"It's Jeb's Fault!" by Jack Bovee
Many pundits ask Jeb Bush about his support for Common Core, but none question him on his major gaffe as Governor—eliminating Florida’s long-standing graduation requirement that students successfully complete courses in American History and Government. That this happened so soon after 9/11 and at the time numerous surveys reported American students lacked basic knowledge of history, civics, geography and economics is downright bizarre. For example, a National Geographic study in 2002 revealed that young adults in Mexico and seven other nations could better identify the location of the U.S. on a world map, could more accurately determine the correct size of the U.S. population, and could better identify the Taliban or Al Qaeda than their 18-24 year peers in this nation! Bruce Cole, Chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities, published “Our National Amnesia” in the Wall Street Journal in May, 2002 describing an entire series of devastating reports. Moreover, Jeb was fully aware that National Assessment for Educational Progress continually revealed our students’ worst subject as American History. That no state is ever compared on NAEP social studies assessments might give a clue as to why students do perform so poorly in historical and civic understanding and why Jeb could feel completely comfortable eliminating such courses as high school requirements! This is still the case today.
Jeb was also fully aware that a huge percentage of Florida’s students arrived in our state from non-democratic nations. Under his proposal many would graduate without ever having exposure to our nation’s civic and historical heritage. Jeb’s resistance to allowing civic and historical knowledge to even be considered when promoting students from one grade level to the next in grades one to five made the assimilation of these children virtually impossible. All attempts to add social studies to the state’s Pupil Progression Plan—even after the Florida Chancellor for K-12 lent his support to the effort—failed under his leadership! Just how were Florida schools supposed to assimilate such children into American society?
After the legislature passed Jeb’s plan in 2003, he was excoriated in Congress by Jim Davis (D-Tampa) and by Senator Lamar Alexander, a former Republican Secretary of Education, who scrupulously avoided mentioning his name. He was criticized by conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and quietly rebuked by former Democratic governor Bob Graham. None of it stuck and he remained undeterred.
Around this same time his administration sent to all districts a 90 question D.O.E. Drug Awareness survey that was administered to 70,000 Florida students. Unlike civic and historical knowledge, Florida’s youth would be compared in these drug surveys —district by district--and Florida to the rest of the nation.
The following year Florida’s history teachers went on the offensive. Since the 1980s their pleas for some sort of state and district accountability—even along the lines of the Drug Awareness surveys—had fallen repeatedly upon deaf ears in Tallahassee. They protested that Florida’s Department of Education had abandoned its civic education mission. Florida’s D.O.E. distributed suggested reading activities for students at grade three, for example, that rarely contained historical or civic education content. Rather, stories about the “differences between dogs and cats” and how to “make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich” went out to school districts as “models” for reading instruction. Floridians today can thank its history teachers and not Jeb Bush for the fact that once again all its graduates must successfully pass American History and Government to graduate. He fought us all the way!
For those who want to know why young Americans today know so little about our nation’s past or its form of government--I suggest some future pundit ask “Jeb!”
Jack Bovee has
been a social studies teacher in Florida for over 40 years and was formerly
Chair of the Legislative Committee for the Florida Council for the Social
Studies during this time. He lives with
his wife in Fort Myers.
