Standing Up For History Education

If you had asked me in high school what I wanted to do with my life, the last thing I would have predicted would have been a history teacher. I probably would have said an accountant, since it was one of the few classes in which I thrived. This meant that I ended up with a final grade of B.

I had very little interest in history in high school. I can tell you next to nothing about what I learned in my history classes or the teachers who taught me. That wasn’t necessarily their fault. Let’s just say that overall I was not the most curious or motivated student.

Somehow my life came to revolve around a deep interest in understanding American history and a career teaching it to high school students. I love everything about it. I enjoy teaching the most engaged and intellectually driven students as much as I enjoy those that have zero interest, perhaps because the latter remind me of myself in high school.

An interest in philosophy profoundly shaped my understanding of the classroom and my obligations to my students. More than anything else I want my students to learn to think critically about the world around them, to embrace a healthy skepticism, to listen intently to others, and to draw their own conclusions. The study of history has always seemed to me to be tailor-made for just such an agenda.

Teaching has brought joy to my life as well as a sense of purpose.

I share this to underscore just why I am so concerned about the pending bills and laws passed in states across the country attempting to legislate how history is taught. It is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate voters by instilling mistrust in our educators and dividing Americans even further, simply to score political points.

A quick perusal of the legislation passed already suggests that they have very little, if anything, to do with history education. They are not reinforcing the importance of critical thinking and interpretation. Quite the opposite. Consider the recently passed Florida law:

The history of the United States, including the period of discovery, early colonies, the War of Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to include its present boundaries, the word wars, and the civil rights movement to the present. American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable, and shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence. (my emphasis)

This statement has absolutely nothing to do with history education. It views students as passive observers who need to be spoon fed statements that are believed to be “factual” and requires them to regurgitate it on a test. The statement that “American history…shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence” is nothing more than an order from above. It isn’t true or false as a claim about history. It’s meaningless.

I feel just as strongly about those individuals and organizations that are fighting these laws, who appear to be content substituting one myth for another, namely that American history can be reduced to or that the “creation” of the United States can be understood solely based on “systemic racism.” Such a claim is just as misleading and dangerous as the Florida law.

Both approaches are blatantly reductionist and treat students merely as political pawns. Both fail to appreciate the importance of the concept of ‘change over time’ and both undercut the very critical thinking and discussion skills that many of us hope to instill in our students. They undercut the idea that history is complex.

Ultimately, what this body of legislation hopes to undermine is the idea that history is “constructed” or interpreted. What we need to acknowledge, however, is that the past is continuously being reconstructed based on new evidence and the questions we pose that guide us in our inquiry. We shouldn’t do anything to get in the way of that.

This is the very foundation of my approach to teaching history and it is this that is currently under assault.