Test history, geography and civics knowledge or schools won't teach it

"Inquiry-based learning" has become "the orthodoxy in social studies education," writes Jaime Osborne, a middle-school teacher and adjunct education professor in Virginia. Teaching history, geography and civics knowledge is disdained. But ignorance is not bliss. Students can't be expected to explore, inquire or find answers if they don't start with prior knowledge, she writes.

"Give me liberty or give me death," said Patrick Henry, allegedly, in a 1775 debate.

"Background knowledge is a prerequisite for reading comprehension and higher-order thinking," decades of research show, she writes. "Yet many schools have become so enamored with vague '21st-century skills' that they have sidelined content knowledge."

At a conference of social studies teachers, Osborne asked advocates of inquiry learning why scores for low-income students had declined sharply in their counties since the DBQ Project was adopted. The facilitator blamed inadequate teacher training. Osborne thinks asking students to "think like historians" before being taught any history could be a factor.

At a recent Virginia Board of Education meeting, social studies coordinators called for a pause in adding history and social studies to accountability measures, Osborne writes. Recent history shows that teachers spend little time on untested subjects. Expectations fall. "Accountability drives priorities."

Yet speakers at the board meeting supported dropping standardized tests in favor of locally designed, knowledge-lite assessments, she writes. They "dismissed standardized assessments as rote and inequitable while praising performance-based alternatives for promoting critical thinking."

"Inquiry-based learning can be a valuable supplement, but it cannot replace content-rich instruction and assessment — especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds," Osborne writes. Virginia should not exempt schools from teaching civics, economics, history and Virginia Studies.

She has started a private school, the Northern Virginia Classical Academy, to teach a knowledge-rich curriculum.