Adapting outdated content standards: Complications of teaching the Middle East in the California K-12 setting

This article examines why California secondary school teachers rarely include units on the Middle East in their classrooms despite the importance of the region in the world today. In order to explain this gap, it will consider the massive knowledge demands on history teachers, state and federal testing practices, content standards that define what teachers must cover and how the students and parents themselves all limit a teacher’s ability to include the Middle East in the public school classroom from kindergarten through grade twelve. After an examination of the issues involved, a few solutions are offered to assist in increasing education about the Middle East.