Less than 25 percent of seniors at the nation's top schools can identify James Madison as the father of the Constitution, but over 98 percent know who Snoop Dogg is, according to a recent report.
Each year, a staggering number of students in this country leave high school with a shoddy knowledge of U.S. history. But a new grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education aims to improve the quality of high school instruction by opening channels of communication between high schools and universities.
The Durham Public Schools and the North Carolina School of Science and Math obtained grants of $885,434 and $996,267 respectively from the Department of Education's Teaching American History initiative, marking their first year of participation in this federal program. These schools are partnering with Duke, as well as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University, the North Carolina Museum of History and other organizations to provide sustained professional development for U.S. history teachers.
Beginning summer 2003, the Durham Public Schools project, titled History Connect!, will provide direct interaction for high school teachers and university professors with summer institutes and seminars throughout the school year.
"If teachers have a broader knowledge of American history, they will become better teachers in the classroom," said project director Darnell Tabran, DPS head of social studies.
Tabran also expressed hope that the program's use of local primary source material at Duke could serve to close the persistent achievement gap between black and white students in public schools.
"This is a way to involve all students by looking at the wealth of history right here in our community.... It will help them figure how we fit into the larger picture," she said. "They'll say, 'Wow, these things went on right here in North Carolina, right here in Durham.'"
The DPS grant also includes a technical component which gives history teachers laptop computers and training, said Trudi Abel, senior fellow in the Center for Teaching, Learning and Writing. In addition, teachers will be able to access the Digital Durham web site, which provides primary source material connected to local history.
Duke professors will also be involved in the implementation of the grant at the nearby NCSSM. The school's project, "Learn More--Teach More," is opening the channels of communication by videotaping historians giving lectures on 10 key time periods. The lectures will then be distributed to teachers at NCSSM and also over the Internet to NCSSM's "cyber campus"--currently made up of five local education agencies.
"If teachers know more content, they'll feel more confident," explained project director Virginia Wilson, head of humanities at NCSSM. "If [they] learn more during this grant period, then they'll teach more to students. It'll be a richer, better course."
Department of History Chair John Thompson, who will be videotaped for the NCSSM initiative, praised the project for the level of access it provides to high school teachers.
"[It helps us] get out the stuff that we're working on in the academy without it having to be mediated by textbook and curriculum people, who wind up having to serve so many interests that they can't do the best job."
Thompson added that the project also serves the interests of university professors. "It's good for my colleagues to meet people who are on the front lines.... It's kind of cool for us at a major research university to be working with education in its broadest sense rather than just training."
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