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| Christian Bush Class of 2018 |
Recently, I had the opportunity debate with my friend and fellow scholar Frank Bencomo on the evolving role of the federal government in educational policy as part of the McConnell Center Debate Society. While familiarizing myself with the topic at hand (I was arguing against federal involvement), one particularly jarring fact stood out to me. As our education policies have evolved over the last seventy-five years, an increased emphasis on STEM has minimized teaching of liberal arts which ultimately bodes ill for our nation. Though Senator Marco Rubio has declared that we need more welders and less philosophers, I must beg to differ. Our disagreement is not one of the necessity of education, but rather a question of its role as a mean or and end.
While few would contest the necessity of education, the form and subject matter have been debated and experimented with for thousands of years. And though the earliest formal education placed great emphasis on liberal arts subjects such as history, politics, and philosophy, education beginning in the mid 20th century and continuing through the 21st century has emphasized STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) at the expense of a traditional liberal education. While it is undeniable that a STEM education has great value in modern societies, liberal arts play an integral role in shaping citizens, promoting civic virtue, and fostering critical thinking that “practical” education cannot match. Furthermore, the United States’ shift in emphasis from social studies to STEM in primary and secondary schools is ultimately detrimental to our nation.
The impetus for the educational shift arose during the height of the Cold War. During the Space Race, the Soviet Union successfully launched the first satellite, Sputnik, in late 1957. This scientific achievement led the democratic U.S. to assess its educational policies, and public outcry called for an educational overhaul with an emphasis on science. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 (NDEA) was subsequently passed under the Eisenhower administration and declared that,
[t]he security of the Nation requires the fullest development of the mental resources and technical skills of its young men and women. The present emergency demands that additional and more adequate educational opportunities be made available. The defense of this Nation depends upon the mastery of modern techniques developed from complex scientific principles (NDEA).
While the legislative intent behind passing NDEA can be rationalized in the context of the Cold War, the logic behind retaining the educational trajectory years after the Soviet Union collapsed is far murkier. While it is undeniable that technological sophistication and scientific knowhow are important in the functions of modern society, the “present emergency” mentioned above is no longer present.
In spite of this, the federal government under the Bush administration doubled down on education reform with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The purpose of this law as outlined was to “[e]nsure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments” (NCLB). Unfortunately, one hundred percent proficiency is not a realistic goal in any legislation. But more pressing, the “academic and achievement standards” are restricted to measuring reading, writing, mathematics, and science as of 2006. Conspicuously absent from NCLB is a testing requirement for social studies and any of its traditional subcategories (i.e. economics, history, philosophy, politics).
This creates an accountability gap where schools, already pressed to “teach the test” might be forced to gut instructional time for non-NCLB subjects. Moving away from hypotheticals, a national survey taken by state assessment directors on the impact of NCLB noted that “[m]ore than half of the respondents reported that subjects not required to be tested by NCLB receive fewer resources and time in the school day” (Pederson 290). Perhaps some might be able to rationalize (even advocate for) this sort of educational triage. Though we are no longer in a state of war (hot or cold), the complex skills necessary to succeed in a modern globalized workforce demand an education with a strong emphasis on science. Therefore, the modern world depends on STEM professions to “keep the lights on” for all practical purposes. What these critics fail to account for is educational attrition and its effects on the qualitative characteristics of our civil society. It is not a great leap in logic to presuppose that less instructional time diminishes an interest in social studies, thereby diminishing talent and prospective teachers from entering said field, and ultimately reinforcing the same cycle.
What is more difficult, however, is quantifying how NCLB’s emphasis on STEM poses a danger to our civil society. While we cannot measure civic virtue per se, I propose that the purpose of a liberal arts education is far different for the NCLB subjects, that it transcends rote-memorization and that the students who serve to benefit most from it are inadequately familiar with it because of educational initiatives like NCLB.
Outside of one’s family and friends, education is the greatest factor in shaping one’s character. Social studies in particular encompasses a wide variety of topics that are vital to the structure and stability of the country by building “active and socially just citizens through understanding how individuals work with others as well as how people think, communicate, act, decide, and reflect” (Misco 8). In short, social studies are not merely concerned with a quantifiable education, but rather a social, societal, and moral one. And though critics might feel that it is not the government’s place to instruct citizens in a topic that is tangentially connected to morals, one should also remember that social studies ideally does not show a student what to think, but how to think. One of the more deplorable elements of NCLB is that it focuses on testing and evaluation as the end rather than education as a means to achieving something far nobler. But the single greatest tragedy and irony of NCLB and other education policies as far back as NDEA is that they hurt the very people they were designed to help.
At its heart, NCLB is designed to make students “proficient” (as noted in the excerpt above). Of course, NCLB cannot directly target the non-proficient students, but rather underperforming schools. What is interesting about these underperforming schools is that there is a definitive link between educational settings and socioeconomic status. According to the American Psychological Association, “[t]he school systems in low-SES communities are often under-resourced, negatively affecting students’ academic progress. Inadequate education and increased dropout rates affect children’s academic achievement, perpetuating the low-SES status of the community” (Education and Socioeconomic Status). A stifled education coupled with a low socioeconomic status is also linked to an increased risk for criminal activity and perpetuation of the cycle of poverty.
While these underlying problems drove Congress to pass legislation aimed at helping impoverished and non-proficient students, especially at the primary level, the type of education is not geared towards actually helping them. Of course there is a chance that some students might benefit from the STEM education, but the vast majority will see very little application in their everyday lives. Social studies, on the other hand, when taught correctly, promotes the sorts of civic virtues that create integrated and engaged citizens. While no one is suggesting that a liberal education will end crime or poverty, it is laughable to think that learning long division or parts of speech will do any better.
Again, it comes back to an underlying debate about what education ought to look like especially in the context of underperforming schools. Do we want a system of rote-memorization and abstract concepts that may play a role in a future career, or do we want to equip students with the ability to think critically and a sense of right and wrong that they will need? While there is an undeniable link between income inequality and educational inequality, perhaps there is something to be said for the more elusive gap in terms of civic virtue. Though equitable wealth distribution and equal educational opportunities are lofty goals (with the latter proving near ruinous under NCLB), a basic civic education should prove far more feasible.
But should civic virtue become an unequal playing field as has been the case with economics and general levels of education, it creates a shadow class of citizens. This discrete insular minority will be adrift politically and hard pressed to find their niche in society. If economic and educational inequality create a climate that is conducive to lawlessness and a cycle of poverty, is it so far-fetched to suggest that ignorance of the values of citizenship, history, and the law will not create similar conditions. Also, since the aforementioned schools targeted most aggressively by NCLB are low-income and low-performing, students are already at risk as is.
In the last half century, U.S. educational policy has shifted in favor of a “practical” education, but what shall it profit a nation, if it shall gain the whole world, and lose its own soul? The foundations of civic culture and essence of freedom are at least tangentially related to the type of education students receive. Alas, government policy does not hold schools accountable for teaching social studies, and it is instead gutted in favor of STEM. Even more detrimental still are the students who need a liberal education the most but have been explicitly targeted by this kind of legislation that marginalizes such learning. While STEM is valuable for innovation and maintaining the quality of life in this nation, social studies is the vanguard which shelters and cultivates its soul.
Christian Bush is a sophomore McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. He studies Chinese and political science.