Paul Horton: History Matters: The C3 Social Studies Standards are Fool's Gold
Guest post by Paul Horton.
I could not but help get a little hot around the collar the first time I read the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) C3 "Framework for Social Studies Standards": Social Studies for the Next Generation. Like most of us with history degrees who teach high school history and who take history seriously, we don't like to closely examine the very bright and glossy NCSS bulletins that we receive, typically from district level curriculum people who have degrees in Social Studies Education.
The fact is that somehow NCSS has a boatload of money, and we history scholar wannabes who have memberships in the American Historical Association (AHA), the Organization of American Historians (OAH), and the National Council for History Education (NCHE) saw money for History professional development dry up when the spigot for the Teaching American History Grants was turned off.
When I saw that the AHA and the NCHE endorsed the new standards on the inside cover, I saw red. This can't be, I told myself, are these two proud organizations selling out? When I copied an e-mail to the Director of NCHE that expressed my dismay, he was upset with me because I had