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Whose History is This Anyway?  History and the Florida A++ Plan

By

Michelle Tenam-Zemach and Dr. Hilary Landorf

“Let the tutor make his charge pass everything through a sieve and lodge nothing in his head on mere authority and trust…let this variety to ideas be set before him; he will choose if he can; if not he will remain in doubt” (Montaigne cited in Frame, 1943, p. 13).

Both I and my dissertation chair took our first degrees in English literature. Neither of us ever thought history was that interesting, until we realized how history affects our own lives and our understanding of the world in which we live. As educators, we both now often use historical moments as the compass with which to make sense of what is happening around us and to help our students make sense of their world. However, the Florida legislature has a different opinion of how we, and all Floridians, should know and understand the past.

On June 5, 2006 the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, signed Bill 7087 into law as part of the A+ + plan. This is not to be confused with the current A+ plan that reduces schools to a letter grade in order to weed out failing schools.  In reaction to Bill 7087, Theron Trimble (2006), Executive Director of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, said in a recent article in The Tampa Tribune that the law represents a “misguided fear of ‘constructed’ history, another word for interpretation.” University of South Florida Social Sciences Education Professor Barbara Cruz had a similar reaction in the same article: "The thing is, when you start using terms like 'factual' telling, it implies that someone else's version is not as factual as yours. It implies that alternative perspectives on history are not going to be accommodated.”

The incongruence between the aims of teaching and learning and the text of the bill was picked up by Cornell University American History Professor Mary Beth Norton (2006), who pointed out in her July 2, 2006 editorial in The New York Times that she is “befuddled” by the wording of the law.  Bill 7087 states that “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed” and “shall be viewed as knowable, teachable and testable.”  In Norton’s opinion, “facts mean little or nothing without being interpreted – another word for ‘constructed.’ All historians know that facts never speak for themselves.” We both strongly agree with Dr. Trimble, Dr. Cruz, and Norton, among many others, and would like to explain why.

Learners need an anchor for the information they are acquiring. That anchor is the context that places information in a purposeful place in the learner’s mind. For example, prior to most reading lessons, teachers attempt to elicit prior knowledge from students to facilitate students’ understanding of the text they will read. This “prior knowledge” helps the students to make sense of the information and to help them see its relevancy in relation to their own experiences. The same is true of historical “fact”. In order for learners to anchor the facts, they need to understand their context, and then be able to interpret the potential relevancy of these facts in the world that they live.

As Montaigne asserts in the quoted statement above, it is the responsibility of the teacher to present students with multiple perspectives because truth at best is ephemeral, whereas doubt is a constant. “Only fools are certain and assured” (Montaigne, cited in Frame, 1943, p. 13).  Allowing students to engage with a variety of ideas not only teaches them to handle uncertainty but allows them to critically apply the past to work through the present.

History, like all content matter, does not exist in a vacuum. Every event that takes place is influenced by a myriad of coexisting events. To pretend otherwise, to isolate information and refer to it as a historical fact, limits students’ perspectives of what happened in the past and why. What purpose does it serve to teach the “facts” about global warming without teaching students about how the Industrial Revolution contributed to our current warming trends? How will students contribute to the solutions of the earth’s degradation without understanding how our actions have contributed to this phenomenon? 

To Construct or Not Construct

            Who chooses what we teach, what we should know and how we should know it?  In light of the present standardized context of schooling, this is a valid question. In fact, this has been a question of the ages. Plato asks, “Shall we therefore readily allow our children to listen to any stories made up by anyone, and to form opinions that are for the most part the opposite of those we think they should have when they grow up?” (Plato, cited in Lee, 1956, p. 131) The reply is “We most certainly shall not” (p. 131). Despite Plato’s viewpoint that students should learn certain values over others, he and Socrates were insistent on using inquiry rather than didacticism as the primary pedagogical tool for teaching and learning. Indeed, the Socratic Method, called the elenchus, means disputation--inquiry through dialogue. The essential question is, how do students learn so that they can make informed and critical choices? According to the theory of constructivism, students construct meaning and participate in the outcomes of their learning process.  Constructivist oriented teaching encourages creating new perspectives and interpretations of what students have learned. Von Glaserfeld (1984) contends,

…learners construct understanding. They do not simply mirror and

reflect what they are told or what they read. Learners look for meaning

and will try to find regularity and order in the events of the world even

in the absence of full or complete information” (p. 18). 

With constructivist pedagogy, students are given opportunities to respond to what they have learned in meaningful ways that derive from their own prior knowledge and experiences. Knowledge is contextualized so that it is relevant to students’ lives and focuses on the process of learning. In addition to learning factual knowledge and skills, students come to conceptual understanding by using the constructivist method. Woolfolk (1993) explains constructivism in this way: “The key idea is that students actively construct their own knowledge: the mind of the student mediates input from the outside world to determine what the student will learn. Learning is active mental work, not passive reception of teaching” (p. 485).  However, under the new legislation, students will only not only be required to know the “facts”, but they will be restricted from interpreting those facts in meaningful and relevant ways.

Why Study History?

Bill 7087 states that certain facts are important in history.  According to the statute, American history includes “the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement to the present.” Other than the obvious question of who decides the content of American history is the underlying question of why study history? For the authors of the Florida statute, students must study history in order to learn nonnegotiable facts. The history educator Sam Wineburg has another viewpoint. Wineburg (1999) states that “history holds the potential,  only partially realized, of humanizing us in ways offered by few other areas in the school curriculum.” Like literature, history teaches us who we are and what we can or should not become. More important, it provides a point of distinction in time and space. If we are to think of history as a guide by which to live and make decisions, then we consider it essential to provide students with the capacity to judge and interpret the ‘facts.’ Wineburg goes on to point out that “the essence of achieving mature historical thought rests precisely on our ability to navigate the jagged landscape of history, to traverse the terrain that lies between the poles of familiarity with and distance from the past.”  How can we expect students to have “mature historical thought” without providing them the opportunity to think through the material presented to them and to see the myriad of ideas in between what they know about their present world and what may have existed in the past?

                                                References

Frame, D. M. (1943). Selections from the essays of Montaigne. Arlington Heights,

 IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc.

Dolinski, C. (2006, May 18). Whose Facts? Tampa Tribune, A1.

Lee, D. (1955). Plato: The republic. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books.

Norton, M.B. (2006, July 2). History Under Construction in Florida. The New York Times, Sec.4, 11.

Von Glaserfeld, E. (1984). Radical constructivism. In P. Watzlawick (Ed.) The invented

            reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 17-40.

Wineburg, S. (1999). Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. Phi Delta Kappan,

            80, 488-499.

Woolfolk, A. E. (1993). Educational psychology.  Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Authors:

Michelle Tenam-Zemach: Michelle is an advanced doctoral candidate in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, College of Education, Florida International University. She can be reached at micheletz@bellsouth.net

Dr. Hilary Landorf: Dr. Landorf is an Assistant Professor and the Program Leader for Social Studies/Global Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, College of Education, Florida International University. Dr. Landorf can be reached at landorfh@fiu.edu.