Social studies teachers across the country routinely try to teach their students "what things were like" at particular times and places in history. Many such lessons, however, are a waste of time. The Detroit News, for example, recently praised a teacher who built a life-size replica of a World War I trench with his students to help give them " a realistic feeling of being a [Word War I] soldier." Sixteen-year-old Jessica Harbin, faithfully parroting the party line, told the News that once students see the trench, "there will be a great impact in their understanding and knowledge of war." No word on whether rats, mud, influenza, dead bodies, and post-war mental problems are part of the lesson. In a related story, an elementary school teacher in Biggsville, Illinois was suspended for telling a student to take off his clothes during a lesson in which she was trying to illustrate "how the pharaohs ruled." (He stripped to his underwear before the lesson was halted.) In Sacramento, teacher Emilio Moran aroused student and parent ire when he sent home a list of "taxes" to be imposed on students-$1 for a hall pass, 10 cents for homework-to help them understand what it was like to be a colonist under British rule. Moran opined that "part of the problem with teaching history is that it is hard to get kids into the proper mind frame. I could tell them what happened 200 years ago, but my colleagues and I believe that if students remember anything, they will remember the fraudulent classroom rules." No word on whether they remember the actual history lesson. For a longer discussion of social studies' maladies, see Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? at www.edexcellence.net/socialstudies/socialstudies.html.
"Novi students study WWI," by Janet Sugameli, Detroit News, November 4, 2003
"Social studies lesson goes bad in Biggsville" by Carol Clark, Peoria Journal Star, October 29, 2003 (link no longer available)
"A real history lesson," by Bill Lindelhof, Sacramento Bee, November 5, 2003