In September in a room where someone had conspicuously placed a Confederate flag for at least part of the proceedings, the Texas board of education sat through two days of public hearings on a “streamlining” of its 2010 social studies standards.
Panels of teachers had proposed hundreds of changes, but the most controversial was to delete a line of the standard on the Alamo referencing “all the heroic defenders who gave their lives there.” Swift condemnation from politicians and the public followed, forcing the panels to restore some of that language even before the hearings concluded.
Much has been written about the Alamo’s relative historic importance in the story of the United States, but that wasn’t even the point of this debate. What was truly at stake were the underlying values proponents felt it signaled: What defines American thought and action? What can students take pride in?
It’s easy to lose sight of the connection between what students learn in history and the civic ideals and values those topics communicate, especially since they tend to be treated as different disciplines in K-12 education.
U.S. public education is rooted in the belief by early American leaders that the most important knowledge to impart to young people is what it means to be a citizen. If America is experiencing a civic crisis now, as many say it is, schools may well be failing at that job. To better understand the role of education in the current crisis, Education Week consulted experts, visited classrooms, and conducted surveys. This article and the state-by-state survey that accompanies it mark the official publishing launch of that initiative. Look for more pieces from our Citizen Z project in the weeks and months ahead.
But the Texas debate reminds us that history and civic values are deeply intertwined, and gives rise to this interesting question: What if the inability of Americans to agree on our shared history—and on the right way to teach it—is a cause of our current polarization and political dysfunction, rather than a symptom? It’s a question that gets right to the issues of what constitutes facts, how to interpret them, and how they inform contemporary debates, all of which are key themes as America experiences a kind of civic crisis.