Most often, teachers have taught the students in their history classrooms about names, dates, people, and places, without
encouraging those students to weave all those pieces into a coherent whole. This might be helpful on standardized tests, which
use a (primarily) multiple-choice and true/false format, but it is not of much use when those students are asked to come up with
creative ideas to apply those facts (e.g., putting on a reenactment play, making short films, etc.) It does not bring the history alive
for the students.
Worse still, many instructors unconsciously fall into the habit of showing their classes history-themed films, but not giving the
students any critical thinking exercises. This encourages two things: 1) the instructors to use ready-made teaching materials
without taking the needs of their particular classes into account; and 2) the students to think that watching movies somehow gets
them “off the hook” when it comes to learning. It is, of course, unwise to place a learning tool into the curriculum without
intending for it to enhance the students’ learning experience in any way.
Because of these practices, students have long seen history in schools as quite a dry, disconnected topic, consisting of strings of
items that need to be memorized and “spat back out” onto quizzes and tests, all for the purpose of earning a good letter grade in
the class, and eventually, for earning scholarship money for performing well on a national standardized test.
Many students would probably say that they would rather sleep or go home than be forced to listen to a rather cold, lifeless set
of abstract bullet points. In their minds, the students are wondering, “How does this material pertain to me? How is it relevant to
today’s world?” And that is precisely the set of concerns that instructors have been running up against. Things do not need to be
that way. What are sorely needed in many academic history curricula across this nation are sets of in-class and out-of-class
exercises that help the students to link information about the past to their own lives in the present.
In fact, educators during the Progressive Era began to realize this, and made their concerns known. Toward the end of her
teachers’ guide, Outline of U.S. History, Clair Byers Wilson notes: [1]
John M. Gillette, at the University of North Dakota, made a similar point in the January 1914 issue of the Journal of American
Sociology: “…for most part they (the history textbooks) have emphasized four things: the past, commanding persons, community
life on a vast scale, and the disconnected event.”[2]
Like many others of their day, Gillette and Wilson also wanted to focus on more than just these things. Thus, the methods
through which students learn their information, and the way in which they perceive that information, are closely linked.
Sources
[1] Clair Byers Wilson, Outline of U.S. History (Clearfield, Pennsylvania: Kurtz Bros., 1918,) 132.
[2] John M. Gillette, “An Outline of Social Study for Elementary Schools” (American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 19, No. 4, January 1914), 493. Accessed via JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2762961
Back to Main Page for History 502: Digital Media and Technology in History
Introduction: Overview of the Teaching of History
Students’ History Textbooks in Progressive-Era America
Instructors’ Guides for U.S. History in the Early 20th Century
What Can We Do to Make History More Exciting for Our Children and Teenagers?