Textbooks and Curriculum changes
Although the curriculum changes related to history and social studies in the NC Standards have taken a back burner due to widespread objections, mainly over the periodization of US History courses that have taken on a very “presentists” perspective, don’t think that the battle has been won. Neither should we think that the battle is only related to curricula issues, per se. The adoption last week by the Texas State Board of Education of a social studies and history curriculum that requires the teaching of Judeo-Christian influences on the founding fathers [no mention of the may "diest" among them], emphasizes “a constitutional republic” rather than the “democratic”aspects of our origins, and down playes ideas such a religious freedoms, and ends teaching the ideal of the “separation of church and state” because those words do not appear in the constitution!
We might say, “well, NC isn’t Texas.” But the changes, nearly 200 of them, made in Texas, will be the basis for textbook publishers to rewrite the next generation of books that will be sold to most other states, including North Carolina. Of course, this is not a new issue. Many are revisited each time the curriculum is revamped.
But during this current process, I have another objection beyond the content – the cost! At a time when budgets are strained to the point of firing teachers, closing some schools, increasing the student/teacher ratio,etc., why are we even considering the cost of retooling the curriculum? Poorly funded schools will not attract or hold quality teachers [for long]. I encourage our members and others who are interested in the curriculum and textbook issues to also get behind supporting our schools — at all levels. The House Education Appropriations Sub-Committee Chairs are:
Rep. Rick Glazier Rich.Glazier@ncleg.net
Rep. Marian McLawhorn Marion.McLawhorn@ncleg.net
Rep. Ray Rapp Ray.Rapp@ncleg.net
Senate Education Appropriations Sub-Committee Chairs are:
Sen Tony Foriest Tony.Foriest@ncleg.net
Sen. Charles Albertson Charliea@ncleg.net
Sen Charlie Dannelly Charlied@ncleg.net
Sen A.B. Swindell Abs@ncleg.net
Send one message to all with your thought on these issues and to your own representatives! Let us be a force that is both democratic in voicing the will of the people to those who represent us in our state —that is guaranteed a republican form of govt. by the actual words of the US Constitution.
Dr. Dorothea Martin, President [2010] NCAH
Story as history; history as story
I just got back from a day visiting social studies teachers in public school classrooms scattered across a city. It’s part of my role as a consulting content coach in a federal “Teaching American History” grant initiative.
We chatted about many things, but one point of common ground was constant. Kids of all ages respond to stories. They love drama and characters and plot. A well-executed story at the start of a class can draw students in and hold them long enough to move toward some historical understanding.
Today I found a blog post on this theme of history as story that really says the same thing in the guise of a book review.
I know as well as any trained historian that history is an orderly interpretation and analysis of the past, an argument based on a thesis.
And yet.
When I see fifth, eighth and tenth-graders held engaged as a storyteller/social studies teacher spins a vignette based solidly on historical fact, I marvel at the power of story as a vehicle for creating passion for and understanding of the past.
Judging from my years in college and university classrooms, it works for young adults – and more mature evening students – as well.
Kathy Carter
Managing Editor, JNCAH
Deep River Press
I was intrigued to read this morning that the Library of Congress has announced that it will archive all Twitter messages (“tweets”) sent since the service since Twitter went on line in March 2006.
Read the LOC’s announcement to see an LOC blog statement on the potential of holding this archive of 140-or-fewer-character messages, including Barack Obama’s tweet sent as he won the Presidency in 2008.
For historians who have been rightly concerned about what will become of primary sources as paper records give way to electronic online files, this is an interesting and hopeful move. The LOC has long been in the forefront of the digitizing revolution (American Memory, for example). Digitizing, of course, creates virtual copies of actual print and other physical resources. Now, LOC turns its attention to what most of us would regard as ephemeral: the tweet. Nothing is really ephemeral on cyberspace, however; messages stay in caches and on servers. Now LOC will preserve this set of bytes for future reference.
Much of it will be, of course, inconsequential unless examined as composite data for statistical social trends and such. But then, there is the Obama victory tweet and others of its ilk.
There used to be concern that web-based information were too ephemeral to be retained as primary source evidence for future historical researchers. It’s a reasonable concern, but the LOC seems to be meeting that challenge. It’s a critical need as we move into “cloud computing,” in which applications, programs, and files will not be on our computers but rather on servers accessible in cyberspace.
The acquisition announcement was sent out as from @librarycongress as a tweet to its 50,000 followers. That seems fitting.
But part of me wants to know: a century from now, will researchers understand what a tweet was?
Kathy Carter
Managing Editor, JNCAH
Deep River Press
The Journal of the NCAH has an immediate need for peer reviewers in postcolonial sub-Saharan African history, primarily post-1960. I am seeking the best peer reviewers the Journal can recruit for this important role. Membership in NCAH is always appreciated, but it is not required of peer reviewers.
We need peer review in the established academic sense. That is, we need two readers for a manuscript, and those two readers must have researched and published in the field.
If you work in postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa as a primary research and publication field, I would welcome your participation. The reading could be done during the summer months (summer in the northern hemisphere, anyway). Publication is for the 2011 issue of the Journal.
If you see this post and know of a colleague who might be a good choice as a peer reviewer, please feel free to forward this request on.
Academe functions best when there is collegiality. I am hoping that this extends to cyberspace as well!
Many thanks to anyone who can help. I can be contacted here.
Kathy Carter
Managing Editor, JNCAH
Deep River Press
This is a short post, simply to announce that our new discussion forum has gone “live” very recently.
There’s not a lot of action on it at present, but it would be a great place to create small discussion groups on specific topics, for example.
If you have an idea for it (like the forum that has been set up for the upcoming Cavalry Studies Group in response to a request from an NCAH member), please email your request.
You do not need to be a member of NCAH to use the blog or the discussion board, but of course we welcome your participation in the Association.
Nothing to do directly with the NCAH, but certainly of interest to anyone who is an educator in the humanities. This is a cut-and-paste out of an email I received this week. (You need a subscription to the Chronicle to read the full text of several of the articles, which are quite thoughtful and thought provoking. Most are open to all readers.)
This Week’s Highlights: a Special Issue on the Crisis in Graduate Education in the Humanities
| Facing Facts By Peter Conn It may be that the current dilemma is part of a long, cyclic history. Or it may be that something more serious is going on. |
| Profess, Don’t Oppress By Lee S. Shulman The salvation of doctoral programs may come, at least in part, from embracing what might seem to be an opposing model: education in the professions. |
| Where’s the Data? By Frank Donoghue The notion of a measurable job-placement rate is bandied about by English departments, but it’s always a misleading fiction. |
| Forum: Do We Need to Overhaul Graduate Education? Does graduate education need reform? The Chronicle Review asked a variety of thinkers to weigh in. |
| A Useful Crisis By Richard A. Greenwald Graduate education in the humanities faces a crisis. Let’s not waste it. |
| Clueless By David D. Perlmutter Were tenured professors to blame for your career prospects? |
A Letter From a Grad Student
By Katharine Polak
Dear Professors: We don’t want your pity, just your help.
I spent eight years in academe as a student and 30 years in various faculty positions. Currently I work outside academe by my own choice. As editor of the JNCAH and a former president and program chair for the Association, I have a deep interest in the role that NCAH plays in bringing together historians across fields at different stages in their careers and in different occupational areas.
In some ways, this goes against the norm in the 21st century. Historians’ organizations tend to be specialty-focused. Even the national groups, like the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, are divvied up into specialty groups, as a look at their annual meeting programs would demonstrate.
Many scholars seem to gravitate toward specialist associations and groups when it comes to presenting papers. Certainly making contacts within one’s specialty can be a wise move. And feedback on the content of presentations is often very useful.
So what’s the modern-day role of a generalist association like the NCAH?
- There’s the human, social component of the annual meeting. It is healthy to leave campus to associate with colleagues from other places. If this can be done without having to invest a lot of time and money in the process, so much the better. We live in an age of retrenchment. The NCAH provides a cost-effective way of gathering with congenial colleagues for a little while.
- Although many of them hate to admit it, most academic historians become generalists by necessity. Why? Two words: survey courses. World Civ. Western Civ. US Survey. At my last place of academic employment, which I left as a tenured full professor after nearly 20 years on staff, about 75% of the classroom work I did was devoted to teaching the survey courses that were part of the general education curriculum. My point is this: we fool ourselves if we think that academic professional development should only focus on our narrow research interests. To teach the survey course well requires a broad and current exposure to fields outside one’s own. A generalist annual meeting, with papers presented on a wide range of fields, is an exciting opportunity to glean from the work of others, and perhaps to put it into practice in survey teaching.
- And then there is the diverse nature of NCAH. Members include not only academics but public historians, independent scholars, schoolteachers, and people whose paying occupations are outside the field of history entirely: the occasional attorney, for example, or myself, an entrepreneur in a mixed world of editing, writing, and online bookselling. There is positive energy that rises from associating with people who share a passion for history but whose lives do not necessarily conform to the rhythms and flow of academe.
I might have more to write on this subject, but I think that’s enough for now.
Kathy Carter
Managing Editor, JNCAH
Deep River Press
As other states are doing – Texas most notably in the national headlines – North Carolina is currently re-examining its SCOS for Social Studies. This is the statewide document that defines the measurable goals and objectives that public schools must meet as they offer history, geography, civics, and other social studies material to children and teens from kindergarten through 12th grade.
When states revise the SCOS for any subject, it is occasion for careful examination, reflection and debate. To what degree is content being sacrificed for skill sets? How can a knowledge of the past be combined with the “twenty-first century skills” that schools are encouraged to facilitate in their student populations? Can there be analysis and critical thinking without learning the facts of the past? How much history should be taught? What history should be taught? How do we assess learning?
In many ways, these are perpetual questions. I have seen the NCSCOS revised twice in the past twenty years, and this third time around raises many of the same philosophical and practical questions. It’s healthy to ask them. It’s the responsibility of citizens to hold governments accountable in democratic republics.
The NCAH is deeply interested in the revision of North Carolina’s social studies curriculum. The organization’s second vice-president, Rebecca Seaman of Elizabeth City State University, will be posting information on this blog about the various changes being discussed regarding the teaching of these important elements of educating young citizens.
Please feel free to comment. This is an issue that affects us all, whether or not we are trained historians – whether or not we are classroom teachers – and whether or not we have children in the public schools of North Carolina.
Kathy Carter
Managing Editor, JNCAH
Deep River Press
The future of NCAH
As managing editor of the Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians, I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about the role of a general historians’ association with members of widely varying educational levels and (sometimes) occupations.
When the Association was formed in the 1970s as the Association of Historians in North Carolina, it brought together practicing academics and emerging graduate students. Public historians joined its ranks, and a few secondary school teachers. In the 1970s, an era of uncertainty in higher education, the Association served, as well, independent scholars and those who chose career paths outside the academy. These constituent groups have, more ore less, remained constant throughout the organization’s history.
NCAH still welcomes these core groups a generation later, and that is a very positive thing. Diverse groups can be dynamic and (to borrow a coined term from business) synergistic.
Does this new era in which we live change things for NCAH?
I am blogging on a website that I built – something that would have been inconceivable twenty-three years ago. With a click of the “publish” button, I can send this reflective piece of early morning writing onto the Internet, where it will become instantly accessible.
As I sip my coffee and watch the sun brighten this beautiful spring day, I wonder how NCAH might use the resources at its disposal to serve its members to the best degree possible.
I will end this post with two questions. They are the sorts of questions any long-standing association should ask from time to time.
Question 1: Is there still need for a generalist association of historians? (Okay, okay, it’s a rhetorical question, and my answer is “Yes.” I’ll elaborate another time.)
Question 2: What are some specific ways in which the North Carolina Association of Historians can serve its present and future constituency, composed of historians inside and outside academe (and with a presence on the Internet that is growing, historians inside and outside of North Carolina)?
Kathy Carter, Ph.D.
Managing Editor, JNCAH
Web Developer, www.ncassnhistorians.org
Deep River Press
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