P R I M A R Y A N D S E C O N D A R Y E D U C AT I O N I N T H E H U M A N I T I E S
Public Education and the Humanities
WILLIAM J. REESE
F
ew institutions are as central to
the nation’s hopes for the future
and aspirations for the common
good than the public schools. Few have
therefore received as much public investment and public scrutiny. To understand
the place of the humanities in public
schools today, as Part I of the Humanities Indicators Prototype1 seeks to do,
requires an understanding of the main
characteristics of public schools as they
evolved over time and the current, dramatically new expectation that they lift
academic standards for everyone, leaving
no child behind. The statistical record
that helps chart the fate of the humanities in the schools shows that a generation of reform has led to mixed, uneven
results. This is not a cause for despair but
simply a recognition that 1) fundamental
change takes time and persistence; and
2) transforming and improving tens of
thousands of schools in over 13,000 districts is a monumental task.
When they were formed in the northern states in the pre–Civil War era, public schools assumed a multitude of responsibilities, not all of them academic.
The most famous school reformer of
the nineteenth century, Horace Mann
(1796–1859) of Massachusetts, wrote
that public schools were “the great
equalizer of the conditions of men—the
balance-wheel of the social machinery.”2
He and his contemporaries believed,
like Thomas Jefferson before them, that
people could not be ignorant and ex-
pect to enjoy the blessings of civilization and representative government.
Access to free schools, the theory went,
allowed the economic system to remain
fluid by enabling talented children from
all backgrounds to rise. Mann and his
contemporaries also passionately argued
that schools could help promote literacy, eliminate poverty, hasten the assimilation of immigrants, and teach moral
values, time discipline, and a hearty
work ethic. These ideals (which have
hardly disappeared from today’s classrooms) infused textbooks such as the
blue-backed spellers of Noah Webster
While no evidence supports the claim
that pupils knew more in the past, the
data on today’s students are
alarming.
and the assorted readers of the Rev.
William Holmes McGuffey. Whether in
the countryside, where the majority of
children lived and attended one-room
schools, or in the cities, teachers taught
a mostly bare-bones curriculum, later
called the basics, concentrating on reading, writing, and arithmetic, plus some
geography, history, and occasionally
drawing and science.3
Over the course of the twentieth century, public schools retained and even expanded their broad mission, building
HUMANITIES INDICATORS PROTOTYPE © 2009 BY THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
upon tradition while changing some
fundamental policies and practices.
One-room schools in the countryside
gave way to bigger consolidated facilities. Credentials for teachers and administrators rose dramatically. Children
once routinely excluded from the benefits of public education, whether
African-Americans in the South or special-needs children everywhere, increasingly attended school, thanks to the
civil rights movement. Given their previously poor or nonexistent access to
schools, such children faced daunting
academic challenges but were part of a
mighty explosion of enrollments. For
example, about 6% of the adolescent
population in 1890 attended high
school, whose enrollments soon skyrocketed as immigrants filled the increasingly industrial work force and
then jobs dramatically disappeared for
teenagers during the Great Depression.
New vocational courses appeared in
many high schools in response to the
presumed needs of the non–college
bound, weakening the academic nature
of secondary education, the traditional
home of core humanistic subjects (e.g.
English, history, and foreign languages).4
By midcentury, concerns about the direction and quality of mass education
accelerated. Historically a state and
local responsibility, schools quickly became the object of federal interest during the Cold War in the 1950s, when
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PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE HUMANITIES
their anemic academic nature, said critics, had allowed the Soviet Union the
upper hand in the space race and military preparedness. Less than 1% of public school budgets came from the federal government in 1950, mostly through
a few targeted programs such as vocational education. But attention to academic achievement, especially for gifted
pupils in science, mathematics, and
other academic subjects necessary for
college admission and national defense,
gained traction. The booming postwar
economy also generated “rising expectations,” as citizens craved higher standards of living that seemed ever dependent on educational credentials.
Complaints about underperforming
schools were commonplace as an increasing number of citizens wanted to
hold schools more accountable,
whether for racially integrating society
or for raising academic standards. Economists increasingly emphasized how education promoted human capital, essential to economic mobility and success. A
1965 television commercial, a public
service announcement, underscored the
centrality of schooling to material well
being and the good life: “To get a good
job, get a good education.”5
With the rise of the civil rights movement and Cold War, then, federal interest in lifting school achievement gained
momentum. Measuring school performance, whether in the sciences or
humanities, was nothing new. By the
early twentieth century, achievement
tests, aptitude tests, IQ tests, and many
other forms of testing were ubiquitous.
Test results helped place children in
ability groups in elementary grades and
formal tracks in many high schools.
Pupils routinely took a variety of tests in
each subject to determine their grades
and chances for promotion. What was
new was the hope that all children, and
not the tiny number of gifted ones,
should do well at school, an idea born
during the Great Society years of the
2
1960s. Legislators who approved landmark legislation such as the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
which aimed to raise school achievement among the nation’s poorest children, mandated follow-up studies to assess how well such reforms worked.
Concerns throughout the 1970s over
declining scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), teacher strikes, and accelerating levels of pupil violence and
drug use led a new generation of Republicans to emphasize even more the
need to promote higher academic standards for all pupils.6
Various indicators show that the
achievement gaps between different
ethnic and racial groups–which school
reformers have tried to narrow since
the time of the Great Society–remain
stubbornly wide.
Evolving bipartisan support among Republicans and Democrats for raising
standards and measuring school performance to assess reform initiatives is
inexplicable apart from these various
historical trends. They help provide a
context in which to assess what has
been documented in the current Humanities Indicators. The pressure on
schools to lift academic scores in key academic subjects, including in the humanities, arose from a number of overlapping developments. The influential
national report, A Nation at Risk
(1983), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education during Ronald Reagan’s first presidential term, condemned schools for their cafeteria-style
curriculum and lax standards, holding
the schools responsible (fairly or not)
for a deteriorating economy.7 During
the same period, governors’ associations
and business groups throughout the nation called for an increase in graduation
requirements, a beefed-up academic
core, and tougher disciplinary policies.
George H. W. Bush, a self-styled “education president,” along with his successor, Bill Clinton, pressed for national
educational goals, resulting in Goals
2000 and the promise, among other
things, to make the nation’s schools the
best in the world in mathematics and
science. The No Child Left Behind Act,
a Republican initiative that initially enjoyed strong bipartisan support, mandated testing and evaluation to raise
standards across the board.8
How well have schools responded to
these reform movements in terms of the
humanities? Strong reading and writing
skills are essential to success in many
school subjects, including the humanities. Despite all of the emphasis on raising standards for everyone, a generation
of school reform has produced uneven,
mixed results. Consider first the issue of
reading performance of 9-year-olds from
1971 to 2004 on tests given by the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP, created in 1969). At
the highest end of the performance spectrum there has been only slight improvement whereas at the intermediate level
there was an impressive leap of 11 percentage points (Figure I-1a).9 However,
for the same period, 13-year-olds
showed much continuity, not improvement, in their level of achievement (Figure I-1b). Much the same can be said for
17-year-olds at all three performance
levels (Figure I-1c). Writing performance is also crucial to overall school success. NAEP test results for 1998 and
2002 showed that a majority of 4th, 8th,
and 12th graders could write at a basic
level, but the level of improvements that
4th and 8th graders made over that time
period in the proficient category was not
achieved in high school. In 2002, 26% of
4th graders, 29% of 8th graders, but only
22% of 12th graders wrote at the proficient level (Figure I-2).
HUMANITIES INDICATORS PROTOTYPE
PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE HUMANITIES
Often it is said that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it
and cannot participate fully in a democratic republic. If true, the indicators on
pupil knowledge of history and civics
are cause for concern. While no evidence supports the claim that pupils
knew more in the past, the data on
today’s students are alarming. Consider
the NAEP scores on U.S. history
achievement in 1994 and 2003. While
about half of 4th and 8th graders had a
basic knowledge of American history
and showed some gains over time, only
one-third of 12th graders scored at the
basic level. Over half of the seniors
scored below basic (Figure I-3). The
same phenomenon noted in other subjects, that of lesser achievement at the
higher grade levels, surfaced in the
2006 NAEP civics test: only 66% of
high school seniors performed at a basic
level or better compared to 73% of
fourth graders and 70% of 8th graders
(Figure I-4a).
the depth and rigor necessary for higher
achievement, the enrollment trends in
Spanish are salutary. Since the early
1980s, academic course-taking in the
contemporary high school has shown
modest overall improvement. According to transcript studies from the U.S.
Department of Education covering
1982 to 2000, the number of credits
taken in vocational subjects has noticeably decreased, and the number in academic alternatives has increased.11
States and local school districts, responding to widespread complaints
about poor academic quality even before A Nation at Risk, labored to im-
Foreign-language instruction had been
a mainstay in public high schools since
the nineteenth century but suffered
calamitous enrollment declines over the
first half of the twentieth century.10
However, since the 1980s Spanish,
thanks to demographic change and the
perceived utility of this language, has
grown more popular, as reflected in
dramatic gains in enrollment. Other
European languages have fared less
well, and enrollments in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian, for example, are relatively small (Figure I-7a).
The good news is that over the last generation a much higher percentage of
high school graduates have completed
four years of course work in a foreign
language. Only 4.5% of all graduates
had done so in 1982 compared to 7.8%
in 2000 (Figure I-7b).
humanities courses.
Although considerable room remains
for improvement in the number of
pupils pursuing foreign languages with
HUMANITIES INDICATORS PROTOTYPE
The results of various school reforms,
as shown by the Humanities
Indicators Prototype, have been
uneven, but modest progress has been
made since the 1980s in expanding
access to more academic and
prove their secondary schools. This
benefitted the humanities, which have
seen a noticeable if sometimes modest
rise in enrollments in English, social
studies, and foreign languages since the
1980s (Figure I-6). Transcript studies
cannot assess the content or quality of
the curriculum, but the trends were
nonetheless notable. The inability of
high school seniors to perform better
on NAEP reading and writing exams,
then, requires explanation. Similarly, indicators are needed to assess the
achievement of the many children with
access to various humanities courses
who are streamed into special education. We also need more knowledge
about humanities instruction in schools
in different locales—for example, in
cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural
areas—and about the influence of re-
forms such as No Child Left Behind on
the curriculum, from the teaching of
the three R’s to the arts.
Various indicators show that the achievement gaps between different ethnic and
racial groups–which school reformers
have tried to narrow since the time of
the Great Society–remain stubbornly
wide. SAT scores are one of many examples of this disturbing reality. Mean SAT
scores dramatically declined from the
late 1960s through the early 1980s, fueling considerable public debate over the
causes and solutions to correct the problem. Once the decline halted, mean verbal scores have generally remained in the
500–510 range. Mean math scores,
however, have improved overall from
their low point in the early 1980s, hitting 520 in 2005 (Figure I-5a). Persistent gaps, however, separate whites and
African Americans, whose mean score on
the verbal and critical reading component of the SAT was considerably lower
than that for whites in 1992 and 2002
(Figure I-5b). Racial and ethnic disparities were also evident in the 2006 SAT
writing scores of college-bound seniors
(Figure I-5c). While the dramatic rise in
the number of Advanced Placement
Exams in the humanities taken per 11th
and 12th graders, from 8.8 exams per
100 11th and 12th graders in 1996, to
16.9 in 2005, is impressive, these courses disproportionately profit white middle- and upper-class pupils, adding to
and not narrowing the racial divide
(Figure I-8b).
The quality and character of the teaching force clearly influences academic
outcomes, but their precise impacts are
more difficult to assess. Drawing upon
data compiled by the National Center
for Education Statistics (NCES), the
Humanities Indicators Prototype provides useful information on some of the
academic and professional qualifications
of high school teachers. For example, in
1999–2000, 80% of high school stu3
PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE HUMANITIES
dents taking arts and music and 70% of
students in English courses were taught
by faculty who were both certified to
teach and had majored in the taught
subject in college. That dropped to a little over half for students taking foreign
languages and under 40% for students of
history (Figure I-9a). Except in the case
of arts and music, the percentages of
students who were taught by faculty
with both certification and a major in
the subject taught were substantially
lower at the middle school level (Figure
I-9b). (High school teachers have long
been subject-matter specialists, unlike
teachers of the lower grades.) While the
percentage of nonwhite pupils in the
public schools has dramatically risen
since the 1960s, Hispanics and AfricanAmericans remain underrepresented in
the teaching force (Figure I-10c). Attracting the best and the brightest to
public school teaching, especially in
schools with high percentages of poor,
minority, and special needs children, will
be a continual challenge.
Revolutions are rare in education, and a
knowledge of history helps put recent
trends in the humanities in the public
schools in context. From their inception, schools have been asked to per-
4
form innumerable functions, including
training the mind as well as more immediately preparing pupils for the work
force. With the collapse of the industrial
economy and the replacement of industrial jobs with low-wage jobs in the
service economy, citizens understandably turned to the schools to try to
solve pressing social problems. Over the
last generation—a relatively short period of time—many policymakers, politicians, and educators have tried to make
public schools both inclusive and excellent. The civil rights movement led the
way in bringing more children of color,
and those with special needs, into the
embrace of the public system. The results of various school reforms, as
shown by the Humanities Indicators
Prototype, have been uneven, but modest progress has been made since the
1980s in expanding access to more academic and humanities courses. As recently as the 1950s, only gifted children
were expected to receive a high quality
academic education. In today’s global
economy, such thinking is untenable.
Though much more must be done to
raise achievement levels in reading, writing, and various academic subjects,
America’s high schools seem especially
remiss in not sustaining the often modest progress that has been made in lifting
school achievement at different times in
the lower grades. That high school
teachers more often than their counterparts in the lower grades major in the
particular subjects they teach makes their
inability to raise achievement levels puzzling. The indicators cannot explain why
improvement or failure occurs on any
grade level or in any particular subject,
but they are an essential part of our understanding of the nature of public
schooling. Without them, charting the
place of history, English, foreign languages, and the arts in the nation’s
schools and beginning to understand
what role the humanities will continue
to play in our society will be difficult.
William J. Reese is the Carl F. Kaestle
WARF Professor of Education Policy
Studies and History at the University of
Wisconsin—Madison. His publications
include Rethinking the History of American Education (co-editor) (2007),
America’s Public Schools: From Common
School to ‘No Child Left Behind’ (2005),
and The Origins of the American High
School (1995). He is a member of the
National Academy of Education.
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PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE HUMANITIES
NO T ES
1
Humanities Indicators Prototype, Part I. Primary and Secondary Education in the Humanities, www.humanitiesindicators.org (American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2008); hereafter cited as HIP.
2
Twelfth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board (Boston: Cutton & Wentworty, 1849), 69. On Mann’s wide-ranging views on education and society, see Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972).
3
On the creation of public schools, see Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1840 (New York:
Hill & Wang, 1983); and William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to ‘No Child Left Behind’ (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
4
See William J. Reese, The Origins of the American High School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
5
On the postwar developments, see James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996).
6
Reese, America’s Public Schools, ch. 7.
7
National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, DC: GPO),
available online at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html.
8
On the evolution of the federal role in education, see Carl F. Kaestle, “Federal Education Policy and the Changing National Polity for Education, 1957–2007,” in To Educate a Nation: Federal and National Strategies of School Reform, ed. Carl F. Kaestle and Alyssa E. Lodewick,
17–40 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007).
9
All figures can be found in the HIP, Part I, and are reproduced at the end of this essay.
10
John Francis Lattimer, What’s Happened to Our High Schools? (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1958), 26.
11
HIP, Part I Indicator I-6. Credits Earned by Graduating High School Seniors. For the period 1890 to 1995, see David L. Angus and Jeffrey
E. Mirel, The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890 – 1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995), 176-182.
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