Here is David Blight, Beth English, and Jim Grossman at The New Republic: Under the grossly misleading title “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” the White House last week issued an executive order that would undermine the integrity of writing […]
teaching history
“Evangelicals believe…”
I am teaching my history course on the “Age of Hamilton” this semester. In between the first and second class periods I asked the students to watch Lin Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton. On the second day of class we […]
Interview: Michael Soffer on Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil
“I was teaching Holocaust Studies in a classroom that a former Nazi camp guard used to clean, and in a building that had rallied to his defense.”
Florida replaces sociology with a “factual” U.S. history survey course
Here is Praveena Somasundaram and Hannah Natanson at The Washington Post: Florida will no longer allow a sociology course to count toward students’ graduation requirements at state universities, replacing it with a class that officials say will teach “factual history” in a […]
Historian Drew Gilpin Faust: “Education asks you to change”
I am trying to get former Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust on The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast, but I think her publicist is ghosting me! 🙂 I am hoping that Faust might be willing to consider smaller […]
The American Historical Association responds to the Florida African American history standards
Here is AHA Executive Director Jim Grossman: The Florida Board of Education approved new standards of instruction in African American history on July 19, 2023. A firestorm of protest erupted immediately from a range of public figures (including the vice president of […]
Do you want to make the past more interesting for your students? Focus on contingency.
In my book Why Study History (revised second edition coming in March 2024!) I introduce students and other readers to Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke’s five Cs of historical thinking. They are change over time, context, causality, complexity, and contingency. […]
“Offensive” professors
Last academic year a student told me that they were offended by an image I showed in a Reconstruction Era lecture. I had another student complain because I said that systemic racism was built into colonial Virginia society after 1680 […]
A Florida professor responds to the history wars in his state
On April 22, 2022, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill (HB) 7. The “Individual Freedom” bill: Provides that subjecting individuals to specified concepts under certain circumstances constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin; revising requirements for […]
8th grade U.S. history scores continue to decline
Here is Sarah Mervosh at The New York Times: National test scores released on Wednesday showed a marked drop in students’ knowledge of U.S. history and a modest decline in civics, a sign of the pandemic’s alarming reach, damaging student […]
How to teach the history wars
I think it’s fair to say we are in the midst of another round of history wars. Today’s so-called “activist historians” invoke a usable past to preach political and social agendas, while more traditional historians (of all political persuasions–from Trotskyite […]
Messiah University is looking for someone to teach an intro course on the Civil War and Reconstruction in Fall ’23
If you are interested, let me know. It will be a night class (6:15-9:15) that will meet once a week. We are looking for someone: The course is geared toward non-history majors, but it is likely that a handful of […]
A historian takes a close look at Advanced Placement African American Studies
Many of you are following the debate in Florida over the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies courses. If you are not familiar with this controversy, get up to speed here and here. Over at Politico, historian Jonatan Zeitz […]
The integrity of history education in colleges and universities is under threat
Jim Grossman, the executive director of the American Historian Association, and Jeremy C. Young, the senior manager for free expression and education at PEN America, weigh-in on attempts by state legislatures to influence what happens in K-12 history classrooms. Here […]
Are you listening to the Secondary Sources podcast?
Over the years the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) has worked hard to cultivate relationships with secondary school history teachers. I have been honored over the years to be part of these initiatives and am thrilled to see this […]
Slavery was the cause of the American Civil War
Most historians agree with the title of this post. So do many Americans. But there are others who still claim that the Civil War was about something other than slavery. Watch: Yesterday I showed this video to my Civil War […]
White supremacy in American history textbooks
Over at Esquire, Abigail Covington interviews Harvard historian Donald Yacovone on his recent book, Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity. Here is taste: ESQUIRE: You make it very clear from the start that […]
Misha Matsumoto Yee is the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History National History Teacher of the Year!
Congratulations! Here is the press release: NEW YORK, NY (September 27, 2022) –The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History announced today that Misha Matsumoto Yee, a history teacher at St. Andrew’s Schools in Honolulu, Hawaii, has been named the 2022 National History Teacher of […]
Eric Foner: “We can’t accept the principle that the way to judge a course of study is by how much money you will make.”
Eric Foner reflects on his life as a historian in this interview with Nawal Arjini at New York Review of Books. A taste: Nawal Arjini: How did you come to specialize in Civil War history? Eric Foner: When I was in college in […]
The president of the American Historical Association on presentism
James H. Sweet is correct. Historians these days seem more interested in interpreting the past through the lens of the present. Here is a taste of his piece at Perspectives: Twenty years ago, in these pages, Lynn Hunt argued “against […]