Sam Wineburg: Testing students' knowledge of the civil rights movement

Sam Wineburg is a professor of education and history at Stanford University and the author of "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts."

"Students' Knowledge of Civil Rights History Has Deteriorated," one headline announced. "Civil Rights Movement Education 'Dismal' in American Schools," declared another.

The alarming headlines, which appeared in newspapers across the country, grew out of a report released three weeks ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Teaching the Movement," which claims that the civil rights movement is widely ignored in history classrooms. By not teaching it, the report claims, American education is "failing in its responsibility to educate its citizens to be agents of change." The study included a report card for individual states, and California got slapped with a big fat F.

But is it true? Are today's students really not learning about such an important part of U.S. history? The Southern Poverty Law Center has done groundbreaking work in combating racism and prejudice. But its new study simply doesn't stand up.

For starters, the report did not base its conclusions on any direct testing of student knowledge. Not a single student, not a single teacher, not a single principal answered a single question about their knowledge for this report. The closest we get to a live child — and even this is a stretch — comes from Julian Bond, who wrote the report's forward. Bond recounts that "some years ago" he gave a quiz to college students and found that none could identify George Wallace....