Thomas Jefferson admonished that education "enables every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom." Current practices in education have helped undermine our ability as citizens to understand the forces that "secure or endanger” the United States. Current classroom ideology needs adjusting to teach democratic values and instill the civic responsibility necessary to maintain a free society. We cannot take our system of government for granted. We must educate our citizens to understand the importance of this country’s political vision of freedom and equality before the law. We need to foster in each generation loyalty to the political institution our Founders created.

Taught correctly, the goal of teaching multiculturalism in social studies is to educate our citizens about different ethnicities and values which make up our society and the rest of the world. This helps acclimate us to which is different and fosters amity. But in many cases, when teaching about diverse cultures, our own is held to a higher standard. We gloss over the failings of other groups. We should be able to look critically at the problems in our society and look honestly at the flaws of other social orders. Social Studies texts usually offer non-controversial information about other cultures. Rarely do they include objectionable information such as: female circumcision, slavery, one-child policies, or religious discrimination. Inexperienced or unqualified teachers don’t recognize these omissions.

Social Studies will not be tested as part of NCLB. How well history, geography, or civics is being taught will not be held publicly accountable. Unfortunately, it is common knowledge in the educational field that "what gets tested is what gets taught”. This, in addition to current progressive ideology dominating the field of education is a recipe for disaster in terms of civic education.

The progressive education movement has detrimentally effected teaching in general. It has had a significant impact on the teaching of history. The NEA began the process of replacing history in the younger grades when it decided that the goal of social studies was good citizenship and that historical studies which didn’t contribute to social change had no value. Theorists believed that the schools’ mission was to socialize students by centering their activities on home, family, neighborhood, and community. History was eliminated from the elementary grades and replaced with expanding environments.

Expanding environments is the curriculum most states use to organize elementary (K-6) social studies. Every year elementary students are exposed to a slowly widening social environment beginning with the self and home; leading to, families; neighborhoods; communities; state; country; and; world. However, this program lacks substantive content knowledge. Family, neighborhood, and community are topics children know before coming to school. In addition, Expanding Environments limits the curriculum to persons and institutions directly relevant to the student rather than introducing historical figures, significant events, meaningful achievements, and diverse cultures. It doesn’t establish a foundation for later study of history.

No Child Left Behind raises the expectations for achievement in our schools. I believe that, in order to accomplish this, current progressive teaching techniques will have to be reevaluated for their usefulness. Techniques such as cooperative learning are often unsuccessful because high achievers end up "carrying the group”. "Multiple Intelligence Theory” values each intelligence equally, regardless of its usefulness to society. Students have problems in literacy yet national English standards equate "media-viewing" with reading and writing. Admission standards into honors courses are often eliminated. Ability grouping and gifted programs have been abandoned and classrooms are dominated by lowest-common-denominator education. Mainstreaming of "exceptional students” in regular classrooms has been extremely disruptive to the education of the majority.

Progressive teaching methods fail to take into account how to establish the fact base necessary for intelligent discussion. Social Studies teachers are not taught the art of lecture. Student teachers are taught how to create student centered learning environments. Teachers must figure out how to accommodate each day’s lesson plans so to individualize instruction for each student (sometimes seeing over 150 students a day). This is because classrooms are heterogeneously grouped so all students have "equal access” to education. Discussion is student led in cooperative learning groups. Often this process fails when some students misbehave or other students sit quietly, stealthily using the opportunity to finish "more important assignments. Many don’t contribute to the group at all. Teachers are expected to provide leadership, subject knowledge, and classroom order in an environment set up to fail.

Progressive teaching methods are not adequate in real world classrooms. Traditional teaching methods utilize teacher led discussion while requiring reading, memorization, and application in the study of history. Traditional methods allow for students to be grouped with others who are learning at similar rates. Traditional methods don’t expect teachers to spend all of their time individualizing instruction and expect them to "prescribe grades” for students not up to the task. It is time to go "back to basics” with regard to methodology. Teachers need to be able to teach for democracy. It’s bigger than NCLB. It’s a matter of preserving our way of life.

Nancy Salvato is a middle school teacher in Illinois and an independent contractor for Prism Educational Consulting. She is the Educational Liaison to IL Sen. Ray Soden and she works with national and local organizations furthering the cause of Civic Education. She is a columnist for American Daily, The Common Voice, GOP-USA, OpinionEditorials and The New Media Journal.us. Her writing has been recognized by the US Secretary of Education. She has been published in The Washington Times, The Washington Dispatch, Iconoclast, Free Republic Network & Townhall.com., as well as other nationally and internationally published media outlets.