Heggert and Flowers (2019) offer important insights into how social media provides students with important opportunities to engage in meaningful civic engagement and political activism. They argue that students are more politically active than some recent studies would have us believe because they are utilizing social media platforms, methods not…

In this article, the author appropriates from Clint Eastwood's film simply to organize a few remarks on his experience working with Gary Nash on the project to develop the U.S. national standards for history back in the mid 1990s. Sound bites are a powerful political tool, and it did not take them long to realize that the attacks on the standards…

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…

This essay presents Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential rhetoric as an iteration of an American synecdochal sublime. Eisenhower's rhetoric sought to re-aim civic sight beyond corporeal objects to the nation's transcendental essence. This rhetoric is intimately connected to prevailing political anxieties and exigencies, especially the problem of…

The author considers the treatment of women's rights as human rights in the social studies curriculum. She discusses the role of the United Nations in promoting women's rights since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. She also reviews the treatment of women's rights within social studies curriculum today through a…

"Civil defence pedagogies" normalise continuous emergency through educational channels such as school, community and adult education. Using critical whiteness studies, and critiques of white supremacy from critical race theory, as a conceptual base, the protection of whiteness, and particularly the white middle-class family, is considered to be…

In 1942, less than four months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent United States entry into World War II , nearly 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living along the west coast of the United States were ordered to evacuate their homes and sent to internment camps. The evacuees, separated from their extended families, former…

In December 1984 when the Soviet Union still was an "evil empire" and the United States "encroached on the achievements of Socialism," Ira Jay Winn wrote, "students who scream "Kill the Russkies" or who believe that the Soviets fought against us in World War II... are not simply ignorant of historical facts or…

Underscores the necessity of teaching United States history in a strongly international context, rather than perpetuating "historical provincialism." Advocates an approach that compares the American experience with that of other countries, highlighting both similarities and differences rather than the "unique and indigenous" nature of the forces…

Presents the seven principles for the teaching of history, many of which were the foundation for the 1981 "California History/Social Science Framework." (AM)

Argues that history is worth studying because it alone can begin to help us find who we are and what choices we may have before us. Discusses the particular significance of history within self-governing, democratic societies. Asserts that American students must be familiar with history of other cultures and periods before Columbus. (KH)

Presents a speech delivered to the International Reading Association on censorship and the arts in ancient times, in modern times, around the world, and in the United States. (SR)

Suggests that one can gain an overview of the coverage and balance of a multi-course social studies curriculum by placing the different courses, by total semesters taught, in these three pairs of course categories: American Studies/World Studies; U.S. History/Non-U.S. History; and History/Contemporary Studies. (Author/SJL)

This book reconsiders why and how U.S. humanities education is taught. A humanities program should teach students not just memorizable facts but analytical skills that are vital for a critically informed citizenry. Innovative research is important as the basis of such a curriculum. Specific suggestions are outlined for translating curriculum goals…

This paper examines the content of the proposed national standards for U.S. history and world history. The document suggests shortcomings of the developed standards as being without an emphasis on the themes of democracy and western civilization and an overemphasis on multicultural ideas. Specific standards in each of the areas are addressed with…