National Standards for World History: Exploring paths to the present

Preface, [1994]

This electrionic version of the National Standards for World History presents all elements of the printed edition except for

1) Chapter 4, “Teaching Resources for World History,

2) appendix listing contributors and participating organizations,

3) charts and illustrations.

You may purchase the printed editions of the National Standards for World History, United States History, and K-4 History by writing to the National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA, 10880 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 761, Los Angeles CA 90024-4108. The fax number is (310) 825-4723.

If you have comments on the standards please send them to the National Center for History or e-mail to: history@lands.sscnet.ucla.edu.

PREFACE

Publication of the National Standards for World History: Exploring Paths to the Present could not be more timely. These standards address one of the major goals for education reform contained in the landmark legislation, Goals 2000: Educate America Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in March 1994. This statute affirms that by the year 2000, All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter in the core academic subjects of the school curriculum, history among them. Heralding passage of this legislation by the Congress, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley announced, Final passage of the Goals 2000 legislation moves us one step closer to the day when we can assure every parent in America that their children . . . are receiving an education that is up to world class standards.

It is a goal broadly supported by the American people, their state governors, their legislators in the United States Congress, and the two successive administrations of Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton.

Support for the development of internationally competitive national standards of excellence for the nation's schools was first voiced in the National Education Goals adopted by the nation's fifty governors in their 1989 meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia. The third of the six education goals adopted in that meeting identified history as one of five school subjects for which challenging new national achievement standards should be established.

In October 1992 President Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to achieving these goals, including the, establishment of world class standards [specifically to include history] and development of a meaningful national examination system . . . to determine whether our students are meeting the standards . . . , to increase expectations, and to give schools incentives and structures to improve student performance. That same year, the importance of national standards in history was again affirmed in Raising Standards for American Education, the report to Congress of the National Council on Education Standards and Testing, appointed by the Congress to advise on these matters under the co-chairmanship of Governors Roy Romer (D-Colorado) and Carroll A. Campbell (R-South Carolina).

It was in this robust climate of education reform that the National History Standards Project was born. Funded in the spring of 1992 by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Office of Educational Research and Impovement of the United States Department of Education, this Project sought to develop broad national consensus for what constitutes excellence in the teaching and learning of history in the nation's schools. Developed through a broad-based national consensus-building process, this task has involved working toward agreement both on the larger purposes of history in the school curriculum and on the more specific history understandings and thinking processes all students should have equal opportunity to acquire over twelve years of precollegiate education.

In undertaking this process, it was widely agreed that the History Standards, as finally drafted, would in fact mark a critical advance but not the final destination in what must be an ongoing, dynamic process of improvement and revision over the years to come. History is an extraordinarily dynamic field today, and standards drafted for the schools must be open to continuing development to keep pace with new refinements and revisions in this field.

This present publication, National Standards for World History, marks a major milestone in the development of standards of excellence for the nation's schools. It is the result of over two years of intensive work by hundreds of gifted classroom teachers of history; of supervisors, state social studies specialists, and chief state school officers responsible for history in the schools; of dozens of talented and active academic historians in the nation; and of representatives of a broad array of professional and scholarly organizations, civic and public interest groups, parents and individual citizens with a stake in the teaching of history in the schools.

The National Council for History Standards, the policy-setting body responsible for providing policy direction and oversight of the project, consisted of thirty members, including the present or immediate past presidents of such large-membership organizations directly responsible for the content and teaching of history as the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the Council of State Social Studies Specialists, the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Council for History Education, the Organization of American Historians, and the Organization of History Teachers. In addition, members included the director and associate director of the Social Studies Development Center at Indiana University, supervisory and curriculum development staff of county and city school districts, experienced classroom teachers, and distinguished historians in the fields of United States and world history. To foster correspondence in the development of the United States history standards with the work under development for the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in United States History, several participants in the NAEP Planning and Steering Committees were included in the National Council for History Standards. For similar reasons two members of the congressionally mandated National Council for Education Standards and Testing also served on this Council. Finally, the two directors of the National Center for History in the Schools, responsible for administering this project, served as co-chairs of the Council.

The National Forum for History Standards was composed of representatives from major education, public interest, parent-teacher, and other organizations concerned with history in the schools. Advisory in its function, the Forum provided important counsel and feedback for this project as well as access to the larger public through the membership of the organizations represented in the Forum.

Nine Organizational Focus Groups of between fifteen and twenty-nine members each, chosen by the leadership of their respective organizations, were engaged to provide important advisory, review, and consulting services to the project. Organizations providing this special service included the Council of Chief State School Officers the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the American Historical Association, the World History Association, the National Council for the Social Studies, the Organization of American Historians, the National Council for History Education, the Council of State Social Studies Specialists, and the Organization of History Teachers.

Three Curriculum Task Forces were formed, totaling more than fifty members, with responsibility for developing the standards for students in grades K-4, and for students in grades 5-12 in the fields of United States and world history. Composed of veteran classroom teachers from throughout the United States who were recommended by the many organizations participating in this project, and of recognized scholars of United States and world history with deep commitments to history education in schools, these groups have worked for many months in grade-alike writing teams and in meetings of the whole to ensure continuity of standards across all levels of schooling, elementary through high school.

The drafting of the World History Standards required more than the usual collaborative effort that any standards project must mount. Acknowledgements and appreciation are therefore especially apt. The National Council for History Standards established an ad hoc World History Committee of experienced teachers and historians with expertise in various eras and areas of world history to draft a scaffolding for the writing of the standards. This devoted group, which met for three work sessions over a period of six months, was chaired by Michael Winston, Howard University and the Alfred Harcourt Foundation. The other members of the committee were: Joan Arno, George Washington High School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; David Baumbach, Woolsair Elementary Gifted Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Richard Bulliet, Columbia University; Ainslee T. Embree, Columbia University; Carol Gluck, Columbia University; Akira Iriye, Harvard University; Henry G. Kiernan, Director of Curriculum, West Morris Regional High School District, Chester, New Jersey; Colin Palmer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Richard Saller, University of Chicago; and Theodore Rabb, Princeton University.

Working from the Winston Committee's report was a group of experienced, knowledgeable, and dedicated classroom teachers and historians who have been in the forefront of efforts to teach and write a more balanced and inclusive world history. This group, the World History Curriculum Task Force, worked over two summers and in week-long sessions throughout these two academic years. They included: Joann Alberghini, Lake View Junior High School, Santa Maria, California; John Arevalo, Harlandale High School, San Antonio, Texas; Joan Arno, George Washington High School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; David Baumbach, Woolsair Elementary Gifted Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Edward Berenson, University of California, Los Angeles; Margaret Binnaker, St. Andrews-Swanee School, St. Andrews, Tennessee; Jacqueline Brown-Frierson, Lemmel Middle School, Baltimore, Maryland; Richard Bulliet, Columbia University; Stanley Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles; Anne Chapman, Western Reserve Academy, Hudson, Ohio; Peter Cheoros, Lynwood High School, Lynwood, California; Sammy Crawford, Soldotna High School, Soldotna, Alaska; Ross Dunn, San Diego State University; Benjamin Elman, University of California, Los Angeles; Jean Fleet, Riverside University High School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Jana Flores, Pine Grove Elementary School, Santa Maria, California; Michele Forman, Middlebury High School, Middlebury, Vermont ; Charles Frazee, California State University, Fullerton; Marilynn Jo Hitchens, Wheat Ridge High School,Wheat Ridge, Colorado; Jean Johnson, Friends Seminary, New York, New York; Henry G. Kiernan, West Morris Regional High School District, Chester, New Jersey; Carrie McIver, Santee Summit High School, Santee, California; Susan Meisler, Vernon Center MiddleSchool, Vernon, Connecticut; Joe Palumbo, Long Beach Unified School District, Long Beach, California; Sue Rosenthal, High School for Creative and Performing Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Heidi Roupp, Aspen High School, Aspen, Colorado; Irene Segade, San Diego High School, San Diego, California; Geoffrey Symcox, University of California, Los Angeles; David Vigilante, Gompers Secondary School, San Diego, California; Scott Waugh, University of California, Los Angeles; Julia Werner, Nicolet High School, Glendale, Wisconsin; and Donald Woodruff, Fredericksburg Academy, Fredericksburg, Virginia.

To all of these precollegiate and university members of the World History Curriculum Task Force we express great respect and admiration for their tireless efforts and good spirits in negotiating the choppy waters of world history. None of their efforts would have reached fruition without the very special involvement of Ross Dunn, who played a leading and indispensable role in coordinating the work of the World History Curriculum Task Force, led two of the drafting sessions, and acted as a gentle intellectual padrone in negotiating the many cross-currents that necessarily attend the writing of anything as ambitious as a framework for the study of humankind's entire history.

In the final drafting of National Standards for World History: Exploring Paths to the Present, a small group of people worked with Dunn in the summer and early fall of 1994: Joann Alberghini, Roger Beck, Anne Chapman, Jean Fleet, Jana Flores, Jean Johnson, Henry Kiernan, David Vigilante, and Donald Woodruff. The East Asian Curriculum Project at the East Asian Institute, Columbia University, and The Council on Islamic Education greatly assisted this group as they drafted grade-level materials. The co-directors of this project believe that only rarely in the history of American education has such a group of good-spirited, gifted, and devoted teachers from across the country and teaching at every level of education from elementary schools to baccalaureate institutions accomplished so much for the teaching of history in the schools.

Our thanks go also to the many members of the National Council for History Standards, the National Forum for History Standards, and the Organizational Focus Groups who gave unfailingly and selflessly of their time and professional expertise during the more than two years of intensive work that went into the development of the standards. The Appendix presents the rosters of all these working groups. In particular, we salute those who read draft after draft under difficult deadlines throughout the spring an d summer of 1994, and submitted substantive recommendations for revision that have contributed importantly to the completion of this volume.

Special appreciation is due also to the many school districts and administrators who time and again agreed to the release time that allowed the gifted teachers who served on the World History Curriculum Task Force to meet at UCLA for week-long working sessions throughout the school year in order to complete the development of the standards and of the grade-appropriate examples of student achievement of the standards.

As co-directors of this project, we express special appreciation, also, to the many thousands of teachers, curriculum leaders, assessment experts, historians, parents, textbook publishers, and others too numerous to mention who have sought review copies of the standards and turned out for public hearings and information sessions scheduled at regional and national conferences throughout these two years, and who have provided their independent assessments and recommendations for making these standards historically sound, workable in classrooms, and responsive to the needs and interests of students in the schools.

Finally, we note with appreciation the funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the United States Department of Education to conduct this complex and broadly inclusive enterprise.

In this most contentious field of the curriculum, there have been many who have wondered if a national consensus could be forged concerning what all students should have opportunity to learn about the history of the world and of the peoples of all racial, religious, ethnic, and national backgrounds who have been a part of that story. The responsiveness, enormous good will, and dogged determination of so many to meet this challenge has reinforced our confidence in the inherent strength and capabilities of nthis nation now to undertake the steps necessary for bringing to all students the benefits of this endeavor. The stakes are high. It is the challenge that must now be undertaken.

Charlotte Crabtree and Gary B. Nash
Co-directors