Recently the subject of history literacy was raised. I don’t recall the exact circumstances or by whom. Every day I delayed in posting this blog, it seems as if another moment in history had occurred. Thinking about these historic times was the impetus for a need to organize my thoughts and not approach everything piecemeal. I needed to develop a blueprint for the coming weeks and months ahead to help me organize my thought and create order out of chaos. So here is my plan for future obviously subject to change and ignoring “non-historic events.”
TEACHING SOCIAL STUDIES
Blog #1 The AHA 2020-2022 study on the teaching of social studies
Blog #2 The presentation at the AHA conference in January 2025 on the study
Blog #3 The Executive order on the teaching of patriotic history (Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling)
Blog #4 The reaction to #3
Other items may pop up during this time period. These include
1. The Christian nationalism curriculum in Oklahoma
2. Jan. 6 in the curriculum in Oklahoma
3. The demise of the Department of Education and its staffing
4. The impact of the Gulf of America in the classroom – an AP reporter was kicked out of White House briefings because the AP uses Gulf of Mexico. What does this mean for textbooks and teaching? Think of how successful the Woke have been on banning the use of “Indian.” Think of the Palestinian maps that don’t show Israel.
5. The decline in reading scores
6. The inability to read a book
7. The revival of such Gilded Age terms and personalities as manifest destiny, tariffs, the Panama Canal, William McKinley, and Teddy Roosevelt. For the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE) we are entering what should be a banner year strangely enough.
8. The centennial of the Scopes Trial, the subject of the book Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple.
9. The bicentennial of the Erie Canal with Wedding of the Waters in New York harbor on November 4, 1825.
10. The bicentennial of the diluvial decade when there was a vigorous and robust search for proof of Noah’s flood. The Erie Canal became part of that search
11. The separation of powers
This is a very fluid situation. How are social studies teachers supposed to keep up when current events are historical? How is the American public supposed to keep up?
THE AMERICAN SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL
Blog #1 2024 Year-end report on the national and state (New England and New York), and New York City
Blog #2 developments since the beginning of the year and planed for the rest of the year. The new year has seen a veritable explosion of activity. !775 marks the year when things begin to happen that are remembered. With the Second Continental Congress, the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, the failed attempt to make Canada the 14th colony, the Knox Expedition transporting cannons to Boston with the Lafayette Bicentennial of his arrival at Bunker Hill, there is a lot going on besides Paul Revere and Lexington and Concord.
Blog #3 The Executive Order Celebrating America’s 250th Anniversary recognizing that any funding likely is too late for 2025 and probably will be restricted to July 4, 2026 and trying to determine its relationship to the existing U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission.
ACADEMIC ORGANIZATIONS AND THE 250th
Blog #1 AHA conference in January
Blog #2 The winter issue of the Journal of the Early Republic by SHEAR dedicated to the 250th
Blog #3 OAH conference in April
Blog #4 Scholarship on the American Revolution including geographical, chronological, imperial, and cultural debates – this is a mushrooming topic within the academic community which highlights the disconnect between what scholars and the general public are talking about. This is a huge topic to say the least. One lesson concerns what these history organizations are and are not doing to bridge the gap between the general public, teachers, and the professional historians.
Blog #5 Kathleen DuVal – So far she has had a banner year. On January 6, 2025, at the opening of the annual conference of the AHA she had an op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled “Enough with the Land Acknowledgement’s.” At the conference she was a panelist in the session “Why You Can’t Teach American History without American Indians: Films and Resources for the Classroom.” I had not yet read the op-ed piece so I could not ask her about it. Now she has been awarded a Bancroft Prize for her 752-page book Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS NON-250TH
I am only able to attend the AHA and OAH conferences and later SHEAR in July. I realize that there may be other national conferences of interest (NCHE, NCPH).
CIVICS AND NEWSPAPERS
My local weekly paper recently closed. There are too many newspaper deserts in the country making people dependent on social media and national cable stations. I feel the loss right now with the upcoming mayoral and trustee elections in the Village. This closure has created a gap in the social fabric as was mentioned by several of the candidates in the LWV forum held this week. Ironically, one of the candidates and eventual winner is the former editor of the newspaper. Trying to keep track of the ten candidates without the newspaper is a bit of a challenge. This blog will examine what is going in the world of vanishing newspapers including what some high schools are doing.
HISTORY IN THE NEWS
These blogs reflect when history becomes part of the national political conversation. Since this is a history blog these political blogs will not necessarily be distributed to the IHARE history list although they will be on the IHARE website.
This blueprint is a very ambitious one and the odds are I will not fulfill it. It is difficult to keep track of all the developments. My newspaper clippings are a chaotic mess. The plan is more organized and structured on the computer screen than its actual implementation. In any event, it should keep me busy for months to come.
