A Case for Teaching History in Elementary School with Robert Pondiscio | History Matters Podcast

Hello listeners of the Knowledge Matters Podcast! We're thrilled to welcome you to the first season of our new series, the History Matters Podcast. We decided to launch the podcast because, while the national conversation about the science of reading is growing, the role of content knowledge in reading is still woefully understated. In this inaugural season, we explore the vast untapped potential of high-quality history instruction to build knowledge, accelerate literacy, and prepare students to participate in civic life. Enjoy!

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S1E1: A Case for Teaching History in Elementary School with Robert Pondiscio | History Matters Podcast

Elementary schools spend almost no time teaching history. How did we get here, and how can we reprioritize this crucial foundation for literacy and knowledge? 

Host Barbara Davidson begins the eight-part “History Matters” podcast with a reflective and forward-looking conversation with guest Robert Pondiscio, an author and former fifth-grade teacher who founded the Knowledge Matters Campaign.

Pondiscio recalls his youthful passion for history, sparked by the nation’s bicentennial celebrations nearly 50 years ago. As a teacher, he found his students had learned very little about the past. Rather than learn facts, administrators wanted students to grapple with “essential questions”—which Pondiscio notes is impossible without the knowledge to understand them. 

Later, federal accountability rules prompted schools across the country to overwhelmingly focus on tested subjects. But reading is more than decoding—it is comprehension. Without background knowledge, students cannot make sense of what they read. “Everything was reading, reading, reading, math, math, math,” he says. “That’s just not how you build a reader.”

Historical knowledge is especially powerful: Pondiscio notes that the nation’s founders recognized that a republic is fragile and needs virtuous, educated citizens to maintain it. Davidson asks: If you had a magic wand, what would you do? Pondiscio sets forth two big changes. First, that every school use knowledge-building curriculum. Second, that representatives from every state and district decide what basic, foundational historical knowledge kids should learn in each elementary grade:

“What is it we expect kids to know to be literate, to be competent citizens, to be engaged, to be excited in participating and playing a part in the American experiment? I’d love to see schools take up that challenge.”

For more History Matters episodes, check out the History Matters Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork, on behalf of the History Matters Campaign. Follow the History Matters Campaign on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter/X. Search #historymatters to join the conversation.

Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.

Transcript

Robert Pondiscio

At one point, I remember asking my fifth graders, “If you could look out the window 100 years ago, what, what do you think you'd see?” And silence, silence, silence. And then one shy kid says, “Dinosaurs?” And it hit me like a thunderbolt, like they just have no sense of the passage of time. 

Barbara Davidson

Hello listeners of the Knowledge Matters Podcast! This is Barbara Davidson, President of StandardsWork and Executive Director of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. 

I’m thrilled to welcome you to the brand-new History Matters Podcast. This podcast was born out of a vision—one I believe all educators have—of inspiring our students to ask big questions, develop their love of learning through reading, and feel empowered to go out and explore their community and the world.

We believe great history education can be a spark that causes this to happen. The History Matters Podcast will explore how it’s done.

We decided to launch the podcast because, while the national conversation about the science of reading is growing, the role of content knowledge in reading is still woefully understated. We’re also concerned that much of the interest in civics education is ignoring the groundwork that must be laid in the elementary grades.

I hope this podcast will show you how history serves both literacy and civic goals, and how some ground-breaking work, and practicing educators, are out there, right now, getting it done!  

Welcome to the History Matters Podcast - Season 1.

For this inaugural episode of the History Matters podcast, I talked to Robert Pondiscio, founder of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. Robert is a former fifth grade teacher, journalist, and author of the book, How the Other Half Learns.

Robert and I talked about the roots of his long running passion for building students' knowledge of the world and his conviction about the importance of strong history instruction in the elementary grades. I think you'll enjoy this lively discussion.

Barbara Davidson 

Oh my goodness, Robert, I cannot believe that we are doing this. My guest today is Robert Pondiscio, a friend and partner in crime for at least 15 years. Right, Robert?

Robert Pondiscio 

Oh man. 

Barbara Davidson

Yeah. 

Robert Pondiscio 

If not longer, yeah. It's been a while. 

Barbara Davidson 

So let's start off by establishing, where did your passion for elementary history instruction begin? Where was it born?

Robert Pondiscio

Wow. Well, it's interesting because I've always been—I shouldn't say I've always been—I've been a history buff for much of my life. And interestingly enough, I trace it back to the bicentennial. I'm old enough to have been in eighth grade in 1976 when the Bicentennial was a very big deal. I mean, you've got to be our age to remember this, but it was a big commercial enterprise. 

I grew up on Long Island. Remember the festival with tall ships? That happened in my backyard. I remember seeing 1776, which was our generation's Hamilton, on TV and absolutely falling in love with it. And it just happened to be the year in eighth grade that we did American history. So everything lined up, and that kind of made me a lifelong history buff. 

In terms of my passion for history as a subject, working with students, one of the formative moments in my journey as a teacher was a professional development at my South Bronx Elementary School in my, probably my first year of teaching. 

And I'll never forget this. The principal led a PD, the title of which was: No More Trivial Pursuit. She said, it's not important for kids to learn the War of 1812. Instead, they should grapple with essential questions like: Is war ever justified? But this was one of those moments where, like, come on, you got to be kidding me.

How can you expect any educated person to have anything worth saying about, is war ever justified if they don't know history, if they don't know the War of 1812, if they don't know, you know, American history? Said, like—and it’s just like, one of those early moments in my teaching career where like, wait a minute, this is — there is less here than meets the eye. 

Barbara Davidson

Yeah. Wow. What a compelling story. I just wonder, in terms of sort of setting the stage, Robert, you're in a good position to do this, what's your understanding about what's going on in elementary—elementary in particular—instruction across the country?

Robert Pondiscio 

You know, I started in 2002 when the ed-reform movement was kind of at its high water mark in terms of its kind of prestige and moral authority. And, and, you know, policy makers not unwisely decided that, well, look, we really needed to get kids reading and doing math competently. Get them, you know, up to speed.

So that set in motion a series of well intended reforms, most notably, No Child Left Behind. And that, you know, this idea that we're going to get every single kid in this country reading on grade level in the next decade. Well, who wouldn't want that? 

Well, the problem is —the mischief is, is how that was interpreted in schools. Okay, we're going to do reading and math and everything else can wait. It didn't—literally—I mean, literally that wasn't the case in every single school, but it might have—might as well have been. It certainly was in my school. You know, everything was reading, reading, reading, math, math, math, and nothing else. 

And as you know, and I assume some of our listeners know, that's just not how you build a reader. Kids need not just history. They need science, they need art, they need music, they need the full range of experience. 

I can't finish a paragraph without invoking E.D. Hirsch, Jr, who's kind of like my my guru in this, but he has pointed out for decades now that um the way language proficiency works is readers—or rather, writers and speakers make assumptions about what their listeners and readers know, and when those assumptions are correct, language is fluid and proficient. And when it's not, it falls apart. And that is literally what I saw in my South Bronx classroom every single day, kids who could decode but struggled with comprehension. 

Barbara Davidson

So what are the arguments for shared knowledge?

Robert Pondiscio 

The argument for shared knowledge is the argument for literacy. It's—I can't say it any more plainly than that. I mean, this is what we all learned from, from E.D. Hirsch, Jr, I alluded to it a moment ago, that, you know, language is more than just—you know, or, or reading is more than just 26 letters and 44 phonemes and whatnot. It's more than decoding the words. It is, is comprehension. 

My favorite analogy that I've used over the years is, I compare reading to the child's game of Jenga, where every single block is, you know, a bit of background knowledge or vocabulary word. If you've played that game as a child or with a child, then you know how this works. You know, you pull out a couple of blocks, and everything's fine. Then you pull out one too many, and the entire thing collapses. That's what it's like to be a reader, you know, with a, with a deficit of background knowledge, of vocabulary. 

And what makes it so vexing to people is, those of us who are well educated and literate, simply don't realize or remember that we are like that proverbial fish, you know, that doesn't know what's in water. We are swimming in knowledge and vocabulary. So what seems obvious to us — like, you know, working as a teacher, like, how can you get that test question wrong? The answer is right there in the passage. Well, you know, they've had that Jenga phenomenon.

And, and back to history. You know, it's, it's—it's a sin, it's a crime that we are not, um you know, giving kids their, their, their rich history through what—through whatever lens you, you choose to teach it. 

I will never forget, at one point, I remember asking my fifth graders in the South Bronx, because we were in this 100 year old school, schoolhouse, and on the fifth floor. I said, “If you could look out the window 100 years from”—and we had a time machine—“You were looking out the window 100 years ago, what do you think you'd see?” And silence, silence, silence. And then one shy kid says, “Dinosaurs?” 

Barbara Davidson 

Oh.

Robert Pondiscio 

[laughs] And it’s like 100—and it hit me like a thunderbolt. Like they just have no sense of the passage of time. 

Barbara Davidson

Yeah. 

Robert Pondiscio 

Right. You know how we got from here to there. And that's what goes missing when you don't have a good grounding in history. Like you're part of a story, you know.

Barbara Davidson

Right.

Robert Pondiscio 

You are in a moment of time. There were things that came before you, there were things that are gonna—are gonna come after you. And unless you can place yourself in that stream of time, then you're—there's just something tragic about that, right? About not understanding, not just your country's history, your family's history, the world's history. You know, how we got here and—and, frankly, what a privilege it is to be, you know, here, at this moment in time where so much has gone before you to make this moment possible. 

Barbara Davidson 

Well, I have this instinct that history's best days may be ahead of it, in part, because of this wider embrace that the field seems to have about the importance of background knowledge. 

Robert Pondiscio 

Yeah.

Barbara Davidson

I mean, let's take a win here, Robert.

Robert Pondiscio 

I—I choose to agree. Yeah. 

Barbara Davidson

Yeah.

Robert Pondiscio 

You know, I think we are having this um science of reading moment right now, which I frankly, would have never expected. And had you prophesied it to me 10 or 15 years ago, I would have said, well, great, maybe not in my lifetime, but, but eventually. So sure! Um. You know, it—it's here, and I do agree with you.

I mean the number of people that I talk to, you know, day to day, week to week, who do understand, you know, that that connection between knowledge and vocabulary and and reading achievement is—you know, I used to joke we could meet in the washroom of a 727, you know. Now we might occupy the entire 727, including the first class seats. So it's gotten better. 

But there—Look, I don't want to be, you know, overly credulous or naive. We do—we still have a long way to go. I think in the broad public imagination, there's still this idea that reading is a quote skill, you know, that you know, first you learn to read, then you read to learn. And as we know, it's a little bit more complicated than that.

Barbara Davidson 

You know, one of the reasons that the Knowledge Matters Campaign is uh putting a finer point on the need for background knowledge through launching this history matters campaign is uh really because we feel that history is particularly privileged content. And not only is it a topic area that uh there's great understanding that we have need for now, now in particular in our country, but also because, I think mostly because of the way in which history is—what history is! It’s story. And therefore it has more stickiness to it. 

Robert Pondiscio 

Sure. Look, you know, I like to remind people — um I make a joke out of this — I say, you know, Horace Mann went to his grave without ever once having uttered the phrase college and career ready. Um. And what I mean by that is, like the founding principle, the founding point of American public education was not college and career readiness. It was preparation for citizenship. It was character education. It was history. 

You know, it's instructive to revisit the mindset of those earliest thinkers about education, the Benjamin Rush’s, the Noah Webster's, Thomas Jefferson um and others, you know, who were very concerned about this fragile thing called a republic. You know, we all love that story about Benjamin Franklin. “What have we got, Doctor?” “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” 

Well, that wasn't just a wry remark. It was not a certainty that we would keep it. Republics tend to end in things like, you know, bloodshed and guillotines and whatnot. So, it was a long shot bet, and it required a well educated population. If you're going to put the people in charge, they need to be well educated. They need to be virtuous citizens. 

So that's why we have these things called public schools. It was not for the kind of the instrumentalist, you know, this is about me. This is about my career. This is about my educational opportunities. This is about how we're going to keep the Republic. So those of us who favor, you know, a strong history and civic knowledge or an education rich in those things, we have nothing to apologize for. Okay, we, we—This is the founding purpose of American public education. 

Barbara Davidson 

So if you could wave your magic wand and do something, [Robert laughs] what would you do to improve elementary history instruction?

Robert Pondiscio 

Boy, I'm really glad that you narrowed the question to elementary because that's a lot easier to answer than what goes beyond it. Okay, if you're giving me the magic wand, I want every school to be, if not exactly, a core knowledge school I want them to have based their curriculum on, on that very, very sound idea that um reading is not a standalone skill, that it requires broad knowledge. 

And look, frankly, you know, let me, let me contra—contradict myself somewhat when saying nobody wants to do this work of establishing what it is that kids should know, you know, in history or civics or geography or whatnot, it's a little bit easier at the at the elementary level.

I have this bet that I would love somebody to take me up on, which is, you know, why don't we want to, you know, say what kids should learn in history uh, or civics or social studies? Because, oh, then we're going to have to argue about evolution. Oh, then we're going to have to argue about abortion, and then we're going to have to argue about all these, these, you know, third rail topics. Well, maybe not in elementary school. 

So here, here's my proposition, Barbara, if you were to take in all 50 states, um put a panel together, teachers, parents, you know, students. And say, Okay, what is it that you think every—you know, the question that Hirsch asked as the foundation of his work—what should every kindergarten know? What should every first grader know? Second grader, etc, etc?

My guess is there would be, I'm not kidding, 95% agreement. Now, who's going to say? No, I don't think it's important for kids to know their shapes and colors. I don't think it's important for kids to know the oceans and continents. Um. You know, we might disagree on—you know, you might want to put, you know, Roman history, or, you know, the ancient Greeks in third grade. I might want to put them in fourth grade. 

But I would bet you real money that, that at the elementary school level, what is the history that kids really need to know to have foundational knowledge so they can participate thoughtfully in all of those controversial arguments they're going to have in middle school and high school? I’d wager my last dime that it would be a lot less controversial than people think. 

So, that's my magic wand. I want, I want schools in all 50 states and all 14,000 districts to do exactly that. To sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper um and just say, okay, what is it we expect kids to know, to be literate, to be, you know, competent citizens, to be engaged, to be excited about participating to, to playing a part in, in the American experiment. I'd love to see schools take up that challenge.

Barbara Davidson

To learn more about Robert’s work, you can visit his substack, “The Next 30 Years,” which is linked to in our show notes.

This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign. You can learn more about our work at knowledgematterscampaign.org. 

To catch all of the History Matters Podcast, make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.