Inspired by participation in the 2014 version of the Stewardship of Public Lands seminar, hosted by the Yellowstone Association Institute and sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities' American Democracy Project, the author's first goal was the creation of a "Sophomore Seminar" course themed on "Parks,…

James Loewen has revised "Teaching What Really Happened", the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled…

Learn how to design history lessons that foster students' knowledge, skills, and dispositions for civic engagement. Each section of this practical resource introduces a key element of civic engagement, such as defending the rights of others, advocating for change, taking action when problems are observed, compromising to promote reform, and…

War is one place where the complexity of victory and defeat should be explored more deeply. Unfortunately, war--whether experienced directly as a soldier in Afghanistan or a Syrian in an Aleppo suburb, or indirectly through a news item on the Internet or American television--is a near inescapable aspect of most people's daily life. Yet unless…

Current educational reforms have given rise to various types of "educational Taylorism," which encourage the creation of efficiency models in pursuit of a unified way to teach. In history education curricula, this has been introduced through scripted textbook-based programs such as Teacher Curriculum Institute's "History…

Populism is a relevant issue in the teaching of American history. Historically, the standard interpretation of Populism perceived the movement as favorable. How educators handle conflicting views of Populism is important in engaging students in critical thinking. This article describes the history of American Populism, explains how Populism can be…

Scholars often define historical reasoning as constructing defensible interpretations of past events. Drawing on critical theory, this article suggests that it also entails consciously framing one's topic of inquiry. The article examines an instructional unit that aimed to foster this expanded view of historiography. Forty students, ages 14-15,…

The author describes alternatives to traditional ways of conceptualizing the early American literature survey course, focusing on film ("1492" and "Black Robe").

This is an exploratory study of racism in a genre of children's literature that has been largely overlooked by research and teaching in multicultural children's literature: sports biographies and, in particular, the biographies of African American professional football players. By examining the race bias of this genre of children's literature, the…

For over a century, history teachers throughout the United States have selected textbooks as the primary instructional material for their classrooms, while textbook authors and publishers have continuously produced a unified nation-state narrative that presents United States history as a series of objective historical facts for student…

Each fall semester, on the first day of class of his upper-level American Military History course, the author informs his students that a major part of the class consists of a wargame in which they will participate. In this article, the author describes briefly how the class will be divided into two teams, and that on a specific evening during the…

This special theme issue of the OAH Magazine of History contains articles that present a variety of perspectives on the Columbian Quincentenary--the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyages of discovery. The articles include: "Exploring the Columbian Quincentenary through Historiography" (John Hebert); "Science, Religion,…

Timothy Draper's approach to teaching history is that the discipline essentially embodies the best of other humanities and social science disciplines. The processes of remembering, retelling, and reconstructing involve the higher domains of learning. Freed from the bonds of mere memorization of dates, the college history student analyzes,…

Discusses the Columbus Quincentenary and its impact on the K-12 history and social studies curriculum. Reviews the differences of opinion about Christopher Columbus and the results of the voyages of discovery. Warns that teachers must be wary of instructional materials that are based on political and social ideologies. (CFR)