No Longer Doomed to Repeat the Past

As a child in Illinois, Sheila Benecke learned some history lessons she will never forget. Ever.

For 12 years, her teachers began at the same place in American history, repeating information about the 13 colonies, the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War. The annual repetition of ancient facts reached all the way forward to the Civil War--and stopped.

Because teachers started with the same historical timeline each year, Benecke never learned more than the barest outline about events of the 20th century.

“When I was in school, we never got to World War II or even World War I,” Benecke said. “How many times can you learn about the same thing?”

Now a trustee at Capistrano Unified School District, Benecke is striving to make sure students in her district don’t suffer from the repetitive learning process she endured.

Benecke is part of the process in which Capistrano Unified officials are revising the curriculum to expand the material students are exposed to every year and to ensure that educators are not belaboring some lessons and skipping over others.

“What we’re trying to do is have greater depth in a smaller area each year” instead of overlapping, Benecke said.

So rather than starting at the beginning of American history every year, students will study the country’s 200-plus years in sections that spiral rather than overlap.

*

Toward that end, the district this year will expand its curriculum mapping program, in which teachers chart covered material and compare it grade by grade to eliminate excess overlap and identify overlooked areas.

“It’s very curriculum-based in that district,” said Julie Hume, coordinator of history and social science for the Orange County Department of Education and former director of curriculum for the Tustin Unified School District.

It’s a passion of Capistrano Unified educators “to always be curriculum-based, and they always have been,” she said.

Last year, the district began a policy of examining its teaching patterns on a school-by-school basis. This year, eight elementary, two middle and two high schools will be involved, said Suzette Lovely, district director of instructional support services.

Once the mapping is complete, the district will be able to seal any gaps and try to prevent experiences like Benecke’s.

Increasing competition in the work force requires that students make the most of their time in school, Benecke said.

“Industry requires more of its employees,” Benecke said. “We have to reduce unnecessary repetition and save time, so that we can teach additional things.”

*

But the problem is not easily solved.

“You’ve got a school site with 35 to 40 teachers who don’t even have the same recess schedule, so how are they going to find out what each other is teaching?” wondered Helene Dykes, principal of Bergeson Elementary in Laguna Niguel.

And some amount of review is necessary to freshen memories dulled by summer fun, said Dennis Evans, director of credential programs at UC Irvine’s department of education.

“In some ways, overlap is good,” Evans said. “Most teachers when they start the school year go back and review.”

Some changes already have resulted from the district’s policy. Last year, for instance, its high schools substituted geography for a mandatory ninth-grade world cultures class that had been repeating many lessons from junior high history, Benecke said.

“Changes are happening now in different high schools, and it will happen even more once curriculum mapping tightens up,” she said.

Change is slow. Still in the beginning stages of a five-year curriculum improvement plan, Capistrano Unified is spending most of its time tackling basic reading, writing and other language skills.

But officials have a strong incentive to reach their goal of expanding students’ literacy and knowledge of history and social science.

As philosopher George Santayana wrote in “The Life of Reason,” “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Benecke agreed: “If we’re not covering what is happening in this century, what are we teaching our children about how to lead constructive lives in the next century?”