This paper examines what public school history textbooks in the United States should teach students and who should make those decisions. Drawing on Wheeler, Becker, and Glover's Discovering the American Past (2011), the paper argues that textbooks should move beyond dry recitations of facts and political events to present the broader context in which historical decisions were made. The authors advocate for stimulating student imagination and independent thinking, including exercises that ask pupils to consider alternative historical outcomes. The paper also proposes a more collaborative textbook development process involving academics, sociologists, psychologists, and teachers, while maintaining a balance between historical accuracy and student engagement.
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The paper models how to use a single primary source effectively across an argument. Rather than simply summarizing the source, it extracts specific passages and links them to broader policy claims, demonstrating the technique of evidence-based argumentation in educational policy writing.
The paper opens by establishing the cultural importance of American history before identifying the gap between that importance and student engagement. It then introduces Wheeler, Becker, and Glover's framework as a solution, addresses the issue of public opinion's influence, and closes with two concrete reform proposals: broadening the textbook authorship process and revising assessment criteria to balance accuracy with stimulation.
American history is strongly embedded in the consciousness of the U.S. population. Americans place great emphasis on the arrival of the Pilgrims, the colonization of the continent, and the eventual gaining of independence from British rule. They take great pride in this history and continue to emphasize the values that sat at the foundation of the country, such as freedom and democracy.
Yet American children tend to know less and less about their own national history. The educational system in the United States is focused on presenting facts and data that are historically important but that do not always capture the interest of young learners.
The history curriculum in public schools is focused on revealing crucial events and personalities, such as the role of the United States in the Second World War or the presidency of John F. Kennedy. History textbooks discuss political decisions and important moments in time. But to young children, and even to adolescents, these discussions often seem tedious and uninteresting.
In such a setting, an important question arises regarding the nature of history lessons taught in school: What should public school textbooks teach pupils about history, and who should make that decision?
Answering this question is a highly complicated endeavor, and several researchers have strived to provide an answer. William Bruce Wheeler, Susan Becker, and Lorri Glover (2011) take a notably different approach, arguing that an important change in the history-teaching process should be the stimulation of student imagination and thinking.
According to the three authors, it would be useful for public school textbooks to continue focusing on important facts and decisions, but to be clearer in presenting the setting in which those decisions were made and the forces that drove decision-makers toward them. Furthermore, textbooks should stimulate imagination by asking pupils to make decisions for themselves, or to consider what would have happened had the authorities of the time chosen a different course of action.
As the authors illustrate with the example of Reconstruction: "What should happen to the defeated South? Should the states of the former Confederacy be permitted to take their pre-war places in the Union as quickly and smoothly as possible, with minimum concessions to their northern conquerors? Or should the United States insist on a more drastic reconstruction of the South?" (Wheeler, Becker, & Glover, 2011, p. 306).
The history textbooks used in American public schools can and should do more than present isolated facts and political milestones. By embedding historical events in their broader social and political contexts, inviting students to engage imaginatively with the decisions of the past, and drawing on collaborative expertise in textbook development, educators can make history more meaningful and relevant. Balancing historical accuracy with the goal of student engagement is not a compromise — it is a more complete approach to history education.
Wheeler, W. B., Becker, S., & Glover, L. (2011). Discovering the American past: A look at the evidence (7th ed.). Cengage Learning.
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