Wow — an excellent post on the state of history education today. As a professional historian and a history-museum-educator, we see this when visitors talk about how they hated history in high school, but love learning about history in our museums and historic sites. Why? Because we tell stories. We make it relevant, real and human. History isn’t about filling in bubbles on a test.
Thanks, History Tech, and Thanks, Indiana Jen for reblogging it so I saw it.
About 15 years ago, I had the chance to drive James Loewen around for a couple of days. He was in town for a two day workshop and afterwards had to get to Kansas City for a flight. As his chauffeur, I got the chance to pepper him with all sorts of questions. And much of what I wanted to know revolved around his most recent book at the time, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.
I was especially curious about the first few sentences in the book:
High school students hate history. When they list their favorite subjects, history always comes in last. They consider it “the most irrelevant” of 21 school subjects, not applicable to life today. “Boring” is the adjective they apply to it. When they can, they avoid it . . .
In writing the previous post, I was looking at Will Richardson’s blog. His last two posts hit really close to home for me, as I too have a daughter about to enter her junior year of high school.
“What Are We Doing to Our Kids”, based on a post by Cathy Davidson about the average GPA of entering freshman at UC Irvine being 4.1, comments on the fact that the expectation for kids to be PERFECT in order to get into college is getting out of hand. It’s true – very true. I’ve seen kids this year with 4.0+ and near perfect SATs not get into colleges. It’s crazy.
I admire Mr. Richardson for his response that his daughter has a balanced life, doing things outside of school, not focusing on all honors classes. It is a model we have followed as well, and will continue, for a couple of reasons.
I wholeheartedly agree that there is more to life – way more – than the academics in class. The life skills learned in extracurriculars often far outweigh the details about cell respiration, who fought the War of 1812, and where Jay Gatsby may have lived.
Per my previous post, if academics are so driven by standardized tests, the content and skills they learn are basically useless.
My daughter is a visual learner. She thinks and process information in pictures and color. Traditional school does NOT reward this type of thinker. Yet, once she’s out of school, these skills will be incredibly valuable.
I am grateful for Richardson’s previous post, “It’s the Assessments, Stupid,” he has a link to SAT -optional colleges.
This short tweet shifted my world. I look at the work my kids bring home through a whole different lens. Not that I ever approved of assessments that were based on simple factual recall – when I was teaching 20 years ago, we never ever used bubble tests. Those were considered the lazy teacher option that didn’t test anything except who had the best memory. In 1990, I was telling my history students that I didn’t expect them to memorize all the dates and facts as long as they knew how to find it. Back then, finding the information meant looking it up in a physical encyclopedia.
My daughter just finished her sophomore year of high school, including a year of AP World History. In this class and in her biology class she took a horrifying number of “Scantron” tests. Of course, the kids never got the tests back (you see, they might pass the answers to someone else) and parents never got to see them. I finally requested to see the tests and had to make an appointment so I could look at them in the room with the teacher present.
Back to Google….. After seeing the tests, I was so disappointed. They were 90% basic low level questions that could be easily answered using Google.
What about AP Tests?
A few months ago, I was asked to give a talk to a group of history and education majors at Carleton College about tech in education and how museums are using tech to work with the K12 audience. On a whim, thinking of my daughter’s tests, I looked for a sample AP test.
Question from Sample AP US History Test
I took this sample AP test and Googled the 40 questions exactly as written. It took about 2 seconds to find the answers – and that was checking a couple of pages to verify the answers. Thirty-five of the 40 questions were easily answered this way. The other five required information from a chart or photo.
I asked the students at Carleton to find the answers to a couple of these questions. Obviously, they had the same result. The students, many of whom had taken plenty of AP classes, were shocked. The professors were very amused.
A few weeks after this, I had the opportunity to talk with a history professor at Oberlin College, and asked him what he thought about this and AP in general. He said that they often need to reteach students how to read and study history when they arrive at Oberlin. Students who have been through AP classes are geared to read for minutae and minor detail. They haven’t been taught to read for concepts, context and the big picture.
AP Philosophy
In looking closely at the AP material online, it turns out that the multiple choice questions and the free response questions are each worth half of a student’s “grade” on the test. There are 80 questions to be completed in 55 minutes. The free response questions, including primary source analysis and essay, takes 130 minutes.
This quote from the AP materials confuses me:
“Although there is little to be gained by rote memorization of names and dates in an encyclopedic manner, a student must be able to draw upon a reservoir of systematic factual knowledge in order to exercise analytic skills intelligently. Striking a balance between teaching factual knowledge and critical analysis is a demanding but crucial task in the design of a successful AP course in history .”
They admit that rote memorization isn’t necessary, yet fully one half of the test score is based on this skill. While I don’t disagree that a basic level of knowledge of factual knowledge is necessary, is it necessary to have grades depend on the skill of memorization when we now have access to encyclopedias of content in our pockets? There is no possible way we can have the entirety of knowledge memorized — we need to be able to find it. We need to teach students how to find this information.
In my daughter’s AP World History course, her assessment/grade was based on this skill of rote memorization: assessments were worth 60% of the grade, and these assessments were by far mostly multiple choice Scantron tests with a few writing assessments thrown in there. Any creative assignment that required critical thinking, creativity and communication was worth just a few points. The content, structure and assessment of the course is designed to heavily favor strong word-based learners. It does not allow for success of a visual learner.
Even Will Richardson dislikes Google Questions
At ISTE in June, Will Richardson shared a story about his high school daughter’s history final – 100 multiple choice questions. He thought that all but 5 could be answered using the phone.
“I’m a big advocate of open phone tests. If we’re asking questions we can answer on our phone, why are we asking the questions?”
I’m excited to have yet another awesome quote about the value (or lack of) low-level questioning.
I had a fun, quick Twitter interaction with him later — I just had to know what someone like him, who is so active in this community, so well respected, does when his own kid is given an assessment like this.
Watch Will’s talk. The history final story is at 12:30. Then don’t give any more tests that can be Googled.
Got an email about a new site, curiator.com. Interesting concept of collecting your favorite art, whether it’s from a museum, gallery, online, in person, etc.
A recent study by Pew Research (summary article by MindShift) finds teachers of higher level students feel that the opportunities offered by using technology in writing improves students writing. Students (and adults) need to learn how to write in formal as well as informal voices. Teaching writing with technology tools allows for sharing, an authentic audience, teaching of voice, as well as copyright.
HT to Jennifer Carey for this study. I’ll be referencing this in a letter I’m about to send to the superintendant of my local school. This type of writing is not only not happening in the school my daughter attends, but it is actively discouraged.
A recent NPR/Talk of the Nation story about choral music talks about how good it is to sing. The story includes an interview with Stacy Horn, author of an interesting new book, “Imperfect Harmony”.
Why post this hear? Because arts are so important for learning. Kids need arts, like they need math, movement, literature.
I’ve only read the article (not the whole book) and am intrigued to read the book.
My only concern is the continued attack on “giftedness.” Having been active in supporting gifted learners, I am concerned (and disagree) with the concept that “all students are gifted.” Without reading the book, I agree with Kaufman that all students can achieve greatness, and definitely that society measures intelligence in only one way (more on that later.) However, I am concerned about not meeting the needs of kids who do measure gifted in the traditional manner. These kids have a different learning style that needs to be addressed/met in order for these kids to be able to achieve their potential. They need to be able to move quickly, learn deeply. It is an ongoing concern with the label “gifted.” I do wish there was a term that better defined this learning style.
Standardized Tests
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of this article. Why do we define intelligence based solely on test scores? Why are we such a text based society? Why isn’t intelligence in other areas valued in a similar manner?
…traditional metrics of intelligence are misguided and may even be detrimental to learning and development.
I see this all the time with my daughter. She struggles with tests and with “traditional” learning settings. Yet, allow her to express her knowledge in an appropriate setting, and she shines. Let her make a video, write a short skit, give a speech – and her intelligence, communication skills, creativity and critical thinking skills shine. Make her take a multiple choice test? Not so much.
I have had a couple of her teacherscomment in the last few years about how she does on these types of projects. The engagement we see at home for these types of assessments is clearly different than what we see for multiple choice tests. In the long run, which skill set is more important? You know what I think….
Yet, she is being defined by these tests, and we see an increasing impact on her self-esteem and image. This is not to deter from the kids who do well on these tests. I just wish there was another measure that was valid.
Kaufman says it better:
I am against standardizing minds and ignoring the fact that there are multiple paths to the same outcome and that engagement is an extremely important aspect of the equation.
As I’ve blogged before, my daughter’s school uses the exact same tests over and over and over again. Tests must be standardized so that all kids have the exact same assessment. Guess what, kids aren’t standard, nor are they the exact same.
I heard an anecdotal story about a teacher who allowed students to come up with their own project to express their learning. A parent complained because her student got a “B” and now this teacher isn’t allowed to do these types of assessments. Now he has to do tests.
At the recent ISTE conference, I sat next to a high school teacher from St. Louis. As Adam Bellow showed his awesome video about shredding Scantron tests, he told me that his school got rid of their Scantron tests three years ago. Best move ever, he said.
Solutions
Kaufman is pretty clear about his solution – project based learning:
… allow students to express their knowledge of the material on their own terms, in their own unique voice, and at their own pace, I think we’d be setting up all students for the future much better, including those students we label gifted now.
No way this is going to happen at my daughter’s school. I’m not sure what the solution is for us, given she has two years left. My son will not be attending this school.
My Wired Life 