Repeating History
My son is in 11th grade history this year, his last required year. It’s – surprise! – US history. Again. This makes me cranky.
I am not a history buff. I am, however, a believer in a solid education, and I think our educational system should be turning out more students who are fired up about history.
I remember my history education as a blur of repetitive American history. Coumbus blah blah American Revolution blah Lewis and Clark blah blah Civil War blah blah Industrial Revolution blah World Wars then, well, the school year was over. (They didn’t want to tackle the tricky Vietnam and Cold War.) All the schools ever seemed to teach was the same tired stuff, year after year, and what they required from us students was rote memorization of dates, battles, places, and presidents. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”
I had only one class that stood out, a contemporary world problems seminar, where we read newspapers, debated current events and talked about issues as they unfolded through the eyes of the everyday citizen. It was the only class that engaged us on every level.
It’s no wonder that our American system turns out so few history geeks. We teach it as a dead field of study, we teach only dead facts and figures, and we skew it so heavily toward our own history that it distorts our young people’s view of the world around us.
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture. It often entails the belief that one’s own race or ethnic group is the most important and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups.
I did a survey of Washington state’s educational standards, and here’s an oversimplified summary of the 12-year history curriculum:
1st grade – none
2nd grade – none
3rd grade – US history
4th grade – state and US history
5th grade – US history
6th grade – world history
7th grade – state and US history
8th grade – US history
9th grade – US history
10th grade – modern world history
11th grade – US history
12th grade – Contemporary world problems or other social science (elective)
That’s 7 years of US history, 2 years of world history, and one social science elective. Pardon me, but is the last 500 years of one country’s history on one continent proportionally – 7:2 – so critical? Are we Americans really so special that we need to review the American Revolution and Lewis and Clark seven times in seven years, cover multiple milennia of Chinese history once for three weeks in sixth grade, and never touch on modern Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian history at all?
History could be so much more compelling to students if we taught about the people behind the dates, places & battles, their stories, hopes & dreams. We need to cover the ideas and philosophies that were flashpoints for historical change, and why, in the context of their times and culture, they drove people to such passionate measures. We need to not be so afraid of religion, in the historical and comparative context, in schools, religion was and continues to be a significant impetus for conflict and political change.
I’ve often been told that the reason we study history is so that we will learn from our mistakes.
Is quisnam does non perceptum ex history est fatum ut revolvo is.
He who does not learn from history is destined to repeat it.
September 4th, 2008
Yep, that was how it was where I went to grade school too. By the time I got out of standard high school, I’d tuned it out so far that I don’t really remember much U.S. history at all.
One notable exception: 11th grade history, as taught by someone who was truly passionate about it. There were many class periods where he was jumping up and down and yelling at us about all the things past people had done wrong. It was awesome.
After that I went to college and minored in history, starting with “U.S. history since WWII” so I could get some clue about the part that every single grade school year missed. From there, I went for Asian and African history instead of U.S./western European. There’s a lot of cool stuff that happened elsewhere in the world.
September 4th, 2008
Oh, I meant to say – I knew someone who grew up in Connecticut, and he said that in every single grade school year, they never got past the Revolutionary War. By comparison, I’d say I and your son had/has it good.
September 4th, 2008
At least you are studying the history of the country you live in…our school system is also full of AMERICAN history. And while i can understand the importance of it..after all, we are 5 minutes from the US border, as well as the influx of British History that our children get, It was not until Grade 7 that Iain did any sort of real work on Canadian history, and it was a small section at that.
Thanks goodness that my children live in a house where history is as important as breathing. I am pretty sure that my 7 yr old is the only one in her class that has any idea of why this area is not American. (it helps to live near a few monumental forts and have your very own piece of History..aka Papa..living in your home)
There are so many problems with the educational system..across the board…it is one of those things that knows no boundries. (sorry, this is a sore spot in our house)
September 4th, 2008
History is one of the few subjects that is best taught with great storytelling. By the time most students really need to learn history, storytelling as a learning tool has been relegated to the five sucktastic classics you’ll read as part of English Lit.
I was fortunate enough to have a truly extraordinary high school history teacher who nurtured my spark of interest by piling great history books on my plate for extra credit. I’d love to see more stories and less facts & figures in history curricula, especially at the high school level, but somehow I doubt that fits in the No Child Left Untested mindset we’re stuck with.
September 4th, 2008
The ratio is out of whack. I don’t think you can understand the true uniqueness of the United States without an understanding of where we came from and other cultures. I like history, but I feel woefully ignorant of much before the 17th century generally.
September 4th, 2008
It’s nice to see things haven’t changed much in public education in the last 20 years.
I was a history nerd throught grade school, so majoring in it became the obvious choice in college. The amount of classes offered at that time was staggering to me. I had to idea what to major in – Asian, African, European or US History. So I chose Military History. And spent my college years studying US History again
September 4th, 2008
MWT – I can’t believe they never got past the revolutionary war. Gak! I didn’t take any social science in college beyond the general reqs – I think I took political science, anthropology, macroeconomics and some sort of history class. Obviously, that latter was memorable.
My son’s school does have a fabulous history teacher, who taught world history last year. He has senior electives on Cold War and Vietnam Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, or Latin American History, as well as teach the AP history class – so there’s hope!
September 4th, 2008
Kim, I cannot believe that they teach primarily American history in Canada. That sucks! That’d be like teaching British history in the US.
My hub is actually into history, more than he gives himself credit for. He reads a lot of British and American history works, both general subject matter and biographies. We’re both David McCullough groupies.
September 4th, 2008
Lance, I got to read Dune in American Lit so I lucked out. I also had to read some awful stuff – but Dune was a great choice. I agree on story as a medium for relating to history. I’ve tended to avoid alternate history novels because of my history-aversion, also because I don’t care so much for faux-historical dialogue and language, but I’m reconsidering that lately. Asking what-if about history can be pretty fascinating – it just needs to be more accessible to the average reader.
Chris, hopefully your college years were more productive than your secondary school history classes. There are some fascinating periods to study. Unfortunately, I mostly remember Lewis, Clark & Sacagawea. Bleah.
September 4th, 2008
I can’t get into alternate history stories. My mind spends the whole time going “but that’s not what happened, and that didn’t happen, and so that wouldn’t've happened!” I guess I prefer my history to be factual.
September 4th, 2008
I hate history through school. I’m horrible with numbers, so I found it to be a nightmare, since tests consisted of years things happened in.
So not only is history a boring subject in school, it completely misses the point.
I was ten during the Iranian revolution and the taking of the American hostages.
However it was only a few years ago that I learned about Kermit Roosevelt and the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government.
And then just a few years later the American government was working to overthrow governments south of the border.
Then again, learning history is depressing when one sees the same mistakes made over and over again.
September 4th, 2008
Today, in my Canadian Literature class, I was the only one who knew when our Confederation was.
HELLO?????
It is a first year course? These kids were all in high school last year, and you mean to tell me that not one of them knew when their country’s birthday is??????
Not only that, but only a handful could go back more than 3 Prime Ministers.
(Keep in mind that we have had 2 PM in the last three years…..)
The Canadian education system is clearly failing our children, when they do not know who the leader of their own country is…and yet almost all of them could tell you about the Presidential Race.
AARRGGHHH!
September 5th, 2008
Hmmm… your fellow classmates aren’t helping the case that Canada is supposed to be a separate country from us, and not just a really big northen US state.
September 6th, 2008
I’m not a huge fan of the way history is taught in public schools, but (to some degree), I understand the problem.
First through third graders aren’t really ready for complexities and paradoxes. It’s probably not the time to get into the whole We screwed over the native population and if that wasn’t enough, we imported Africans so we’d have someone else to lord it over thing. It’s understandable that these periods would need to be revisited.
You’ve also got the widely varying viewpoints of parents ranging from the We Suck crowd, to the We’re the greatest nation ever, in spite of anything we ever did wrong crowd. Teachers can’t win, whatever they choose to teach.
Teaching math is easy. X + Y is always going to equal Z. Not much debate there to be had. Science should be easy. Man originated somewhere in Africa and not only evolved into modern humans, but spread around the world by walking a little further every generation. (Note that I’ll skip over the fact that there’s any debate here, whatsoever because I can’t even fathom the folks who can’t even agree on the basics.)
History is a minefield. Witness all of the fireworks (no pun intended), over how the 50th anniversary of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to be portrayed.
History calls for thought and questioning and contemplation…all things that our school systems are not well-designed for.
September 6th, 2008
And the irony is, schools would better prepare their students for life if there were a more effort to teach kids HOW to think and question and apply logic than WHAT to think and facts to regurgitate and then forget. :/
September 6th, 2008
Anne – it’s my fault for entering my stuff in your PC – you’d think I’d know better about how annoyingly persistent such things are. Let me see if I can figure out how you can delete just a single cookie – IE, right?