Week One Response, Symcox 4-6 & Conclusion

Week One Response, Symcox 4-6 & Conclusion

Chapters 4, 5, 6, and the conclusion of Linda Symcox's Whose History? is littered with names and acronyms of organizations who participated in, and ultimately dismantled, the nineties quest for what should be taught in schools through the social studies discipline. I found it incredibly easy to get bogged down in Symcox's history of history standards, with it reading like a textbook.

But what I did pull from the final pages of Symcox's discourse was an interesting complication in the standards debate that, ironically, stemmed from a conservative viewpoint in the text.

I'll disclose fully that I'm a bleeding heart liberal, so to find truth in even a couple of words of conservative rhetoric--even about something such as social studies standards--is rare. But on page 123, Paul Gagnon lambastes the world history standards set forth because the document "offers no help to teachers... than any massive world history text would do. The document fails to set priorities."

I side with the argument Symcox puts forth--that a conservative agenda unfairly crushed a set of well-written standards that set out to overhaul the white-male dominant presidential synthesis curriculum, and do justice to those traditionally underserved by social studies education. But this comment by Gagnon is relevant. The conservatives involved in this conflict may have had an agenda, but they set out to define social studies education (even if incredibly limited in scope). The NCHS standards, however, failed to really offer a definition of what should be taught, because it lacked priorities. Perhaps this is a misreading of Symcox on my part.

I came to this conclusion as someone who will eventually be faced with making choices about what to teach, and what to exclude. And while I already plan to complicate a traditional history with the types of information that the NCHS standards include, I know I'll face classes who lack fundamental knowledge and skills, and my time will be diverted to remediation. As an educator in training, anticipating these realities, I believe standards should seek to prioritize curriculum by daring to answer WHY we teach social studies. How can I answer that for my students, if I can't answer the question myself? (sidenote: I do have a personal answer to this question, but I'm not arrogant enough to think it's the best one)