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Minnesota Proposed Social Studies Standards Long on Facts, Short on Substance

Ohanian Comment: Minnesota new standards offer history as trivial pursuit. And politically loaded sound bite. The Vietnam War is defined as a military action that involved the United States "defending freedom."

Describe the importance of Timbuktu. Explain the significance of the Intolerable Acts. Know how the Gulf Stream affects climate. Find ancient Constantinople and the Ural Mountains on a map.

Sound tough? Minnesota's proposed new social studies requirements would have students master those and many more names, dates and places by the time they finish grade school. Hundreds more requirements to learn facts, places names, geographical features and historical events pepper the proposed requirements released Monday by the Minnesota Department of Education.

Hundreds of science requirements also were unveiled.

The new standards -- the last such academic requirements to be considered -- could be controversial.

Already, the proposed social-studies requirements have come under fire. Rep. Jim Davnie, DFL-Minneapolis, who is also a social-studies teacher at Buffalo Middle School, charged that the standards give short shrift to key points in U.S. history such as the women's and civil rights movements, and that the language of some requirements is charged with politically conservative sentiments.

For instance, he said, the Vietnam War is defined as a military action that involved the United States "defending freedom."

"We've been debating U.S. involvement in Vietnam practically my entire life," he said.

But Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke praised the proposed standards, which were drafted by a citizens committee over the summer.

"There's a higher level of rigor [than the current requirements], and more of an emphasis on the specific as opposed to keeping things very general," she said. "We're coming back to higher expectations than we had in the past."

As far as omissions are concerned, Yecke noted that there will be plenty of time and lots of opportunities for citizens to voice both approval and criticism. A series of statewide meetings will begin next Monday and continue for more than a month.

"If people think things should be added, then by all means let us know," she said.

Yecke said she is concerned about the sheer bulk of the requirements and hopes they can be whittled down during the public comment process.

Although the science standards mention evolution several times, Yecke noted that she instructed science committee members to avoid debates about whether creationism ought to be taught alongside it.

Like the social studies standards, the science standards tend to be far more detailed and numerous than those listed in the Profile of Learning, the state's process-oriented former graduation rule, which was voted out of existence by the Legislature last spring.

Detail-oriented

The new standards, which will gradually replace Profile standards, still face the public meetings, critiques from national experts and the scrutiny of the Legislature next year before they become official.

"It's a dramatic departure," said Todd Flanders, a member of the state's social studies committee and headmaster of Providence Academy Catholic School in Plymouth.

The new standards probably will delight teachers who believe students don't know enough and disappoint those who fear that they will turn classrooms into rote memory exercises.

In their current form, the proposed social studies standards represent a major departure from the Profile and a 180-degree turn from the current vogue in social studies education that stresses more common people and day-to-day life, and tends to diminish big political names and big events such as Civil War battles.

Included in the proposed standards are such figures as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, the Revolutionary War's Battle of Trenton and World War II's Battle of the Bulge. The standards also are replete with the names of historical figures, including Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther King, the Pilgrims, Lewis and Clark, Sacajawea, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Harriet Tubman, Julius Caesar, Frederick Douglass, Robert E. Lee, Charlemagne, Georgia O'Keeffe, Duke Ellington, Plato, Gandhi and Ho Chi Minh.

The standards are also heavy on patriotic symbols, requiring students, for example, to be able to recognize such national symbols as Mount Rushmore and the Liberty Bell by the second grade.

But plenty of concepts and themes from history and geography are also included. Sixth-graders, for instance, must be able to identify characteristics of Indian tribes such as the Dakota and Ojibwe. High school students must be able to discuss the rise of Islam, the French Revolution and the influence of such philosophers as John Locke and Charles de Montesquieu. Seventh-graders must learn about the role of pioneer women in the western expansion of the United States.

Once the standards are posted on the Department of Education's Web site (http://e

ducation.state.mn.us/), citizens can weigh in. Yecke said she intends to show the proposed requirements to various educators around the country, and to introduce them to the Legislature, which must act on them, in February.

The Legislature approved new language arts and math standards last spring. They should be making their way into classrooms this year. The science and social studies requirements will be introduced in 2004-05, with full implementation slated for 2005-06.

Although state tests designed to measure mastery of some standards will be implemented in 2006, there are no plans to implement state social studies tests, Yecke said.


— Norman Draper
New school standards stress basics
Star Tribune
2003-09-09
http://www2.startribune.com/stories/1592/4085393.html

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