The Curriculum We Teach

In the past few weeks, the Oregonian has run two articles by Portland educators. The first, by Franklin High School Social Studies teacher Bill Bigelow, and the second by Portland Public Schools Social Studies Coordinator Rick La Greide. The initial article, by Bigelow, began with Bill stating his concerns about what students are learning with regards to the Climate Change/Global Warming debate in their Social Studies classes. His fear was that in the textbooks that the Portland District implemented, the discussion of this issue, rather significant to he and many other social studies teachers, was given a very small treatment within the text. This led to the larger argument of how much time teachers are able to devote to issues that are significant to them, relevant to the present day, and within the purview of a given class to teach. Thus, a student would leave a history/social studies class with some knowledge, but little concept of a debate or issue possibly more important to their everyday life.

La Greide, who Bigelow did mention in his article, replied back a week later in a letter to the editor, and within his post discussed his concern that by having a Social Studies teacher focus on prevalent current events issues (or issues that they simply are very passionate about), they can leave high school without knowing about important ideas or events from history that they need as building blocks for success beyond secondary education. He cited how his social studies teacher spent weeks on Dante's Inferno because of a personal preference, and then when he got to college, he realized that he was out of the loop about many other events in history. Thus, while he could empathize with Bill's desire to teach global warming better, he felt that making sure students had those building blocks about all of history was more important.

So my initial query is whether individuals think that La Greide is correct or if Bigelow has the point. Bigelow's article can be accessed by clicking on the title of this post (I was unable to retrive a web link for LaGreide's letter, and a few emails to the Oregonian's editors went unanswered).

As I processed this debate, I couldn't help but consider what the implications of their two perspectives mean for those of us teaching social studies. To an extent, I find the debate slightly counter-productive, as sniping at each side doesn't resolve the larger issue -- that we simply don't have enough time to effectively teach high school social studies. 3 years of required education may simply not be enough to get through all of the material that we passionately feel that high schoolers need to graduate -- can we honestly and effectively teach Civics, Geography, Current Events, Economics, Government, U.S. and World History, even in the best of survey courses, in a mere 3 years? It almost seems as if our efforts would be better served (instead of attacking textbook companies and district curriculums) in petitioning for even more Social Studies to be tacked on as necessary to the Oregon Diploma. I graduated my New York high school with the equivalent of 5 years of required Social Studies, and to me, the idea of having to squeeze the same information into only 3 years is hard to live with.
Yet, maybe I've gotten ahead of myself. Maybe I should be resolved to considering those 3 years, and in which case, the Bigelow and La Greide "discussion" is the field on which we should focus.

So, in sum, does Social Studies need to allot time for those critical current events as Bigelow suggests? Or is LaGreide correct in asserting that we need to have a standard curriculum that allows for the creation of building blocks?