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Reforming the Curriculum
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13942 |
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BOOK WORLD
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2 / 1988 |
3,700 Words |
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Stephen Ellenwood
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Educating active, productive citizens is demanding and delicate work, and one key ingredient of an effective citizen is a command of history and literature. Of course, it is possible to exist in a democratic society with less than minimal knowledge of one's history and literature, but it is not possible to live well. To live productively, knowledge of one's cultural traditions and the ability to continue learning in light of those traditions is needed. In What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?, Diane Ravitch and Chester E. Finn, Jr. have rung an alarm with respect to American high school students' mastery of history and literature.
Evaluating the study
Finn and Ravitch have tackled a major area of ignorance in American education. Their examination of what present-day students know in the fields of history and literature is a kind of "end-product analysis" that many have urged for years. The research reported by Ravitch and Finn is from the first national assessment of high school students' knowledge of history and literature. The result? The students could correctly answer only 54 percent of the history questions and 52 percent of the literature questions. The results are not entirely surprising; they are dismaying, although what the scores mean is more complicated than it may at first seem.
The authors correctly point out that our enthusiasm for educational reform often begins in the realms of math and science. National energy wanes when we get around to history and literature. And they argue that at this time, the need for reform in these areas is desperate: Our cultural legacy may disappear within a generation unless a large number of significant citizens pay attention to the author's findings and recommendations.
Those who have lost touch with the younger generation may be startled to find that nearly a third of the students examined did not know "that Germany and Japan were the primary enemies of the United States in World War II." More than one-third did not know that the epic "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" is part of the Declaration of Independence. Though the authors do not point it out, these findings are made even more disconcerting by the fact in many urban school systems about 40 percent of all 17-year-olds had dropped out before this test was given.
In terms of students' habits and lifestyles it would be convenient if we could locate a variable or two that connected unmistakably with success, but we cannot. More than three out of five students in the top quartile do less than an hour of homework each day. In the bottom quartile that figure shifts to three out of four doing less than an hour. History and literature alone should account for more than that. Evidently that homework is not being assigned, a failure that communicates to students that the school is not serious about these subjects. Watching television does not correlate well with success or failure on the assessment. And neither does holding a job, if the student works less than 15 hours a week.
Overall, the mechanics of the national assessment are sound. The sample accords with national demographics. The questions are carefully and unambiguously constructed. Still, one aspect of the research design is flawed. The flaw does not completely vitiate the conclusions, but it should cause us to move forward with
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