Beyond defining
what students should know-that is, the understandings in United States
and World History that all students should acquire-it is essential to consider
what students should be able to do to demonstrate their understandings
and to apply their knowledge in productive ways.
The study of history involves
much more than the passive absorption of facts, dates, names, and places.
History is in its essence a process of reasoning based on evidence from
the past. This reasoning must be grounded in the careful gathering, weighing
and sifting of factual information such as names, dates, places, ideas,
and events. However, the process does not stop here. Real historical understanding
requires students to think through cause-and-effect relationships, to reach
sound historical interpretations, and to conduct historical inquiries and
research leading to the knowledge on which informed decisions in contemporary
life can be based. These thinking skills are the processes of active learning.
Properly taught, history
develops capacities for analysis and judgment. It reveals the ambiguity
of choice, and it promotes wariness about quick, facile solutions which
have so often brought human suffering in their wake. History fosters understanding
of paradox and a readiness to distinguish between that which is beyond
and that which is within human control, between the inevitable and the
contingent. It trains students to detect bias, to weigh evidence, and to
evaluate arguments, thus preparing them to make sensible, independent judgments,
to sniff out spurious appeals to history by partisan pleaders, to distinguish
between anecdote and analysis.
To acquire these capabilities,
students must develop competence in the following five types of historical
thinking: Chronological thinking, developing a clear sense of historical
time-past, present, and future-in order to identify the temporal sequence
in which events occurred, measure calendar time, interpret and create time
lines, and explain patterns of historical succession and duration, continuity
and change.
Historical comprehension,
including the ability to read historical narratives with understanding;
to identify the basic elements of the narrative structure (the characters,
situation, sequence of events, their causes, and their outcomes); and,
to appreciate historical perspectives-that is, the ability to describe
the past through the eyes and experiences of those who were there, as revealed
through their literature, art, artifacts, and the like, and to avoid “present-mindedness,”
judging the past solely in terms of the norms and values of today.
Historical analysis and interpretation,
including the ability to compare and contrast different experiences, beliefs,
motives, traditions, hopes, and fears of people from various groups and
backgrounds, and at various times in the past and present; to analyze how
these differing motives, interests, beliefs, hopes and fears influenced
people’s behaviors; to consider multiple perspectives in the records of
human experience and multiple causes in analyses of historical events;
to challenge arguments of historical inevitability; and to compare and
evaluate competing historical explanations of the past.
Historical research, including
the ability to formulate historical questions from encounters with historical
documents, artifacts, photos, visits to historical sites, and eyewitness
accounts; to determine the historical time and context in which the artifact,
document, or other record was created; to judge its credibility and authority;
and to construct a sound historical narrative or argument concerning it.
Historical issues-analysis
and decision-making, including the ability to identify problems that people
confronted in the past; to analyze the various interests and points of
view of people caught up in these situations; to evaluate alternative proposals
for dealing with the problem(s); to analyze whether the decisions reached
or the actions taken were sound ones and why; and, to bring historical
perspectives to bear on informed decision-making in the present.
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