One of my projects for the last several years has been to help write the C3 (College, Career and Citizenship) Framework for the social studies. It was released today by the National Council for the Social Studies, and CIRCLE issued a supportive release.

All states have social studies standards, but these documents tend to be incoherent, excessively long and detailed, and poorly aligned with tests, textbooks, and course requirements. The same has been true in other disciplines, and the now-controversial Common Core is an effort to standardize the standards for English and math to a better model. Our C3 Framework, instead, recognizes the right, power, and obligation of states to set their own standards. But it provides general guidance. Maryland and Kentucky are implementing the C3 Framework, and I hope other states will follow suit. The more states use it, the more the market will grow for improved texts and materials, tests and assessments, and teacher education. Unless they are implemented well, new standards will not make much difference. But they are a start.

One thing I especially like about the C3 is the “instructional arc,” which goes from “developing questions and planning inquiries” to “communicating conclusions and taking informed action.” We authors realized that students don’t get to decide what questions to ask, in a vacuum. The teacher decides that it is time to study Native Americans or the New Deal. But we wanted to indicate that asking questions is the start of real intellectual work.

“Taking informed action” may be controversial, but it is essential, because we learn advanced civic skills through practice. I would make two points in support of the “Informed Action” section: 1) Action can mean many things, not just community service or activism. Solving problems within the classroom or managing a student group would also count. And 2) action is not a newfangled addition to the social studies curriculum. It was a stronger component of civics in the mid-20th century, when courses called “community civics” and “problems of democracy” were very common. It is already mentioned in many state standards, albeit in miscellaneous ways. If anything, action has diminished as political science has become the model for high school civics. We are just putting a bit of it back in.

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I am proud to have joined the board of Discovering Justice and will attend my first board meeting later today. Discovering Justice teaches younger children about the law and the justice system in ways that increase their appreciation of legal norms and institutions while also encouraging them to use “the power of their own voices.”

Civic education is delivered by the 165,000 full-time social studies teachers in American schools. It is funded by states and localities as part of the general education system. However, independent nonprofit organizations serve important roles in producing materials and lesson plans, developing new models and approaches (“R&D”), convening and educating teachers, and advocating for supportive policies. For instance, I am proud to serve on the board of Street Law, Inc., and my organization works closely with iCivics and Generation Citizen on their evaluations.

Discovering Justice is highly unusual in focusing on younger children. Although some of the other civics NGOs have programs for grades k-8, they all emphasize adolescence. Much less is known about the civic development of young children and the lasting impact of providing civic education in the early grades. As the eminent political scientist Sir Bernard Crick lamented in 1999, “there is no political Piaget.” The way to find out what actually works is generally to develop, test, and refine interventions that may work. Usable research almost always begins with practical experimentation. Discovering Justice is doing that work for civic education k-8.

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Last year, I wrote a piece for CNN on how to teach 9/11 in public schools. That article will be part of a Twitter chat this evening at 9 pm eastern. The hashtag is #PTchat.

In brief summary, I argued that states should not require the teaching of 9/11, because states should generally refrain from requiring specific historical topics at all. If they go down that path, then everyone who thinks that X is important will demand that X be included in state standards to prove that the government cares. That’s why Illinois requires teachers to discuss Leif Erickson, the Irish Potato Famine, and the importance of trees and birds.  Long lists prevent curricular depth and diversity among schools. For instance, in Boston, 8th graders will focus on Reconstruction for several months, in partnership with Facing History. That would be impossible if they had to race to cover 9/11 by way of many other specified topics.

However, 9/11 is an example of a good topic to cover. It has the advantage of being recent, and too often, history class stops at World War II or the 1960s (in part because the accumulated state requirements take too long to cover). Ending more than a generation ago conveys the message that history is over and students have no role in it.

If teachers do elect to discuss 9/11 in social studies class, it should be treated relatively dispassionately, in a scholarly way, and students should be encouraged to consider the related controversies (such as whether the US should have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq as a result). We don’t want to indoctrinate kids with any particular view, but we do want them to learn to deliberate and reason about complex and contentious issues.

One subtle question is what counts as a legitimately open question for discussion, as opposed to a question that should be considered settled in a social studies classroom. (Diana Hess is the expert on this topic.) For instance, slavery is a settled question, but same-sex marriage, even though I strongly favor it, ought to be presented as unresolved. The suggestion that 9/11 was a US government conspiracy should not be treated on a par with the idea that al-Qaeda attacked the US. A student who thinks 9/11 was a conspiracy should be held accountable for providing very rigorous evidence (which I believe will be impossible). Nevertheless, the attack can be understood in several broader political contexts, and students should be encouraged to explore the controversies with due respect for evidence and logic.

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