Is LAUSD "playing with history"?
Former Los Angeles
Unified School District Board of Education member David Tokofsky is concerned
that approaches to history such as the Stanford curriculum now in use at Venice
High School "diminish content and scope in service to their hip
methods." ("History
classes don't need to be 'gamified,'" Readers React, Nov. 28)Both The Times' article describing the new curriculum and publications by those responsible for the program at the Stanford History Education Group suggest that the inquiry-based approach does not diminish but increases students' mastery of history and generates real enthusiasm for it.
The new approach encourages students to look beneath the surface and examine authentic documents to gather evidence to determine whether claims and assumptions are supported by evidence. I recommend that both critics and supporters of the Stanford program, to which I have no personal or professional connection, do the same.
Stephen Krashen, Los Angeles
History classes don't need to be "gamified"
Letter, LA Times, Nov. 28
To the editor: The article describing some
students at Venice High School playing games to access world history saddens
those who believe history need not be "gamified," put online to
download and reduced in scope to stimulate thought and engagement in
classrooms. ("L.A. Unified adopts free history curriculum from Stanford
University," Nov. 26)
To
the generalist, the lesson presented — in which students play the role of
history detective — appeared captivating. A keen eye, however, would recognize
that a lesson presented for nearly five days has to come at the expense of
learning many other standards and eras. Without a textbook, who would know that
other eras were deleted and not being taught?
History
methodology revisionists argue that "less is more," and they are
right with respect to deepening engagement. But unfortunately they often
inadvertently diminish content and scope in service to their hip methods.
Sadly
for students, educational fads often repeat themselves as history does: the
first time as a tragedy and the second time as farce.
David Tokofsky, Los Angeles
L.A. Unified adopts free
history curriculum from Stanford University
November 26
Los Angeles Times
Venice
High sophomore Vanessa Pepperdine had always hated history class: the dry
lectures, the boring textbooks, the forgettable factoids about famous dead
people.
"You
just read out of the textbook, and it wasn't interesting," Vanessa said.
But
during a recent period of World History, Vanessa and her classmates were
engaged in excited discussion about the 1896 Battle of Adwa between Ethiopia
and Italy. Their teacher, Daniel Buccieri, showed them an illustration of the
event and peppered them with questions.
Who
do you think won? How do the American and Ethiopian accounts differ and why?
How was Ethiopia able to defeat Italy in this pushback of European imperialism?
With
that, the students became sleuthing historians in search of truth rather than
passive recipients of a droning lecture.
That's
the aim of a free, online Stanford University curriculum that is picking up
steam nationally as educators grapple with widespread evidence of historical
illiteracy among U.S. students.
Only
about a third of Los Angeles Unified School District high schoolers were
proficient on state standardized U.S. and world history tests last year;
nationally, 12% were proficient in U.S. history in the 2010 National Assessment
of Educational Progress exam.
L.A.
Unified became the curriculum's largest booster this year when it signed an
18-month, $140,000 contract with the Stanford History Education Group for
training and collaborating on more lesson plans. So far, 385 teachers and
administrators — including about 40% of the social science instructors in the
nation's second-largest school system — have attended Stanford-led workshops
this year.
Nationally,
the curriculum has been
downloaded 1.7 million times by educators in all 50 states since the program
was launched in 2009.
As
the teaching of history comes under national scrutiny, with critics attacking
the new Advanced Placement U.S. history guidelines as anti-American, the
Stanford program takes no sides. With more than 100 ready-made lesson plans
covering a range of U.S. and world events, the curriculum features a central
historical question and provides primary documents for students to use in
shaping their own answers, backed by evidence.
Was
ancient Athens truly democratic? Were the "Dark Ages" really dark?
Why did Chinese students support the Cultural Revolution? Did Abraham Lincoln
actually believe in racial equality? What made the Vietnam War so contentious?
"This overturns the traditional textbook," said
Sam Wineburg, the Stanford education professor whose research more than two
decades ago laid the groundwork for the approach. "Students explore
questions with original documents and cultivate a sense of literacy and how to
develop sound judgment."
In
a 2001 book, Wineburg argued that students must be trained to question history
in order to understand it, just as professionals do; the curriculum is called
"Reading Like a Historian." The ability to question the credibility
of information and its sources, he said, is critically relevant in today's digital age — judging claims, for
instance, that President Obama was born in Kenya.
The
Stanford group has also developed free assessments, more than 65 so far, that
gauge mastery of the targeted skills through short essay questions rather than
traditional multiple-choice tests. In a test run five years ago, 236 students
in five San Francisco high schools using the curriculum outperformed peers in
factual knowledge and reading comprehension compared with those in traditional
classes, Wineburg said.
For
school systems such as L.A. Unified, the curriculum came at an opportune time —
just as the district is shifting to new learning standards known as Common
Core. The standards focus on cultivating such skills as reading complex texts
and integrating and evaluating information from multiple sources.
"The Stanford curriculum aligns almost perfectly
with Common Core," said Kieley Jackson, a district coordinator of social
science curriculum.
Not all teachers have embraced the lessons. Some say they
take too long, typically four days, although Stanford trainers say they can be
adapted for one or two. Others say they are short on content. And some
instructors prefer their approach of lectures and textbooks. Only about a
quarter of social science teachers at Hollywood High use the curriculum, said
Neil Fitzpatrick, the department chair.
But Fitzpatrick and many of the 60 colleagues who
attended a training this month praised the curriculum and shared ideas on how
they modified it — actions that Stanford fully supports — with bingo games,
film clips, Play-Doh, poetry, poster sets, Google images.
Buccieri, of Venice High, said he added the Italian
perspective of the Battle of Adwa to further enrich the lesson. He said he
began incorporating elements of Wineburg's approach after reading his book more
than a decade ago and found the Stanford curriculum on his own four years ago.
"History isn't a set of answers I'm passing down to
kids," he said. "It's more a set of questions and problems. To me,
that's more exciting."
Many students seem to agree. Michael Corley, a history
teacher at Polytechnic High in Sun Valley, said nearly 90% of about 100
students he polled preferred the Stanford curriculum over their textbook.
Students don't feel they can argue with the textbook, he
said. But using the Stanford lesson on Prohibition to debate why the 18th
Amendment banning alcohol was adopted and evaluating perspectives about it from
a medical doctor, anti-saloon activist and children's rights advocate? Now that excites them, he said.
He added that the Stanford curriculum seems to especially
engage boys, perhaps by appealing to their competitive "gamer
mentality," and said his students who typically earn Cs and Ds also do
well because the lessons spark their interest. "You can see what they're
truly capable of," he said.
At Venice High, Buccieri's 10th grade students
said their teacher's approach has completely changed their attitude toward
history.
Rosio Salas said she had 10 substitutes in one year who
did nothing but assign textbook readings and worksheets. She didn't remember
anything she learned. "You just did it because you had to do it."
Now, students say history is exciting. They understand
it. They even remember it — as classmate James Gregorio proved by explaining
that a Serbian terrorist's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
ignited World War I.
"You're not just sitting there having to listen to
him," sophomore Drew Anderson said. "You get to figure things out for
yourself."
Twitter: @TeresaWatanabe
