Teaching the US history in schools and college

[American2020]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

"Except that much of what is taught in schools is carefully selected nationalistic b.s. what people k e need to know about history is that the historians' perspective is often subjective, politically -influenced, and nothing but I doctrination. Also, students should be taught this and advised to read widely on multiple perspectives, trends, influences on trends. History also does not stand alone. Understanding attitudes on the times and places, art, economics, religion, all figures into understanding history. It is too often taught as a one-dimensional subject."

"Of course it depends whose voices and perspectives are being amplified and whose are being silenced. Our traditional history curriculums in the US have not been representative of the truth."

"Public schools will never be able to actually teach what is needed to know. Our history classes are crap. Down south they talk about how slaves were happy...we wh*te wash everything to make it all more palatable... If we really taught US history, it would already include black history, native history, Hispanic history But those are not included until college and even THEN, its an elective. our system will not allow anything that doesnt make the founding fathers saints.
We teach this land was "discovered" when natives were here for millennia and pretend like it was a noble thing to steal and massacre them.
Our school system produces idiots.. By design.
Ignorance leads to fear.. And a dumb down scared population is easier to control."

"I’m going to be a history teacher. And you better believe I’m telling the truth.
Americas racist past."

"Except American history is whitewashed AF and is sugarcoated BS. I realized this when I was in 8th grade and called my teacher out on it. I was right ....
“History is always written by the winners. ""

"Education matters! Education, especially history, needs to cover all of our history, the good and the bad. We can't learn from our mistakes if there are people who keep trying to wipe parts of history under the rug as if it didn't exist."

[vitoNova]

Intersectionality and transnationalism is the only proper way to teach/understand history, regardless of region or country of the world.

It's also quite easy to identify bias, but only if the student is motivated in doing so. 

[erſatz-york]

We teach this land was "discovered" when natives were here for millennia and pretend like it was a noble thing to steal and massacre them.

Comanche (n.)
Native-American people from the southwestern Great Plains, 1819, from Spanish, from a word in a Shoshonean language, such as Ute kimánci "enemy, foreigner."

^An inſtructive example.

[Samof94]

Intersectionality and transnationalism is the only proper way to teach/understand history, regardless of region or country of the world.

It's also quite easy to identify bias, but only if the student is motivated in doing so. 

Exactly. I’m sure Bolivia is far worse than the USA at this as they still claim part of Chile as part of their own.

[Senator-elect Spark]

As an aspiring teacher, I believe it's important to teach history through the lives who experienced it. Not everyone experiences history the same way and perspectives can often be different. Often, the "victors" write history and others are left out of the story. However, I do believe we should be teaching the "basics" and include figures who would not necessarily be included. These figures must be representative of the class in which the material is being taught.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I fear we are leaping from one extreme to the other here and that is just as bad.

You don't replace the Lost Cause with the 1619 project and think you are doing a service to an accurate and instructive portrayal of events.

Slavery needs to be taught from start to finish. Motivations and interest groups emphasized as the basis for policies as opposed to focusing on the policies themselves (This is how we get fertile ground for nonsense like the Party Flip Myth), or accepting the proponents as principled advocates and not expedients of select interests that they are in fact.

I am deeply disturbed by the level of myth that still resides in our curriculum and it is a daunting prospect as someone who has contemplated an education profession in history to have to worry about constantly fighting a two front war against the conspiracy theorists and nonsense like the Lost Cause on the one side, and the revisionists on the left be it 1619 or reductionism to everything being about class. The ironic think was one of the most effective destroyers of party flip myth and the "Hamilton and Federalists as good clean Liberals" was Mechaman who approached it from a left/class based perspective and he was brutally effective in portraying the Federalists as a Party of planters, speculators, merchants, societal elites and nativist impulses by dominant English population against at that point largely immigrants from the Celtic Rim and Ireland. Class is an important consideration, but it is one of many.

Of course there is the need to intertwine other disciplines, a value I learned in 5th grade when I cringed at set of class projects on a book we read set in the 1760s and they colored an "army uniform" in modern camouflage.

It is also necessary to include an understanding of economics and this topic came up on a Youtube video a couple weeks back I think the one where Tom Richey reacts to the Praeger U video on the Civil War being caused by slavery. In all the emphasis on the North being industrial while the South was agricultural, it gets lost that the North outproduced the South on agricultural food products. There are two reasons behind this, as a lower percentage of a high enough population can exceed a high percentage of a lower population. (40% of 25 Millions is 10 Mil, while 80% of 9 Million is 7.25 Million). The other reason of course is that a lot of the South's agriculture was tied up by cash crops and their is a video by "Have History Will Travel" that makes an interesting point about how tobacco farmers in NC and other places may well have cost the South the war. Probably exaggerated in its impact, but it helps the make the point that you cannot eat tobacco or cotton.

There is also of course the fact that constructions like the Erie Canal and later East-West Railroads from NYC to Chicago ended up diverting commerce of the Lower Midwest towards New York and opened up settlement as viable in the Upper Midwest. This demographic and economic shift is vital to the Civil War and it makes both the political map that Lincoln won possible and provided the important resources with which to win the war. This is never taught or explained in context as the Erie Canal is taught chapters ahead of the Civil War with no over connections made.

That doesn't get into religion, cultural considerations etc. History is a product of all of these forces acting on a particular point in time.

[StateBoiler]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

[dead0man]

I'm still trying to figure out who is getting these one sided, "US is never wrong, slavery wasn't so bad for blacks and the Natives had it coming" history lessons.  I learned US history a LONG time ago and we certainly were not indoctrinated in this way.  None of my kids were taught that way (and one of them went to school in suburban (partly rural even) Atlanta).

The biggest issues I had with history education in public school was that it covered the same stuff over and over and the world history we got was minimal.  Ancient Greece "discovered" democracy, then there was the Roman empire (look at that map!).  Oh, and Egypt was a thing!  Then <scary voice> the dark ages happened</voice>.  Then we discovered the new world.  Here are the same 5 explorers we're going to ask you about on the test every year.  Magellan went around the world!  Then US history starts and world history stops happening (unless the US is involved).  Rev War, "remember the Alamo!", Civil War, (maybe a little reconstruction), remember the Maine!, maybe a little WWI, WWII and that was the end of history (if we even got to WWII).

[Lechasseur]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

That's one thing that's good about the teaching of History in France. The cirriculum in senior year of highschool is the period 1945-"present" (when I was a senior in 2011-2012, our history program ended either in 2001 with 9/11 or 2007 with Nicolas Sarkozy's election, I don't remember exactly. We got to learn about both French and World History of the second half of the 20th century. The presidents, their policies and elections, the May 1958 crisis, the 30 Glorious (years) for France, and then the Cold War and European construction for the World (even our US History was actually pretty decent; and the irony is our US History education in highschool to the contrary only started say with the 1890s or so, as that's when the US became a major economic power and started imposing itself on the world stage, before that it was essentially a backwater. But starting with the Spanish-American War at the latest we covered all the major things in US History).

[StateBoiler]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

That's one thing that's good about the teaching of History in France. The cirriculum in senior year of highschool is the period 1945-"present" (when I was a senior in 2011-2012, our history program ended either in 2001 with 9/11 or 2007 with Nicolas Sarkozy's election, I don't remember exactly. We got to learn about both French and World History of the second half of the 20th century. The presidents, their policies and elections, the May 1958 crisis, the 30 Glorious (years) for France, and then the Cold War and European construction for the World (even our US History was actually pretty decent; and the irony is our US History education in highschool to the contrary only started say with the 1890s or so, as that's when the US became a major economic power and started imposing itself on the world stage, before that it was essentially a backwater. But starting with the Spanish-American War at the latest we covered all the major things in US History).

To dead0man, I had a separate world history class from U.S. history class in high school.

To Lechessauer, there's one reason that's tied to a real reason and one that's schedule-based.

1.) By the time teachers get to World War II, the semester is over. That's curriculum-driven. In the history we always did from lower grade social studies up to high school U.S. history, you talk about the Indians that were here before, you talk about the first European explorers (Verrazano, Jamestown, establishment of colonies, French and Indian War), the Revolution, the Articles of Confederation era a little on the War of 1812, antebellum era, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, World War I, the Depression, and World War II. And then you're staring at Christmas or the summer.

2.) The 2nd reason that was stated by my history professor in college for the "why don't we discuss post-1945 that much?" is history is not settled yet. Which is valid to a point, but by the time I was a college student, Vietnam for example was pretty much settled. In 2021, I think students could learn up until the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. I can get the argument of 9/11 as an example not being considered settled in the modern world.

For reason #1, you'd have to cut something out. My U.S. History class in high school spent maybe 20 minutes on the Civil War (it was heavily covered when I was in 8th grade in contrast which was North Carolina history) and that was based on curriculum, it seems to be what got cut to allow for some post-World War II discussion.

[Lechasseur]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

That's one thing that's good about the teaching of History in France. The cirriculum in senior year of highschool is the period 1945-"present" (when I was a senior in 2011-2012, our history program ended either in 2001 with 9/11 or 2007 with Nicolas Sarkozy's election, I don't remember exactly. We got to learn about both French and World History of the second half of the 20th century. The presidents, their policies and elections, the May 1958 crisis, the 30 Glorious (years) for France, and then the Cold War and European construction for the World (even our US History was actually pretty decent; and the irony is our US History education in highschool to the contrary only started say with the 1890s or so, as that's when the US became a major economic power and started imposing itself on the world stage, before that it was essentially a backwater. But starting with the Spanish-American War at the latest we covered all the major things in US History).

To dead0man, I had a separate world history class from U.S. history class in high school.

To Lechessauer, there's one reason that's tied to a real reason and one that's schedule-based.

1.) By the time teachers get to World War II, the semester is over. That's curriculum-driven. In the history we always did from lower grade social studies up to high school U.S. history, you talk about the Indians that were here before, you talk about the first European explorers (Verrazano, Jamestown, establishment of colonies, French and Indian War), the Revolution, a little on the War of 1812, antebellum era, the Civil War of course, the Gilded Age, World War I, the Depression, and World War II. And then you're staring at Christmas or the summer.

2.) The 2nd reason that was stated by my history professor in college for the "why don't we discuss post-1945 that much?" is history is not settled yet. Which is valid to a point, but by the time I was a college student, Vietnam for example was pretty much settled.

For reason #1, you'd have to cut something out. My U.S. History class in high school spent maybe 20 minutes on the Civil War (it was heavily covered when I was in 8th grade in contrast which was North Carolina history) and that was based on curriculum, it seems to be what got cut to allow for some post-World War II discussion.

And I think that's the point. In France, history becomes a major subject by 3rd-4th grade at the latest, so all the "old" stuff is known by everyone, so the last year that covers anything that happened before 1848 (fall of the last French king Louis-Philippe) is sophomore year of highschool. Thus the last two years of high school can be dedicated to modern history (1848-1945 in junior year and 1945-2000s in senior year).

Also, in highschool we essentially skipped the world wars as those were more than covered in 9th grade, and everyone knows about them anyway.

In the US history education probably starts too late. The 'old periods" are covered in detail from 6th-8th grades and then sophomore year is a summary of them.

[StateBoiler]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

That's one thing that's good about the teaching of History in France. The cirriculum in senior year of highschool is the period 1945-"present" (when I was a senior in 2011-2012, our history program ended either in 2001 with 9/11 or 2007 with Nicolas Sarkozy's election, I don't remember exactly. We got to learn about both French and World History of the second half of the 20th century. The presidents, their policies and elections, the May 1958 crisis, the 30 Glorious (years) for France, and then the Cold War and European construction for the World (even our US History was actually pretty decent; and the irony is our US History education in highschool to the contrary only started say with the 1890s or so, as that's when the US became a major economic power and started imposing itself on the world stage, before that it was essentially a backwater. But starting with the Spanish-American War at the latest we covered all the major things in US History).

To dead0man, I had a separate world history class from U.S. history class in high school.

To Lechessauer, there's one reason that's tied to a real reason and one that's schedule-based.

1.) By the time teachers get to World War II, the semester is over. That's curriculum-driven. In the history we always did from lower grade social studies up to high school U.S. history, you talk about the Indians that were here before, you talk about the first European explorers (Verrazano, Jamestown, establishment of colonies, French and Indian War), the Revolution, a little on the War of 1812, antebellum era, the Civil War of course, the Gilded Age, World War I, the Depression, and World War II. And then you're staring at Christmas or the summer.

2.) The 2nd reason that was stated by my history professor in college for the "why don't we discuss post-1945 that much?" is history is not settled yet. Which is valid to a point, but by the time I was a college student, Vietnam for example was pretty much settled.

For reason #1, you'd have to cut something out. My U.S. History class in high school spent maybe 20 minutes on the Civil War (it was heavily covered when I was in 8th grade in contrast which was North Carolina history) and that was based on curriculum, it seems to be what got cut to allow for some post-World War II discussion.

And I think that's the point. In France, history becomes a major subject by 3rd-4th grade at the latest, so all the "old" stuff is known by everyone, so the last year that covers anything that happened before 1848 (fall of the last French king Louis-Philippe) is sophomore year of highschool. Thus the last two years of high school can be dedicated to modern history (1848-1945 in junior year and 1945-2000s in senior year).

Also, in highschool we essentially skipped the world wars as those were more than covered in 9th grade, and everyone knows about them anyway.

In the US history education probably starts too late. The 'old periods" are covered in detail from 6th-8th grades and then sophomore year is a summary of them.

I started learning about history probably in 2nd grade/7 years old. It's a standard part of just about every social studies program (social studies is in an education context history, government, geography, the world, roughly you take it from 2nd grade to 8th grade). It's just what do you really learn of history beyond 25000 foot stuff at 8 years old? I was helping my wife's cousin with his homework some months ago. He was 11 and learning about Alexander the Great.

My required classes in high school where you go into a more regimented learning program was civics as a freshman (some school systems have this a senior class), then you picked either world history or world geography (I took both), then you took U.S. history. These were all single semester classes. If I was made dictator I'd probably make U.S. history a year-long class that would go up until the 1990s at the present point in time, and change world history and world geography to "European History" and "Rest of World History", each a semester.

[Lechasseur]

How should the US history be teached in shcools and college ?

I read this on Facebook.

Your first problem.

My largest criticism of my history education was the world stopped in 1945. I took a 20th century history class in college as an elective for exactly this reason. I was there at least able to get into the 1970s (took the class 2003ish). There's no reason a high school student now shouldn't be able to get to the end of the Cold War.

We should however teach history as it is. People should not be held up as immortals but they also shouldn't be held up as they made one mistake so they're evil. The moral standards of today are going to be very outdated in 50 years even if you think you are being full of virtue now.

You should also report on people of consequence that affected the most lives. "Person on the ground" perspectives are fine but are mostly incredibly overrated. For example I just listened to a podcast on the 1872 election, and in it it includes an anecdote of Susan B. Anthony trying to go vote. Nice story about suffragists, but had absolutely zero to deal with what happened in the 1872 election where women's suffrage was not a consideration at all.

That's one thing that's good about the teaching of History in France. The cirriculum in senior year of highschool is the period 1945-"present" (when I was a senior in 2011-2012, our history program ended either in 2001 with 9/11 or 2007 with Nicolas Sarkozy's election, I don't remember exactly. We got to learn about both French and World History of the second half of the 20th century. The presidents, their policies and elections, the May 1958 crisis, the 30 Glorious (years) for France, and then the Cold War and European construction for the World (even our US History was actually pretty decent; and the irony is our US History education in highschool to the contrary only started say with the 1890s or so, as that's when the US became a major economic power and started imposing itself on the world stage, before that it was essentially a backwater. But starting with the Spanish-American War at the latest we covered all the major things in US History).

To dead0man, I had a separate world history class from U.S. history class in high school.

To Lechessauer, there's one reason that's tied to a real reason and one that's schedule-based.

1.) By the time teachers get to World War II, the semester is over. That's curriculum-driven. In the history we always did from lower grade social studies up to high school U.S. history, you talk about the Indians that were here before, you talk about the first European explorers (Verrazano, Jamestown, establishment of colonies, French and Indian War), the Revolution, a little on the War of 1812, antebellum era, the Civil War of course, the Gilded Age, World War I, the Depression, and World War II. And then you're staring at Christmas or the summer.

2.) The 2nd reason that was stated by my history professor in college for the "why don't we discuss post-1945 that much?" is history is not settled yet. Which is valid to a point, but by the time I was a college student, Vietnam for example was pretty much settled.

For reason #1, you'd have to cut something out. My U.S. History class in high school spent maybe 20 minutes on the Civil War (it was heavily covered when I was in 8th grade in contrast which was North Carolina history) and that was based on curriculum, it seems to be what got cut to allow for some post-World War II discussion.

And I think that's the point. In France, history becomes a major subject by 3rd-4th grade at the latest, so all the "old" stuff is known by everyone, so the last year that covers anything that happened before 1848 (fall of the last French king Louis-Philippe) is sophomore year of highschool. Thus the last two years of high school can be dedicated to modern history (1848-1945 in junior year and 1945-2000s in senior year).

Also, in highschool we essentially skipped the world wars as those were more than covered in 9th grade, and everyone knows about them anyway.

In the US history education probably starts too late. The 'old periods" are covered in detail from 6th-8th grades and then sophomore year is a summary of them.

I started learning about history probably in 2nd grade/7 years old. It's a standard part of just about every social studies program (social studies is in an education context history, government, geography, the world, roughly you take it from 2nd grade to 8th grade). It's just what do you really learn of history beyond 25000 foot stuff at 8 years old? I was helping my wife's cousin with his homework some months ago. He was 11 and learning about Alexander the Great.

My required classes in high school where you go into a more regimented learning program was civics as a freshman (some school systems have this a senior class), then you picked either world history or world geography (I took both), then you took U.S. history. These were all single semester classes. If I was made dictator I'd probably make U.S. history a year-long class that would go up until the 1990s at the present point in time, and change world history and world geography to "European History" and "Rest of World History", each a semester.

Ah we probably found the key difference here

In France semesters don't exist before college, all your courses are year long