See both William Bennett and Scott Johnson (channeling Peter Schramm) ruminating on what it is to be an American. Bennett especially laments the decline in the teaching of American History in our schools. What they teach is not good, and when they teach it they do it poorly. One of the problems we have is most of the teachers do not know American history. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it is something like 70% of all secondary American History teachers neither majored nor minored in History in college (this is to say nothing about the elementary school teachers). It is therefore not surprising that, as Bennett reports, American History is our students' worst subject.
How could we improve the teaching of American History? Some suggestions.
1. American history is a story and should be taught that way. It has compelling characters, an amazing plot, and plenty of drama. I am currently working my way through Shelby Foote's Civil War books. You don't get a more fascinating story than that. And this is true throughout American history. There are plenty of heroes and villains (if I may quote Brian Wilson) for kids to root for and against. It's like a real life Harry Potter story.
2. The teaching of American History is more than names and dates. But it is not less than that. The desire of the education mavens to move beyond mere "historical facts" would be laudable if they were talking about advanced History eduction. But any history starts with just plain old knowing who did what and when. With a firm basis in that, we can move on to why they did it.
3. The emphasis on social and multicultural history is misplaced. Again, social history has its place, probably in more advanced History. History shows us how other people lived. We can see different values, lifestyles, political arrangements, etc. This, in my view, is one of the great virtues of history education. But students should get the big picture (political history) before they get the smaller picture (social history). The multiculturalists tend to bring in a load of political baggage. If we want to teach students the greatness of their history, it'd be best if it is not taught by people who hate America.
4. As with most subjects, our teacher training is poor. Our teacher education tends to focus on pedagogy rather than on learning content. Future teachers spend more time learning how to teach than they do learning what it is they are supposed to teach. I'd like to see us move to a system where education students take a four year degree in a content area and then take a fifth year to do their teacher training. I do note that most of my colleagues in the School of Education would think me daft for proposing such a thing.
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