Some writers connected to the Peace Movement, many of whom were Quakers, expressed conflicting views on history's value to society and its ability to prevent unnecessary wars. These writers, mostly opponents to the United States' War with Mexico, argued that history education sometimes contributed to war by romanticizing militaristic government…

Key studies in history education (from France and the USA) are discussed and compared in order to explore their methodological issues in terms of the types of knowledge they can generate about teaching and learning. An epistemological framework that relates the history of historians as an inquiry to that of the classroom provides the criteria for…

Tuning's progress in the discipline of history in the United States since 2009 illustrates the project's continuing capacity to develop "educational structures and programmes on the basis of diversity and autonomy", maintaining the initiative's original European Union commitment in a markedly different academic environment across the…

Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" is the nation's best-known work of American history. It is also the nation's best-selling survey of American history, having sold two million copies since its publication in 1980 and still selling about 125,000 paperback copies yearly. The fifth and current edition covers America up…

The American Historical Association (AHA) and the National Council for History Education (NCHE) have recently advocated for raising the visibility of historians--and the significance of history coursework and subject matter preparation--in pre-service history teacher education. In 2006, NCHE adopted a position statement on history teacher…

In April 2011, Congress slashed funding for a majority of programs tied to education. Several programs related to professional development for teachers did not survive. While cut severely--from $119 million in Fiscal Year 2010 to $46 million (a loss of $73 million or 61% of its funding)--Teaching American History (TAH) grants lived, albeit by…

Professor Howard Zinn was arguably America's best-known historian, despite the dismissive if not caustic response his book, "A People's History of the United States," elicited from historians. In Zinn's narrative the protagonists of history are "blacks, Indians, women, and working people of all kinds ... ordinary people trying to…

When it aired in 1989, Ken Burns's epic documentary about America's Civil War garnered the largest audience in PBS history. Viewers who had little interest or knowledge of the Civil War were attracted to the powerful images and sounds as well as the narration by David McCullough and commentary by Shelby Foote--the combination of which served to…

Historians work in a discipline with few inherent concepts and are obliged to draw upon many fields in recreating the past. Yet authors of most school history texts, state and national standards and curriculum materials seldom incorporate economic analysis in their work. Just look at state standards that include Adam Smith and John Locke but draw…

The book is entitled History Wars in the Classroom: Global Perspectives and examines how ten separate countries have experienced debates and disputes over the contested nature of the subject, for example the "Black Armband" and "Whitewash" factions in Australia who adopt opposingly celebratory or denigratory views of Australian…

In this article, the author describes a syllabus which he designed in his United States history survey courses to help his students learn to think like historians. It contains important information about the way historians work and think, along with descriptions of the reading materials the student will use to further their practice of history.…

A British historian of the American South examines the forces of contingency and the stimulus of teaching that led him to become a historian of the United States and, in particular, the American South. Belonging to a generation of British historians who aimed to make their work indistinguishable from their American counterparts, he has been forced…

Economists and historians have struggled for almost 80 years to account for the American Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted until the early years of World War II. In this article, the authors discuss three major schools of thought on the causes of the Great Depression and the long failure of the American economy to return to full…

This article is largely the author's reflections on one particular aspect of history and social studies education, reflections that are very much those of an outsider. Nationally, she is not an American, but a Canadian, and professionally has been, until recently, a historian rather than a history educator. And the differences, are profound. This…

The author achieved something that he had been striving to do for several semesters when, in 2002, he revised his survey course on the history of the United States up to Reconstruction by replacing most of the photocopied readings he had assigned in the past with online texts. Readings on the web now provided the basis for 10 of the 12 weekly…