The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports that American eighth graders have scored an all-time low in history and that their civics scores have dropped for the first time since it began administering the test in 1994.
Experts aren’t surprised. The drop in history and civics scores was foreshadowed by declining scores in math and reading, and if kids can’t read, they can’t understand their textbooks. Crucially, if kids can’t understand their history textbooks, they won’t know enough to be able to participate in American democracy.
Democracy means government by the demos or people, and it offers those who disagree with a government or policy a non-violent path through which they can make their voices heard. Historians posit that communism only took hold in authoritarian nations because the democratic ones simply absorbed communists into the political process. This inclusion of diverse voices prevents people from turning to violence to achieve their political goals. However, our broken education system means that today’s students are not learning how to participate in the democratic process, and the historical record suggests that some of them may turn to violence as a result.
Of course, there are many reasons for declining scores. Teacher attrition and burnout, overcrowded classrooms, too much focus on skills training at the cost of content, and the rejection of phonics for less effective methods for teaching children to read all play a role, as do the pandemic shutdowns that accelerated dropping scores. However, if the adults in charge are too distracted and overwhelmed by these issues to focus on improving students’ literacy effectively, our democracy will be imperiled by their ignorance.
SAT guru Erica Meltzer writes about her concern that the new digital SAT, which eliminates the long reading passages, “clearly panders to ever-decreasing expectations about the amount that students in both high school and college should be expected/able to read.” When 64% of eighth graders don’t read at grade level, how can they ever be expected to master high-school history or civics? If they can’t read the Declaration of Independence, they will have to rely on those who can to tell them what it says, just as Europeans were once forced to rely on priests to explain the Bible to them.
Many of the founders, including Ben Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison, wrote about the importance of literacy, reading, and education in a democracy, but perhaps Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
How can we do better? Well, maintaining high standards would be a start, as would requiring students to read more. The more kids read, the greater their content knowledge and vocabularies become. I wrote History According to SAT because so many of my students know so little about history. I wanted to provide an accessible resource that would enable teens to understand how the world they live in came to exist, not only so they could get a good SAT score, but also so they are prepared to participate in a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Elizabeth Breau, Ph.D., (she/her), is an award-winning writing coach and private English tutor. Her book, History According to SAT: A Content Guide to SAT Reading and Writing, won a silver medal in the teen category from the Nonfiction Authors Association. Her website is historyaccordingtosat.com and she is currently accepting new students.
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