Literacy, Reading Comprehension, and Social Studies

This week’s article summary is School Reading Classes Still in a Slump Without more Social Studies.

An article summary from a month ago focused on the importance of background content/prior knowledge as a significant benefit to reading comprehension, and the one a few weeks ago focused on how superficial and incomplete most of today’s history textbooks are.

This article focuses on how American schools devote 40% more class time to learning to read compared to other countries. This high percentage is unquestionably influenced by high-stakes math/literacy testing mandated by our federal and state governments.  

The article’s author, an avid student of history, makes the case for how students by studying more history in school will increase their content knowledge, which in turn will raise their reading comprehension scores.

I agree with him up to a point. While content knowledge is good (and helps us answer questions on Jeopardy), a perplexing question is what constitutes accurate, truthful history. 

As I read the article, I couldn’t help but think the author loves history yet also thinks of it from a one-dimensional, one-perspective manner. Too often we learn only one diluted version of history. 

I agree with him that history can be exciting and thought-provoking, but it needs to push and challenge students by going beyond the superficial. We need to guide students to actively ask questions like ‘Whose experiences and perspectives are lacking’ and ‘In what way might this text skew the full story or omit disturbing events for the sake of narrative/thematic flow?’

I grew up in Cold Spring Harbor, a small town on Long Island Sound. In colonial times, it was a whaling village. When I was a kid, my town was a popular tourist stop with lots of quaint antique stores and even a small but popular museum on the history of whaling. From my kid’s perspective, my town’s history was bucolic.

Imagine my surprise when as an adult I learned that my idyllic hometown in the early 20th century was the infamous epicenter of American eugenics studies and research. (For those who don’t know, eugenics was the racist belief that Nordic whites were genetically superior to other people.) While textbooks commonly attached eugenics to Nazi Germany, America’s part is never covered.

As a history major in college, I read a lot of textbooks but by the time I was a junior and senior and taking discussion-based seminar classes, I mostly read primary sources, especially novels, to get a fuller view and feel of the time period. Nevertheless, what I read was mostly a white, male, Eurocentric perspective. Well-written books with provocative ideas but hardly the only perspective. 

So while I agree that content knowledge is important, we also need to teach kids to think for themselves, and to not assume what they read is the complete story. We all benefit from healthy skepticism of what we read, hear, and see--today more than ever. Superficial textbooks can help kids grow their content knowledge, but whose content knowledge? 

Joe

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From an early age, I have been a social studies nerd. Elementary school lessons on Civil War battles, besieged presidents, and westward expansion thrilled me.

So I am sad to learn that, according to a recent study, U.S. elementary schools are spending only 28 minutes a day on my favorite subject, while English language arts gets two hours and math almost an hour and a half.

The authors of the report say the puny history lessons are bad for reading achievement. “On average, students who receive an additional thirty minutes of social studies instruction per day . . . in grades 1-5 outperform in reading students with less social studies time. Social studies is the only subject with a clear, positive, and statistically significant effect on reading improvement.”

E.D. Hirsch and others have been pointing out for decades that children need more background information to become good readers. Yet the conventional wisdom still rules. Kids just need more reading instruction, we are told. That approach has left 2/3s of 4th and 8th graders not reading proficiently.

“Social studies has long been neglected in American primary school,” the authors say. “Elementary teachers are often taught that students should ‘first learn to read, so they can read to learn,’ even though youngsters can learn a lot about the world before they can decode.”

Other developed countries devote much less time to literacy classes than we do. American schools spend about 40% of class time on reading. In Japan, the number is only 24%. In Germany, it is 20%, in Finland 24% and in Canada 27%.

Part of the blame is the belief among many people that reading, beyond decoding, really is a skill independent of knowledge. School districts brag about their big blocks of time for reading instruction without bothering to see whether they work. Federal policy may have contributed to this trend by mandating annual state testing in reading and math.

Virginia’s annual state history tests were much admired around the country, but the scores were disappointing, perhaps because too little time was devoted to teaching social studies. The state solved the problem by killing state history tests. The English language arts exams remain.

This study notes a contrary trend in Louisiana. It is putting out reading assessments that align with the state’s English language arts and social studies curriculums. Natalie Wexler, author of “The Knowledge Gap,” said that literacy curriculums that incorporate social studies content may be the way to go.

“I’ve seen second-graders who are using that kind of curriculum eager to find out who won the War of 1812,” Wexler said. “They were also learning lots of other history and geography.

Could rebel teachers sneak more intriguing lessons on history and politics into the English curriculum? My grandsons often leave their school backpacks lying around. I will search them in hopes of finding unauthorized lessons on the Alamo and Teapot Dome.