What Are History Teachers Really Teaching Students
From Forbes.com
Critics of public schools have accused them of teaching students to hate America. Donald Trump charged that schools are teaching “hateful lies about this country.” But a new study from the American Historical Association suggests that such criticisms are overblown, even unwarranted.
Founded in 1884, is the oldest professional association of historians in the U.S. The study was coordinated by Nicholas Kryczka, a teaching fellow at the University of Chicago whose field includes the history of American schools and cities.
“American Lesson Plan” set out to get a picture of what is happening in high school history classes across the country. What did they find?
First and foremost, we've learned that secondary school US history teachers are professionals who are concerned mostly with helping their students learn central elements of our nation's history.
The researchers concluded that there is an “informal culture of history teaching grounded in common goals and a shared professional sensibility” and that the history typically taught in public high schools is “not riddled with distortions or omissions.”
The report also addresses the culture wars that have surrounded schools in the past few years.
Media accounts of a politically charged war for the soul of the social studies are overblown. The national teaching culture described above varies from state to state, district to district. But generally it is grounded in professional norms and shared commitments that bear little resemblance to caricatures of classroom indoctrination.
This is so not surprising. I briefly taught middle school social studies, the best three years of my career. Sadly, I can no more convince people that no teacher I have ever met is trying to indoctrinate children, than I can convince them that classrooms do not have litter boxes for children identifying as furries. Yes, people I know and thought were intelligent deeply believe the latter, and scoff when I tell them it’s an urban legend. They assure me that they know ow someone who knows someone who swears those litter boxes are in our public school classrooms. 🤯