When Learning Objectives Aren't Really About Learning: Why the Civil Rights Act Reveals Everything Wrong with How We Plan Lessons
How examining one historical moment exposes the fundamental confusion between performance demonstration and intellectual development
The Terminological Shell Game
As the university assessment coordinator at Sacramento State, I spent a lot of time at faculty meetings talking about "instructional objectives" versus "learning objectives," as if this distinction matters. It doesn't, except it did to faculty, who were skittish about the word “learning.” They felt responsible for teaching to their objectives, but they believed they had little to do with whether students had learned the objective. That was pretty much up to the student to do the work.
Looking back, the root cause was a skittishness about the concept of “learning.” There’s something unsettling about learning. Many of them couldn’t see how they could be held responsible for what students learn. They couldn’t fathom the idea that what they do in their classes has a main effect on what students learn. I know, I know. The only way I could understand the phenomenon was by remembering that university professors are not trained in learning science.
Both concepts, teaching and learning, despite their different names, typically function together in the mind of a professor as “teaching.” Learning is a separate construct measured by performance specifications, not by finding out what happened in any student’s mind, and examining how we might teach the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reveals exactly why this matters.
Consider the standard approach: "Students will be able to identify three key provisions of the Civil Rights Act and explain their historical significance." Whether you call this an instructional or learning objective, it creates the same cognitive straight jacket. Students learn to hunt for the three provisions the teacher wants, memorize their approved significance, and reproduce this knowledge on demand.
The Shared DNA Problem
Both instructional and learning objectives typically emerge from the same behaviorist assumption: that learning can be reduced to measurable outcomes. When studying the Civil Rights Act, this translates into objectives like "analyze the political factors that led to passage" or "evaluate the effectiveness of civil rights legislation."
These sound sophisticated, but they're still performance specifications. They assume predetermined pathways to predetermined conclusions about what the Civil Rights Act "means" historically. Students become expert at delivering what teachers expect rather than developing their own thoughts on the matter.
The Deeper Displacement: Performance Versus Understanding
Here's where it gets interesting. What we call "learning objectives" often aren't about learning at all—they're about demonstration. Real learning goals for studying the Civil Rights Act would look fundamentally different.
Instead of "Students will explain why the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964," we might ask: "How will students develop their capacity to think like historians by investigating the complex interplay of social movements, political calculations, and cultural shifts that create moments of significant change?" College students can do this work.
Notice the displacement? The first specifies a performance; the second describes intellectual development. The first can be completed by AI in seconds; the second requires the kind of thinking that can be amplified through AI collaboration.
The Emergence Problem
Real historical understanding is messy and emergent. When students personally engage with the topic of the Civil Rights Act, unexpected questions arise. Why did it take until 1964? How did ordinary people's actions connect to elite political decisions? What role did economic factors play alongside moral arguments? How do we understand the perspectives of those who opposed it?
Take the first question. Why did it take until 1964? Suppose this were to be the only question relevant to the credit/no credit decision. Is it an important question? I think so. Is it a researchable question, i.e., a question for which one can argue for or against a historically based answer? I think so. It’s not like ‘Is there a God?’
As an instructional objective, ‘why did it take until 1964’ could be covered in a section in a chapter or an article provided. The test question could be “In the chapter we read, the text discusses why it took until 1964 to get a Civil Rights Act passed. List the four reasons discussed in the chapter.
Traditional objectives—whether instructional or learning—displace the natural emergence of questions learners might have with predetermined pathways to predetermined insights. Students learn to suppress their genuine curiosity in favor of delivering expected answers, sometimes really complicated answers but memorized, not internalized.
A Different Way: Epistemic Goals in Action
Imagine approaching the Civil Rights Act through epistemic goals instead. An epistemic goal can be personal or collaborative, but it is about building new knowledge. It is a learner’s goal, not a teacher’s goal. Rather than specifying what students should conclude about the legislation, we focus on how they'll develop as historical thinkers.
Students might collaborate with AI to explore multiple primary sources, always verifying with human sources, then grapple with conflicting interpretations. They could investigate how different communities experienced the same historical moment differently. Most importantly, they'd learn to articulate and defend their emerging understanding in public discourse—not because they found the "right" answer, but because they used tools for historical reasoning in a mentored ecology.
The AI Revelation
AI has exposed the fundamental weakness in both instructional and learning objectives. If ChatGPT can achieve your "learning" objective by producing a competent performance on an exam of predetermined answers in an analysis of the Civil Rights Act, then the objective wasn't really about learning at all. It was about memorizing.
This new goal, an epistemic goal, creates a productive displacement. Instead of objectives that can be gamed, we have goals that require intellectual engagement with learning tools of all sorts. When students use AI to explore the Civil Rights Act, we don’t know if there’s cheating going on. If they are doing so to game the system and thwart the professor’s goal, it’s cheating. It’s against the rules. Throw the bum out. But if they're developing the critical consciousness to examine how historical narratives get constructed and by whom, if they are getting motivated to talk about what they are learning, to write about it, to discuss it with peers—well, you decide..
Beyond the Objectives Framework
The most important intersection isn't between instructional and learning objectives—it's between any predetermined objective and the emergent reality of how understanding actually develops. When students grapple with historical phenomena like the Civil Rights Act, they must learn facts. They may be required to learn various expert perspectives on those facts. But until they have tried their hand at explaining why it took until 1964 through their own intention, questions, and experiences, they haven’t learned. They have memorized.
This shift requires abandoning the instructional objectives framework entirely in favor of something more aligned with how learning works. Instead of specifying what students will demonstrate about the Civil Rights Act, we ask: How will studying this moment help students develop their capacity to think critically about power, change, and justice? What intellectual tools will they need to engage authentically with complex historical questions?
The Philosophical Shift
The displacement from objectives to epistemic goals represents a fundamental philosophical shift from viewing education as knowledge transmission to understanding it as intellectual development. When students study the Civil Rights Act through this lens, they're not just learning about 1964—they're developing the critical consciousness to examine how social change happens and how historical narratives get constructed.
That kind of learning can't be faked by AI because it requires the ongoing development of human judgment and creativity. Importantly, that learning is highly motivated, a feature missing from the transmission model. And paradoxically, it's exactly the kind of learning that can become more powerful when students learn to collaborate thoughtfully with AI tools.
The Civil Rights Act isn’t content to master, but a case study in developing the intellectual capabilities students need to live in an uncertain world. Those who can answer the question for themselves based on their own the thinking and study are equipped to think through what is happening today as the Trump Administration continues to push for complete disassembly of not just the Civil Rights Act, but of civil rights generally. .
And as the fights over civil rights continue, sometimes regressing before our very eyes, the real question for the next generation is ‘How long until we secure the rights of learners?’
Maybe it’s time to move beyond the “objectives” framework entirely and design education for real learning, not just performance.
How many years will it take to get a Learners Rights Act passed?
All this is excellent. One step better - after enough screen time, research who the class can talk to that has been personally connected to these historical events. Best - set up a panel of four speakers. Good - set up one. OK - watch video recordings and mix in listening to music while looking at still pictures, writing reflections/inspirations by hand while listening and looking.
The terminology shell game is applicable in my HE environment as well, so I sympathize. That said, I would clarify that there is a hierarchical cascade in the language that can account for the epistemological dimensions Terry refers to here while preserving the granular prerequisite necessity to memorize certain facts and interpret certain relationships at the "learning/instructional" level.
For example, the Civil Rights situation could be assessed according to the following cascade:
- Institutional Academic Competency: Use critical thinking tools and strategies to interpret complex issues and convey findings in various media to diverse audiences.
- Programmatic Competency: Employ historiographical techniques to interpret historical events from a variety of perspectives.
- Course Learning Outcome: Interpret social and political change according to historical events leading up to and after key legislation.
- Assignment level assessment criteria or requirement: Support a historical analysis of the 1964 Civil Rights Act through an account of key leading events and their collateral effects, citing specifics.
The logic here is that the "memorization stuff" is simply the ingredients for other high-order intellectual tasks. There must also be some form of separation between "what" the learner does and "how" they do it - each reflecting different aspects of intellectual virtue.
They key here, IMHO, is writing the assignment requirements so that the human elements of the work are paramount. There is also a dimension of modeling by the instructor that comes into play. The learning experience should not be in a vacuum.