Turned off by the “history of victimization” taught in high school, “even our brightest college students” don’t know much about history and don’t understand why the U.S. is special or why freedom and the rule of law are important, Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas told history teachers at the 2008 American Historical Association conference. Thomas, author of several history books, is the grandson of Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas.
I don’t see kids who are interested in history. I also do not see kids who know anything about history. It is amazing, the gaps in their knowledge. It is not just me. It is standard issue commentary among faculty at these colleges.
Via I Speak of Dreams and Kitchen Table Math.
It wasn’t until I began homeschooling my kids that I began to love history. I’d always liked it, mostly due to the large volume of historical fiction I read as a kid. All I remember from high school history is a boring American history class and the main point I seem to have taken from that was “native good, white man bad.” Since this was in the ’70s, I imagine it’s only gotten worse from there.
My kids were wide-eyed when I told them I had never heard of Henry the Navigator before reading about him to them. The only thing I knew about Henry Hudson was that there is a big bay named after him, and that was only because I visited that area as a kid. My knowledge of the Renaissance in England came mostly from attending a Ren Faire every summer… I am sure I have quite a lot to learn about the Civil War and those to follow.
Thanks for this.
I see it every day in my classrooms.
Well, let’s face it – another problem is that history classes in high school are often an afterthought to be taught by a coach. The coach gets in front of the class, exhorts his class to just shut up, read the history book, do well on the true/false, matching, and multiple guess laden tests, suffer through that for nine months, then go away and have a nice life.