A couple of days ago, I had a little rant on Facebook about the time that middle school teachers spend teaching the proper technique for footnotes. Even in high school, a large portion of Jonah’s history grade is based on his footnoting technique. I wrote that since time is finite, social studies had to prioritize their efforts. It seemed like knowing facts, ie the date of the civil war, the location of Iraq, and the difference between a senator and a governor, was more important than knowing the proper methods of citations. After all, footnotes aren’t exactly necessary in real life.

This led to a big debate, with comments not just from my history and political science professor friends, but from everyone. It was surpring to me how many of my non-teacher-type friends had strong feelings about this, too.

I also complained that I’ve been to too many education presentations where the experts said that students didn’t really need to know these facts, since they could look it up on wikipedia. Skills was more important than knowledge of information.

Well, it seems like kids aren’t learning skills OR facts in their social studies class, according to the latest results of NAEP testing.

In 2014, eighteen percent of eighth-graders performed at or above the Proficient level in U.S. history, 27 percent performed at or above the Proficient level in geography, and 23 percent performed at or above the Proficient level in civics.

Check out the test on their website. It seems like a fair test.

Texas is the only state that mandates civics education. Should other states follow their lead?