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Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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September 26, 2004

Don't know nothing about history...

This is an important story from Southern California about a trend that anyone with a kid in high school knows about: the end of the full-scale research paper. The article tries a couple of times to connect the lack of term papers to the rise of standards in California. But the real reason for the decline of the research paper is stated by the first teacher quoted in the piece:

"Even in some cases, it's difficult to get a complete sentence," Franke said. "If it's multiple choice or matching they'll do it, but if you give any kind of homework assignment that requires them to read and answer questions, they won't do it. It's unbelievable."

I agree. It's unbelievable. But high schoolers today aren't refusing to do tough work because of standards. In fact, the English standards require that they do this kind of work. The reason they're not doing it is because neither the schools nor parents nor the community demands it, and the skills required to produce such a paper have slowly drifted out of the curriculum.

The California standards for 11th grade history include 11 separate benchmarks, each with its own set of sub-topics. If each of those 11 standards is given equal time during a school year, each one could take 14 days of class time, and the teacher would still have several weeks to spare for assemblies, testing, and time wasted at the start and the end of the year.

If you look at the WW II standard, you can imagine a unit that would include some outside reading and conclude with a term paper requiring students to cover several of the points detailed in the standards. Students would have to show the very qualities teachers say they want to teach: understanding, not just memorization, critical thinking, analysis.

Am I dreaming? Of course, given where students are today. But 11th grade students were once capable of doing this kind of work. And they could be, again.

Here is the standard and its sub-points:

11.7 Students analyze America's participation in World War II.

--Examine the origins of American involvement in the war, with an emphasis on the events that precipitated the attack on Pearl Harbor.

--Explain U.S. and Allied wartime strategy, including the major battles of Midway, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Battle of the Bulge.

--Identify the roles and sacrifices of individual American soldiers, as well as the unique contributions of the special fighting forces (e.g., the Tuskegee Airmen, the 442nd Regimental Combat team, the Navajo Code Talkers).

--Analyze Roosevelt's foreign policy during World War II (e.g., Four Freedoms speech).

--Discuss the constitutional issues and impact of events on the U.S. home front, including the internment of Japanese Americans (e.g., Fred Korematsu v. United States of America) and the restrictions on German and Italian resident aliens; the response of the administration to Hitler's atrocities against Jews and other groups; the roles of women in military production; and the roles and growing political demands of African Americans.

--Describe major developments in aviation, weaponry, communication, and medicine and the war's impact on the location of American industry and use of resources.

--Discuss the decision to drop atomic bombs and the consequences of the decision (Hiroshimaand Nagasaki).

--Analyze the effect of massive aid given to Western Europe under the Marshall Plan to rebuild itself after the war and the importance of a rebuilt Europe to the U.S. economy.