National Center for History in the Schools

Overview

One of the important tasks teachers face in helping children become critical, analytical thinkers as well as thoughtful readers of historical narratives is fostering their intellectual independence and overcoming tendencies to look to teachers for cues, to seek the one "right answer," and to accept without question the printed word as authoritative and true. Young children come to school curious, filled with imagination, eager to reach out, discover, and learn, unless home or prior school experiences have thwarted their development of these natural powers in early childhood. The good teacher of young children will work to create the classroom climate and learning opportunities rich in inviting materials that capture children's interest, fuel their imagination, and pose issues and problems for thinking and resolution.

Teachers will find in history many resources to foster these ends: lively, compelling stories and biographies that catch children up in the real problems, issues, and dilemmas encountered by people at various times in history, and that disclose the variety of perspectives, feelings, motivations, and responses of different people involved in the situation; field trips and visits to historic sites and museums; and a rich variety of historical documents, photos, artifacts, and other records of the past that present alternative voices and accounts of events, and that confront students with more than one interpretation of the past.  

Many of these resources will be found in local libraries and in the historical collections or files of local newspapers, local museums, and in the collections or personal experiences of parents, and other people in the community. Teachers should cultivate the professional ties and support librarians are eager to offer them, and not hesitate to ask the assistance of historians and geographers in a local college, many of whom are pleased to assist.  

In such a classroom setting, children as young as kindergartners can become enthusiastically involved in real historical issues and events, engage actively in examining such data, and analyze and interpret the data for themselves. As has often been noted, thinking cannot occur in a vacuum. Classrooms rich in the historical resources proposed here support even the youngest children with compelling opportunities for active thinking.  

Among the analytic thinking skills children should be developing through inviting experiences such as these are the ability to examine a situation and raise questions or define problems for themselves; compare differing ideas, interests, perspectives, actions, and institutions represented in these sources; and elaborate upon what they read and see to develop interpretations, explanations, or solutions to the questions they have raised.   

STANDARD 3
The student engages in historical analysis and interpretation:
Therefore, the student is able to

1. Formulate questions to focus their inquiry and analysis. 
2. Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, values, personalities, behaviors, and institutions by identifying likenesses and differences. 
3. Analyze historical fiction on such criteria as the accuracy of the story's historical details and sequence of events; and the point of view or interpretation presented by the author through the words, actions, and descriptions of the characters and events in the story. 
4. Distinguish fact and fiction by comparing documentary sources on historical figures and events with the fictional characters and events included in the story and its illustrations.
5. Compare different stories about a historical figure, era, or event and analyze the different portrayals or perspectives they present. 
6. Analyze illustrations in historical stories for the information they reveal and compare with historic sites, museum artifacts, historical photos, and other documents to judge their accuracy.  
7. Consider multiple perspectives in the records of human experience by demonstrating how their differing motives, beliefs, interests, hopes, and fears influenced individual and group behaviors. 
8. Explain causes in analyzing historical actions, including (a) the importance of the individual in history, of human will, intellect, and character; (b) the influence of ideas, human interests, and beliefs; and (c) the role of chance, the accidental, and the irrational. 
9. Challenge arguments of historical inevitability by giving examples of how different choices could have led to different consequences.
10. Hypothesize the influence of the past, including both the limitations and opportunities made possible by past decisions.

>> Standard 4, Historical Research Capabilities