With one test out of the way, my goal now is to “study like crazy” for the CSET (California single subject test) in History/Social Studies.

I read through the details and requirements of the test and quickly realized just how much I had to study.  Even though the CSET results in my ability to teach Jr. High and High School students, the test itself is a at the college level.  I am expected to have the breadth and depth of a college graduate in History.

I gathered all the history books I had throughout the house, and compared them with the list of subject matters on the test.  I had no California History, Civics or Economics in my collection, so I went shopping on Amazon for used college texts.  Fortunately, the CSET prep document had a four page list of all the history books it considers important for the passage of the test.  I bought half a dozen books.

I also noticed that, just as with my Art History major, there is a disproportionate emphasis on women in history, minorities in history, revisionist history, and non-western history.  I attribute this to the large liberal population (mostly non-western, minority women with a penchant for revisionism) that decides on the curriculum for the schools.  As a white, European male who likes documented history (I’m a deconstructionist, not a revisionist!), I am at a clear disadvantage.

And yet I’ll press on.  I can at least memorize some of the stuff, even if I don’t totally believe in it.  It will sort of be like the evolutionary concepts that I had to pass for my anthropology class to get my biology degree.  (If I went for my Science/Biology single subject credential, I would likely be the only person in the district who considered Evolution a theory… which it is since it cannot be definitively proven.  Teachers of biology at the Jr. High/High School level generally seem to believe that Evolution has been proven recently – that it is now a fact… which is a complete myth.  At least college professors will generally look up the facts.  Jr. High/High School teachers seem to more readily accept whatever is told to them, or whatever is in their textbooks, even though a few items in the texts have been proven false up to 50 years ago (like “Lucy”).  The HS texts seem to be written by administrators, not leading-edge researchers.  The evolutionary dogma is kept intact.  When you think about it, Evolution should be considered a religion.  It takes about as much faith.  The evidence is “sort-of” there, but cannot be proven.)