| The development
of national standards in United States and World History presents a special
challenge in deciding what, of the great storehouse of human history, is
the most significant for all students to acquire. Perhaps less contentious
but no less important is deciding what historical perspectives and what
skills in historical reasoning, values analysis, and policy thinking are
essential for all students to achieve.
The following criteria, developed
and refined over the course of a broad-based national review and consensus
process, were adopted by the National Council for History Standards in
order to guide the development of history standards for grades kindergarten
through 12.
1. Standards should
be intellectually demanding, reflect the best historical scholarship, and
promote active questioning and learning rather than passive absorption
of facts, dates, and names.
2. Such standards should
be equally expected of all students and all students should be provided
equal access to the curricular opportunities necessary to achieving those
standards.
3. Standards should reflect
the ability of children from the earliest elementary school years to learn
the meanings of history and the methods of historians.
4. Standards should be founded
in chronology, an organizing approach that fosters appreciation of pattern
and causation in history.
5. Standards should strike
a balance between emphasizing broad themes in United States and World History
and probing specific historical events, ideas, movements, persons, and
documents.
6. All historical study involves
selection and ordering of information in light of general ideas and values.
Standards for history should reflect the principles of sound historical
reasoning-careful evaluation of evidence, construction of causal relationships,
balanced interpretation, and comparative analysis. The ability to detect
and evaluate distortion and propaganda by omission, suppression, or invention
of facts is essential.
7. Standards should include
awareness of, appreciation for, and the ability to utilize a variety of
sources of evidence from which historical knowledge is achieved, including
written documents, oral tradition, quantitative data, popular culture,
literature, artifacts, art and music, historical sites, photographs, and
films.
8. Standards for United States
History should reflect both the nation’s diversity exemplified by race,
ethnicity, social and economic status, gender, region, politics, and religion,
and the nation’s commonalities. The contributions and struggles of specific
groups and individuals should be included.
9. Standards in United States
History should contribute to citizenship education through developing understanding
of our common civic identity and shared civic values within the polity,
through analyzing major policy issues in the nation’s history, and through
developing mutual respect among its many people.
10. History standards should
emphasize the nature of civil society and its relationship to government
and citizenship. Standards in United States History should address the
historical origins of the nation’s democratic political system and the
continuing development of its ideals and institutions, its controversies,
and the struggle to narrow the gap between its ideals and practices. Standards
in World History should include different patterns of political institutions,
ranging from varieties of democracy to varieties of authoritarianism, and
ideas and aspirations developed by civilizations in all parts of the world.
11. Standards in United States
and World History should be separately developed but interrelated in content
and similar in format. Standards in United States History should reflect
the global context in which the nation unfolded and World History should
treat United States History as one of its integral parts.
12. Standards should include
appropriate coverage of recent events in United States and World History,
including social and political developments and international relations
of the post World War II era.
13. Standards in United States
and World History should utilize regional and local history by exploring
specific events and movements through case studies and historical research.
Local and regional history should enhance the broader patterns of United
States and World History.
14. Standards in United States
and World History should integrate fundamental facets of human culture
such as religion, science and technology, politics and government, economics,
interactions with the environment, intellectual and social life, literature,
and the arts.
15. Standards in World History
should treat the history and values of diverse civilizations, including
those of the West, and should especially address the interactions among
them.
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