
Quality Grade-School
History Curriculum
Q. Whatever
happened to history in grade school?
Here's an excerpt from the National
Council for History Education's curriculum guide, "Building A
History-Centered Curriculum for Kindergarten Through Grade Four." The
excerpt was part of longer section which appeared in the monthly "History
Matters," December, 2001:
"During the first four decades of
the 20th century, the presence of history in lower grades needed no special
defense or explanation. Along with geography and civic education, history was a
recognizable part of both traditional and progressive curricula. Early peoples,
heroes, myths, biographies, poems, national holidays, fairy tales, and
historical legends formed the heart of K-4 history instruction. As one writer
observed, "The line between historical literature and general literature
was virtually nonexistent." But the Great Depression spurred a shift in
social and educational thinking, and by the 1940s a content-rich curriculum had
been replaced by the sociologically based "expanding horizons"
framework, typically: "Me" (kindergarten), "My Family, My
School" (first grade), "My Neighborhood" (second), "My
Community" (third), and "My State" (fourth grade)."
"This curriculum became so
entrenched that its basis in child development was assumed inviolable. But
during the 1980s, psychologists and educators began to reexamine the
developmental premises of 'expanding horizons.' The researchers were forthright
in their denunciations. 'There is little beyond ideology to commend the
(expanding horizons) program and its endlessly bland versions,' wrote New
School professor of psychology Jerome Bruner. Teachers College professor Philip
Phenix confirmed what many elementary teachers already knew: 'Although teaching
must obviously take account of where the student is, the whole purpose of
education is to enlarge experience by introducing new experiences far, far
beyond where the child starts. The curious, cautious, timid presumptions that
the limits of expansion are defined in any one grade year by the spatial
boundaries defining expanding boundaries dogma is wholly without warrant. Young
children are quite capable of, and deeply interested in, widening their
horizons to the whole universe of space and time and even far beyond that into
the world of the imaginary. And all of this from Kindergarten years, or even
before.'"
Homework: An
example of a quality history curriculum for primary grade levels is the Core
Knowledge series, www.coreknowledge.com
You can browse the syllabus by grade level in most bookstores, which should
stock the books.