When history teachers forget the founding

Academic Questions

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 21-31

  Stotsky, Sandra ^a  

^a NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33646528094     PISSN: 08954852     EISSN: 19364709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12129-004-1015-4     Document Type: Article

References (3)

1. Telephone conversation with Michael Simpson at the National Council for the Social Studies on 20 May 2004.
2. Today, an ideological flavor can sometimes be detected in this ninth grade course. For example, although Educational Testing Service offers a two-semester Advanced Placement course on U.S. and comparative government for the twelfth grade, one large Michigan school district has just moved the semester on U.S. government to the ninth grade and combined it with the study of contemporary issues, leaving the semester on comparative government in grade twelve so that the students who take it compare other governments only to each other, not to our own.
3. Both the social studies and the middle school generalist license were eliminated in the revision of the licensing regulations in Massachusetts in 2000. At first, we planned to require, as North Carolina had recently done, twenty-four academic hours in two different subjects taught in the middle school for a new content-rich middle school license (roughly equivalent to the number of academic hours required for a traditional major with a minor). Just before the final version went to the Board of Education, the president of Lesley University called the Department and, after a long conversation with me, insisted that this requirement be reduced. Lesley University had been preparing a large number of middle school teachers, and this requirement, I inferred, would threaten enrolhnent or survival in their program. Even though I carefully explained why this requirement was needed, she went over my head. The compromise--the McKenna Amendment, as I openly called this particular regulation afterwards--requires only 36 (not 48) academic hours in all for the two subjects.