ESSENTIALISM - Andrews University



ESSENTIALISM

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U.S. Kids Don't Know U.S. History: The NAEP Study, Perspectives, and Presuppositions.

Author: Gaudelli, William. Source: The Social Studies (Washington, D.C.) v. 93 no5 (Sept./Oct. 2002) p. 197-201 ISSN: 0037-7996 Number: BEDI02101781

ESSENTIALISM

Essentialists argue that core knowledge and skills are vital to a successful society, because those requisite abilities allow the individual to be an economically productive member of society. Less concerned with allegiance to a national identity, essentialists concern themselves with teaching students how to survive, succeed in their lives, and not be a burden to others. The basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic have been the mantra of essentialists, with some recent acknowledgment of technology, arguing that the value of academic work lies in unearthing the "basics" that students can use in their future lives. U.S. history can be vocationally meaningful if it is taught so that the skills used in studying history are transferable to the workplace and the real world of economic life.

Essentialism has four broad presuppositional inclinations about curriculum; namely, human nature tends to be bad; culture is outside the individual; consciousness should be focused on the present and future; and the center of value is found in the body, and to a lesser degree, the mind. Children are highly impressionable, and they need to be taught in such a way that they can gain skill capacity. Skills are not innate, so they need to be taught explicitly and repeatedly to students. Moral development of the child falls outside the domain of essentialist educators because they are concerned foremost with the cognitive development of the child that will aid his or her later survival and leave moral considerations to other socializing forces (i.e., family and religion). Only when the child has been sufficiently prepared in basic skills can the school be said to have accomplished its goals of reproducing the next generation. The child's prior abilities are typically seen as distracting to educational purposes because the skills most valued are not idiosyncratic nor are they ones lying within the child, but are those that are widely valued by society. The past is worthy of study only for the skill development it allows. History qua history has little value. Essentialists are most concerned with the future of the child and the extent to which school prepares children to be economically and socially successful. An important element of being successful is having the proper skills, which are generally associated with the body and mind.

Among essentialists, the NAEP-US study is cause for some alarm but not of the same magnitude as among perennialists. Essentialists would be most concerned with the inability of many students to write cogent responses to the open-ended questions posed by the test (What were two strengths of the South in the Civil War? or What was one major consequence of the French and Indian War?). Students' inability to respond adequately to such questions would be measured in terms of their ability to write clearly, using appropriate English, with a minimal emphasis on factual content. Essentialists, like perennialists, use apparent failures in public education, like those documented in NAEP-US, as their driving force, compelling schools to be more "like them" by stressing the "basics" throughout the curriculum. NAEP-US is yet another illustration of the need to return to the essentials of schooling.

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