The Trouble with National Social Studies Standards, and how the Common Core Might Help
Education Week reports on social scientists who complain that the new Common Core curriculum standards replicate the problems of No Child Left Behind, by shunting civics and history in favor of English and math.
I share the concern about the sorry state of civics and history education in American schools, but this is actually one reason why I'm cautiously optimistic about the Common Core. The Common Core English standards call for 50 percent of all English class reading assignments to be non-fiction and "informational;" currently, according toDavid Coleman, the lead architect of the new standards, about 80 percent of all reading assignments are fiction or memoir. So if schools and teachers take the Common Core suggested reading lists seriously, students will gain a lot more exposure to great thinkers and ideas in civics, history, and the social sciences. Here's a sampling of what they'll read:
K-1: How People Learned to Fly
2-3: Martin Luther King and the M
