Through the 20th and into the 21st century, historians have maintained certain elements of historical thinking as crucial to the teaching of history. Ideas such as being able to recognize the “foreignness” of the past, and the ability to understand and articulate chronological causality have remained key elements of teaching students how to think historically. Most significantly, historians have maintained, although expanded, the need for history students to learn how to deal with evidence. They should be able to tell the difference between primary and secondary sources, they should be able to “source the source” and assess the sources value as historical evidence, which is different than reading the source merely for information. They should be able to use those sources as evidence to create an analytical argument or historical narrative. These ideas seem to be consistent as necessary skills for students to learn to think historically. Lofty and noble goals.

What has also remained consistent is a focus on content as well as process, and while so many historians and history teachers discuss the importance of teaching and learning the process, we still tend to focus on testing on content knowledge. And, as I have learned in the readings, students assessed content knowledge has remained pretty dismal over the same period of time we as a profession discuss the importance of process. Much of this consistency through the decades seems to be related to a continued reliance on textbooks that provide lots of information with little integration of process. Here is the story of what happened, and then there will be a separate page with a highlighted primary source document that may have a few questions for students to consider. There is not, however, any true connection between the primary source and the process of creating the textbook narrative.

I have to say I was rather taken aback in Wineburgs’s discussion of national testing and how certain questions and items end up on tests because they work mathematically to make sure a basic bell curve is maintained for test scores. Between a focus on content and rigging tests so that they cannot show how students think historically, it paints a depressing picture for the next 100 years of historical teaching.

So what is the future of the teaching of history? I do not see a day in the near future where k-12 schools, or college classes for that matter, throw away the text books and look to a curriculum focused on the historical process. Inertia is a powerful force. Policy requirements and hostile school boards are also powerful forces. Textbook publishes and testing agencies want to protect their place as well. I am fighting against the forces of cynicism myself, but I’m not sure who is winning at this point.