What did your great-great-grandfather do during the war?

That’s a question you are unlikely to see on an elementary social studies test.

I’ve been reading the new Oklahoma C3 (College, Career, Citizen) Standards for Social Studies and I found the third grade standards, which emphasize Oklahoma History, particularly interesting. Here is the introduction:

“In the third grade, students begin a focused study of the state of Oklahoma. The historic strand introduces selected Oklahomans who have been important in the development of the state and creates an appreciation for the many peoples who have settled in Oklahoma. In the geography strand students explore the physical and political features of the state including its natural resources.  In civics students examine the structure of local governments and the state government.  In the economic strand students explore how Oklahomans have used their natural resources to create a prosperous and growing economy.”

That sounds great and the goal of the standards is to ensure that students are aware of the noteworthy people and events that played a significant part in the creation of our state.  However, I would like to offer a suggestion about what I believe is a major flaw in our approach to teaching history. As a preface to that, here is the beginning of the standard for third grade Oklahoma history:

History Literacy

Content Standard 4: The student will analyze the significant events and historic personalities contributing to the development of the state Oklahoma.

1. Understand and describe the relationship between historic events and chronology through the creation of basic timelines. (CCRIT 3)

 

In the fifth grade my class did an extensive study of the Civil War. We spent at least a month reading books, writing reports, drawing maps, and having discussions. We learned about the many reasons for the war. We studied the generals and battles. We learned important dates. We discussed the aftermath of the war. I found it interesting, but in a detached “just another chapter” sort of way. Like all of the history lessons taught throughout my school years and probably during yours, it was taught as though it happened to a bunch of strangers who lived a long, long time ago and it had nothing to do with me! I was an adult before I learned that my great-great-grandfather not only fought in the Civil War, but was injured and lost his hand. I can only imagine how much more excited I might have been about our study of the war if I had had that information in the fifth grade. It never occurred to me that my family had had any part in the war, and yet it should have occurred to my teacher to point out that each of us must have had a family member alive during that time period and affected in some way by the war.

All of our ancestors were a part of history and yet we only give time and study to the ones that got the most publicity! We teach children about the big events and the “historic personalities” but we never take history to the local, personal level that might really make a difference to them. No matter what event or time period we care to study, your family and mine were doing something and they were affected by world and national and state events. I think a timeline of history, especially state history, would be more interesting to students if it included an understanding of where their ancestors were and what they were doing at the time. Researching family history no longer requires countless hours searching through documents at the court house or peering at microfilm. With the internet and a little information from their parents students can access lots of family data online. Just knowing where their ancestors were located might make a huge difference in their understanding of history. I wish I had known while I was still in school that my ancestors lived on property next to the Boone family in Kentucky and helped settle the area. And I wish I had known that one of my ancestors was the first tax assessor of Hunt County, Texas. I wish I had known that after the war my great-great-grandfather became a constable for Caddo.

History, and our enthusiasm for studying it, can change dramatically if we understand that it is our history. 

Comments

[Classof65]

You are absolutely right -- making history more personal engenders greater interest. It matters not if your great-great was the sheriff or if he was the horse rustler, it brings the subject more to life.

As an aside, I just read today from the New York Times that in Estonia children are being taught how to write computer code beginning in, I think, third grade. How much better prepared those students will be for the world market when they leave school than our students will be. On the other hand, I deplore that our students are not being taught Latin and Greek and higher mathematics at a young age as were students in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

It just seems that there is so much to learn and too little time to learn it. I'm afraid that our school terms are too short and should no longer be set up for an out-dated agricultural society when students had to be available to help plant and tend and harvest crops and thus could not attend school during the summer.

What are your thoughts on these issues?

[Megan]

As as student, I felt it was all interesting and cool, but very much that history happened to other people, somewhere else. I don't know if it's a child's perspective or the curriculum. I believe family history is very important, but it seems that history is zooming by so briskly that knowing any specific person that did pretty much anything has no value to what we're trying to do to prepare kids for the future. Granted, you are doomed to repeat the past that you don't learn from, but how much history? Who's history?

I've noticed a different aspect since returning to college. The amount of scientific knowledge necessary in a freshman class commonly equals what would have been acquired in a four year degree. And that is just beginning of what has to be learned and then added on to. I wonder how specialized education is going to need to be in the next generation or two. Wide swaths of information will have to be ignored . . . and that worries me.

[ICSE Schools in Mumbai]

I really didn't ask about it to anyone and it was good time that.