Teaching History

Teaching history is difficult:•Multiculturalism•Urbanization•Globalization•Immigration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

Teaching History

• Chapter one answers two questions– Why teach history?– How to teach history?

Teaching History

• Telling History

• Teaching History

Teaching History

• History is an action verb.

• Students are not passive recepients of knowledge they are historians at work.

Teaching History

• History is both a science and an art.

Teaching History

• History is a science because it teaches a method of inquiry.

• History is an art because it requires interpretation of how the past exists in our current place.

Teaching History

• How to teach history?– Broad Questions or Themes– History Laboratories

Teaching History

• Broad Questions or Themes– History’s Habits of Mind– Vital Themes and Narratives (NCHE)– History Themes (NAEP)– Ten Social Studies Themes (NCSS)

Teaching History

• History Laboratories– Hermeneutics – a method of interpretation– Heuristics – Students learn for themselves.– Historiography – Study of historical writing– Primary Sources -

Teaching History

• The Atomic Bomb

– The atomic bomb was used “out of a desireto have the edge over the Soviet Union in the postwar world.”

» Japanese textbook

Teaching History

• The Atomic Bomb

– The use of the atomic bomb from a military perspective was “not essentinal . . . and the reasons for why that terrible decision was made have not been entirely made clear.”

» Italian Textbook

Teaching History

• Why Historians Change Their Mind.

– Students have been conditioned to think of history as events on a timeline and not something open to interpretation.

Teaching History

• History is not what happened, it’s what we say happened.

Textbooks

• David Kobrin believes that textbooks have good qualities but analyzing them can expose the agenda of authors and help students better understand the history of the period

Teaching History

• For example, according to Kobrin:

– Reconstruction in textbooks has changed from one of a disaster hurtful to ‘Southerners’ to a ‘Second American Revolution’ that valued civil over property rights.

– Neither interpretation accounts for African Americans who would not appear until 1960.