Illustrates the presence of aesthetic experience in written history by comparing textbook presentations of the United States' 1812 offensive against Canada. The aesthetic dimension of human development is universal. Teachers' responsibility is to consider the aesthetic quality of school experiences they bring about and extend students' range of…

Reports that a Texas advocacy group discovered thousands of errors in U.S. history textbooks. Notes that the books underwent the review after drawing favorable reactions from Texas education officials. Identifies possible explanations for the errors and steps being taken to reduce errors in the future. (SG)

Discusses a database used by honors high school U.S. history students learning about the Spanish-American War. Reports that the students compiled the database. Includes some of the historical background of the war, questions for study, a database key, and a table showing U.S. senators' votes relating to the War. (SG)

Provides a three-day lesson plan for instruction about the Holocaust. Includes student handouts about the roots of antisemitism, the "Final Solution," and other topics. Examines the historical roots of anti-Jewish feeling, the rise of Germany's Nazi Party, Jewish resistance, and the ultimate liberation of Jews who survived the…

Offers a rebuttal to the cooperative-learning practices described in an earlier article in this journal which presented a Middle East history unit. Discusses students' basic lack of historical background, student expectations, the unit's organizational problems, and the way in which the students were overevaluated. Presents a rebuttal by the…

Discusses recent changes in history and geography instruction in the French lycees. Explains that France's National Ministry of Education plans to move teaching about World War II to an earlier year and apply a geopolitical approach to instruction in general. Notes that the Association of Teachers of History and Geography opposes the changes. (SG)

Describes the first map to divide the globe into five symmetrical climatic zones. Discusses Ambrosius Macrobius's map as a statement of earthly limitations rather than physical reality. Suggests its significance for teaching world history is as an example of deductive cartography that influenced and challenged late medieval Christian thought. (DK)

Presents a lesson plan in which George Bellows's painting "Both Members of this Club" is analyzed as a historical document illustrating the Progressive movement. Suggests that the lesson can introduce students to a different form of historical communication. Includes background information and procedures for approaching the lesson.…

Examines the sources of structural metaphors in the knowledge base of three experienced secondary teachers who used the metaphors to construct content meaning for students. The article looks at how the teachers perceived, organized, and gave meaning to themselves, their experiences, and their worlds. (SM)

Outlines a method of using Charles Dickens' novel "Great Expectations" as a part of a history unit covering Victorian England. Shows how history instructors might use the book and the film version to broaden student views of reading. (HB)

Examines the rationale and related research supporting inclusion of the arts in secondary English and history courses. Looks at examples from a classroom teacher's experience in including drama, painting, and music into the literature curriculum. (RS)

Employing a sample of 51 12-year-old British secondary pupils, a study analyzed children's written and oral responses to a series of (contradictory) historical questions concerning the Boston Massacre of 1770. Many students were capable of abstract historical reasoning--critiquing sources, detecting bias and ambiguity, and determining flaws in…

Discusses changing concepts of important topics in teaching history--away from a "political/diplomatic" approach to a "social history" approach that includes broader topics, such as urbanization, shifts in social structures and classes, and crime and resistance. Shows evidence of this shift in content requirements, tests of Advanced-Placement…

Historians generally agree that causality is central to historical writing. The fact that many school history students have difficulty handling and expressing causal relations is therefore of concern. That is, whereas historians tend to favor impersonal, abstract structures as providing suitable explanations for historical events and states of…

This article analyses the relationships between the perspectives of stakeholders involved in the development of the 1998 New South Wales Stages 4-5 history syllabus. It examined four key issues that emerged in the debates about history education during the review and found that stakeholders' views diverged significantly on three of these issues.…