The History Matters Campaign is a project of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. For years in my small, K–6 school district in southern New Jersey, dedicated time for history felt like a ghost in the machine. Sure, there was a block on the schedule called “social studies,” but it was often the first to be sacrificed for assemblies or extra practice time for tested subjects. When history instruction did occur, it was frequently treated as an opportunity to practice isolated literacy skills. We were teaching students how to read about history, but we weren’t truly teaching them history itself. They were missing the rich, coherent narratives of the past, the cause-and-effect relationships, and the deep contextual knowledge that makes history meaningful.
Today, teachers and students in Elk Township Public Schools use knowledge-rich history materials and instruction that far exceed our state’s vague, broad academic standards. Elementary classes dedicate 40 minutes to history every day. Meanwhile, student performance in tested subjects has not suffered. On the contrary, 86 percent of our sixth-grade students passed state tests in English Language Arts (ELA) last year. Three years earlier, as third-graders, just 28 percent passed.
What accounts for these changes? In 2023, we implemented a comprehensive, knowledge-building ELA curriculum, American Reading Company’s ARC Core. It requires a daily, protected 120-minute ELA block. This logistical requirement forced us to impose a new level of discipline on our master schedules, making the unstructured and frequently skipped time for history and science glaringly obvious. By walling off our ELA time, we inadvertently shined a spotlight on the neglect of these other crucial subjects.
The most profound shift, however, was philosophical, born from what our teachers and students experienced inside that new ELA block. ARC Core is built on the principle that true literacy is accelerated by deep and systematic knowledge of the world. Its units immerse students in specific topics for weeks at a time. A fourth-grade class, for example, could spend an entire unit delving into American history by reading American historical fiction. Our sixth graders spent weeks exploring Greek and Roman myths.
We saw that students weren’t just practicing reading strategies; rather, they were becoming domain-specific experts with vocabulary and rich context at the ready. We witnessed firsthand that background knowledge is not merely a helpful supplement to reading comprehension, it is the very engine driving it. This powerful, tangible experience threw the inadequacies of our shallow, skills-based approach to history into sharp relief.
Teachers began asking a critical question: If our third graders can build such deep knowledge in their ELA unit on history topics like “Traditional Tales” and “World Cultures,” why are we treating the rest of our social studies time as a superficial exercise? The success within ARC Core generated the organizational will to demand the same intellectual rigor for history as we were demanding in ELA. The conversation shifted from “Can we find the time for social studies?” to “We must protect the time for social studies to build knowledge the same way we do in ELA.”
This newfound conviction empowered us to take control of our instructional vision. We felt emboldened to look beyond what our state required, which had long justified a “mile-wide, inch-deep” curriculum, and made the deliberate choice to prioritize coherent, knowledge-rich history curriculum. That journey is just beginning, and the work of finding and implementing the ideal resources continues.
But a foundational shift has been made. Our social studies block is not optional or an excuse to squeeze in some extra ELA practice. The transformative, knowledge-rich learning we’ve experienced in ELA has created an undeniable appetite for more. We began by trying to build better readers and, in the process, rediscovered our mission to cultivate curious, knowledgeable young historians. We learned that the stories of our past are not just content to practice on; they are the essential knowledge that builds a literate, informed, and engaged citizenry.
Anthony Fitzpatrick is Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction for the Delsea Regional and Elk Township School Districts in New Jersey.