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American Historical Association

American Historical Association Conference (2025): Indians

December 4, 2025
by Peter Feinman

State of the Field for Busy Teachers: Native American History

AHA Session 57
Saturday, January 4, 2025: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Chair: Karen Marrero, Wayne State University
Comment:

Dalton Savage, National Council for History Education and Ned Blackhawk, Yale University

Session Abstract

“If our schools and university classrooms are to remain vital civic institutions,” Ned Blackhawk urges in The Rediscovery of America, winner of the 2023 National Book Award in Nonfiction, “we must create richer and more truthful accounts of the American Republic’s origins, expansion, and current form. Studying and teaching America’s Indigenous truths reveal anew the varied meanings of America.”

What does this look like in the classroom? And when, where, and how might teachers help their students engage with the experiences of Native peoples across the entire history curriculum?

The AHA’s State of the Field for Busy Teachers series provides a forum for history teachers at all levels to interact with leading historians and discuss content, sources, and trends in scholarly interpretation on a theme related to topics commonly addressed in the history classroom. Ned Blackhawk will outline current debates, new lines of inquiry, and useful sources. For the rest of the session, a panel of educators moderates a discussion, with robust audience participation, about how to incorporate insights from new research into the classroom. We anticipate a lively exchange in which all participants can walk away with new insights and resources.

1. speakers use multiple terms for Indians
2. in a rapidly changing field teachers often feel uncomfortable
3. a new one volume synthesis has been written
4. new maps have been created from pre-removal of Indians to today. The Indian nations are still present.
– It is impossible to understand American history without including Indians
– There is a teacher guide on the Yale website
– There is an Antebellum focus in the book
– 200 Indian tribes run tribal cultural centers and museums
– There is a separate organization as part of the Indian infrastructure of the academy. It is an indigenous organization
– It is a story trauma, violence, and pain in history
– Individual Indian nations subjugated other Indian peoples using European technologies. They acted as imperialists
– Mohawk Indians were dominant in the mid-1600s and were so earlier.
– The book is mainly post-1492. It includes the violence in the Spanish empire and the enslavement by natives of natives.
QA The topic of the Comanche dominance in the Plains and impact on other Indian peoples was raised.
QA Teachers were concerned about the time to teach a topic.
QA Teachers need time to learn the new materiality. They don’t want to teach wrong.
QA There are a diversity of Indian peoples

NA Indigenous Study Association professional organization

Why You Can’t Teach American History without American Indians: Films and Resources for the Classroom

AHA Session 239
Sunday, January 5, 2025: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Chair: David Olson, Retro Report
Panel:
Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Colleen Thurston, University of Oklahoma
Matthew Villeneuve, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Session Abstract

How do we tell a full and accurate history of the Indigenous peoples of this land? Most high school and college curricula ignore transformative events of 20th century American Indian history and treat these communities as relics of the past. Engaging in narrative storytelling and highlighting contemporary Indigenous history can address this problem in secondary and post-secondary institutions.

With David Treuer’s “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee,” to Ned Blackhawk’s “Rediscovering America,” and now Kathleen DuVal’s “Native Nations,” historians have recognized that the teaching of American history needs a “reset,” one that places Native nations — their power and influence — at the center of the story. Scholars will counter the prevailing narrative of the triumph of settler colonization in vanquishing Native nations. Indigenous states with sophisticated government structures and complex economies affected the Europeans in ways historians, and their students, need to understand. Indigenous peoples successfully pursued their own interests for centuries, from the Mohawks control of trade to Kiowas regulating the passage of white settlers across their territory. In the 19th century, U.S. military campaigns and settler violence took a toll on Indigenous peoples and, in many classrooms, that is where the teaching of American Indian history stops. Nearly 600 Native American sovereign nations exist in the United States today. But surveys show that students – indeed most Americans – believe Native people are a race lost to history.

From there, we will explore tools to help educators reflect the resistance and resilience of Native people in the face of cultural assimilation and annihilation during the 20th century. With increased Native visibility in contemporary media representations, such as the critically acclaimed television show Reservation Dogs, or the Martin Scorsese-helmed Killers of the Flower Moon, now is the time to closely examine where educators can be incorporating the Indigenous narratives and knowledge associated with American places, culture, and history and combating the invisibility of Indigenous presence on the Indigenous land base now known as America. Panel scholars will analyze how Native history has been depicted on screen in historical fiction and documentary films, and put those depictions into context of how historians are writing and thinking about Indigenous communities.

This session will also include a screening of the short documentary, “The 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz Was a Catalyst for Indigenous Activism” — produced by Colleen Thurston for Retro Report, along with time for Q&A with the audience.

QA What term to use?

Indian Country Today article – Amanda Kyle Blackhoes on What do We prefer

– more specific the name the better
– JER article Brock Bauer
– Hawaiians are not American Indians
– We are not one people ever so terms that assert we are don’t make sense
– native nations are still around
– limit to pre-1900 chronologically in history books
– 1865 not a relevant cutoff – Jean O’Brien
– 1871 end of treaty making as cutoff?
– problem of where people fit in
– part of different from US history
– genocide – how many? Prove it
– renarrative agenda – politics of representation

– the modernity track : people can adapt, cultural change does not mean no longer Indian view in western values

– real Indian authenticity: can’t they be modern?

American Historical Association Conference (2025): Museums and Public Histor(y)(ians)

November 30, 2025
by Peter Feinman

Part of the conference was on the history infrastructure. One session was dedicated to the founder of museums. A second was on including the community. The third one was on the challenges facing museums at a divided moment in American history. The participants had no idea about the carnage that was about to happen.

Mobilizing Oral and Public History: Approaches to Participatory, Community Based, Interdisciplinary Projects

AHA Session 119
Saturday, January 4, 2025: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Chair: Christine E. Eubank, Bergen Community College
Panel:
Anthony Diaz, Newark Water Coalition
Christine E. Eubank, Bergen Community College
Wilmarie Medina-Cortés, Humanities Action Lab
Liz Ševčenko, Humanities Action Lab
Kristina Shull, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Session Abstract

Ongoing and emerging crises on the global as well as local scale suggest that the twenty-first century is an inflection point in history. Oral, public, and digital historians, colleges and universities, issues organizations, cultural institutions, and community partners are forming coalitions and mobilizing around urgent social issues to develop interdisciplinary humanities-based projects that not only create useful narratives but encourage systemic changes for a more just, sustainable, and equitable future. This work is urgent, valuable, exhilarating, collaborative, and creative. Participants on this roundtable are college and university scholars, oral and public historians, museum and gallery curators, community activists, and organization leaders who will share their experiences and insights gained from developing, launching, and managing these types of projects.

This session will appeal to anyone doing work in digital, oral, and public history; scholars whose work centers community activism or issues of social and environmental justice; and those with an interest in developing similar coalitions and community-focused projects. Our goal is to generate a fruitful conversation with audience members. After the chair introduces the panel, each participant will give a five-minute statement that highlights a signature project or projects. The chair will pose questions to the panelists and the remaining session time will be devoted to discussion with the audience.

Founders of Major History Museums

AHA Session 170
Sunday, January 5, 2025: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Chair: Annie Polland, Tenement Museum
Panel:
Ruth Abram, Tenement Museum
Lonnie Bunch, Smithsonian Institution
Alice Greenwald, 9/11 Memorial & Museum
Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, National WWII Museum

Session Abstract

Founders of major history museums in the US will discuss their motivations, challenges, and accomplishments in shaping institutions that preserve and narrate our collective past. Panelists will discuss insights into the intricacies of establishing and sustaining history museums, from initial conceptualization to navigating the complexities of funding, curation, and community engagement.

Abram

1. how can we be one nation today?
2. the creation of the museum for her was an emotional experience: she looked at the tenements where it happened, where the people really lived not so long ago
– 1300 people from 20 countries lived in the original museum building – the museum mission was to tell their story
– To meet this challenge we chose to invite the public in. We wanted them to tell the story as it was physically. A second group said don’ insult our intelligence in your exhibits. She could watch immigrants visiting seeing museum that was about their own story
– preservationists said the building was of no architectural value. Nobody famous had lived there. It was a slum. The museum had to build trust with the immigrant community that the building was worth preserving and the stories were worth telling.

Mueller: WWII Museum as America’s Parthenon as expression of ideals

1. opening the concentration camps tapes was a particularly poignant memory and exhibit
2. museums need to remember to stick to their mission

Greenwald

1. what it means as battleground site for the family visitors vs what it means as a political site are conflicting missions
– for 40% of families visiting the site it is a cemetery
– NYSM and NYHS joined together with Port Authority as curators
2. email coverage and media coverage of the opening of the museum: #1 event then
open ended story
2 billion people watched worldwide
transition from memory to history 20 years later
3. teachers using museum as a textbook for students who don’t know where they were on 9/11 or who had not yet been born
4. it was a time when We the People came together with vigils and hugging
5. the story of the red bandana that touched the hearts of so many: it belonged to bond trader from Nyack, NY, who saved 18 people
6. the first column of structure removed now stands vertical again
– testament to cleanup and search for human remains
– volunteers/service/community
– many construction challenges
– Sandy delayed the opening 2 years
7. need to build trust with museum community
8. a wall separates human remains from the exhibit

Bunch

1. National Mall where people go to understand America
2. need to have a vision to start a museum
3. story for all of us and not just the 1950s when it was first conceived
4. international impact : telling the story of the outsider who becomes insider
5. refuses to touch collections from the Smithsonian – reached out to others
6. the great strength of the museum of America is as a story of a work in progress
7. the history museum is the #2 or #3 visited Smithsonian museum: history matters
8. 40,000 objects, 70% from basements of other museums
9. 2nd door added to slave cabin: we are free
10. tension between what they wanted and what they need
11. stamina to listen

Obviously this museum has borne the brunt of changes due to the President since the 2025 conference.

Session Chair Pollard: objects inspires reflect and discussion
1. because people were poor they were dirty image: gift of soap bar

Leading Public History Institutions in a Divided Moment: Lessons from the Field

AHA Session 212
Sunday, January 5, 2025: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Chair: Jonathan Mercantini, Kean University
Panel:

Sara R. Cureton, New Jersey Historical Commission
W. Todd Groce, Georgia Historical Society
M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, American University
Marc Lorenc, New Jersey Historical Commission

Session Abstract

This Roundtable featuring public history scholars and leaders of state historical organizations will discuss the challenges of doing public history in our current political climate and share some possible solutions. Using the upcoming 250th Anniversary of American Independence as a primary touchstone, but also considering other commemorations and public history events, the panelists will consider how recent histories and interpretations can be shared to increase the public’s knowledge about a more inclusive and complex past.

Bringing together Public History professionals from the Northeast, South, and West, the panel will examine how different states are engaging in the work of public history, with an eye toward how the upcoming anniversary of American Independence can serve as a useful anchor point to engage in these conversation. The panel also includes a look back at the United States Bicentennial in 1976, what useful lessons might be drawn from that experience, but also to consider the differences between that moment and now.

As a whole, we will seek to better understand how historians can build trust, engage the public, and be a part of this important anniversary.

American Historical Association Conference (2025): Black

November 26, 2025
by Peter Feinman

The two sessions at the conference specifically devoted to the “Black” experience in the United States encompass a disparate range of topics. The first involves the centennial of the publication of the New Negro in 1925. The subject of the New Negro has been touched upon in earlier blogs along with the New Negro Woman and Negroland (The Destruction of Negro Communities and the Birth of the African American, February 28, 2023. It was the time of the founding of the Negro Baseball League. It was a time when Italian immigrants from Italy and Negro immigrants from the Great Migration both sought to establish their identity nationally.

The second session was about reparations. This session intends to become an umbrella session or clearing house on the various efforts under way in different state and local municipalities on the topic of reparations. It is not so much a history session as a political session survey what is going on in the present.

Plenary: 100th Anniversary of The New Negro
Friday, January 3, 2025: 8:00 PM-9:30 PM
Chair: Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism School
Speakers:
A’Lelia P. Bundles, Madam Walker Family Archives
Gene Andrew Jarrett, Princeton University
David Levering Lewis, New York University
Denise Murrell, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Jeffrey Stewart, University of California, Santa Barbara

Session Abstract

This session commemorates the New Negro, an anthology of essays edited by Alain Locke and published in 1925. In March of that year, Survey Graphic, a monthly unillustrated magazine of the social work journal, Survey, published “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,” a special issue dedicated to “The New Negro.” Also edited by Locke, it featured essays by such important writers as W. A. Domingo, W.E.B. Du Bois, Countee Cullen, Elise Johnson McDougald, Arthur Schomburg, Walter White, J.A. Rogers, and Eunice Roberta Hunton Carter. Later that year the enormously influential anthology, the New Negro, appeared. Building on the special issue in Survey Graphic and with new essays by like Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer and others, the New Negro came to be seen as the manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance.

On the 100th anniversary of The New Negro, our conversation will situate the New Negro in the context of the time in which it was published and the century that followed. Panelists and audience will engage the ideas about Black freedom that Locke and the other contributors to the volume envisioned and how over time, Black people have continued, in the words of Locke’s recent biographer Jeffrey Stewart, to find ways to “reinvent” themselves “even in the worst of times.”

1. radical optimism
2. new national and international culture
3. fundamentally political conservative
4. break from the past
5. masculine text
6. boot-black Anglo-Saxon criticism of him by another black

AHA Session 161 Historians and Reparations: A Roundtable
Saturday, January 4, 2025: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Chair: Kerri K. Greenidge, Tufts University
Panel:
Leslie Alexander, University of Oregon
Kellie Carter Jackson, Wellesley College
Kerri K. Greenidge, Tufts University
Kyera Singleton, Tufts University

This roundtable, “Historians and Reparations,” will convene historians currently engaged in city or state-initiated studies of slavery and reparations. Roundtable speakers are currently engaged in studies commissioned by the City of Boston’s Task Force and the New Jersey Reparations Council. The roundtable will engage the challenges and opportunities of this work together and how historical research might shape policymakers reckoning with the past.

American Historical Association Conference (2025): Local History

November 19, 2025
by Peter Feinman

This session includes examples of teachers using local history at the college level. Some students have never been before in the area they now walked. There often was a public presentation of the students’ findings which attracted media attention.

Using Local History to Engage Students

AHA Session 221
Sunday, January 5, 2025: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Chair: Jason Morgan, Collin College
Papers:

Utilizing Local History through Place-Based Critical Inquiry in the P–12 Classroom
Lauren Colley, University of Cincinnati

Digital Historical Walking Tours: Bringing Local History to Life
Cacee Hoyer, University of Southern Indiana

Exploring Local Black History in Rural Appalachia: A Journey through Community Engagement
Constanze Weise, East Tennessee State University

Where Do We Come From: Using Oral and Local History to Understand Our Communities
Jason Morgan, Collin College

Session Abstract

The maxim “All Politics is Local,” has been accepted as a way to understand and explain political engagement. This panel makes the argument that “All History is Local!” Incorporating local and/or public history in the classroom engages students and creates connections to people and place. We have found that integrating local history projects into the classroom excites students to conduct historical research and engage with the past. Local history projects not only allow students see how the past directly affects their communities and themselves, it also lets them create papers, artifacts, archives and other projects that directly speak to the public.

This panel brings together people with experience in the K-12 education, community colleges and universities. Each panelist will present for fifteen minutes on how they have incorporated local history projects into their classrooms and the impact this had on students. This will leave thirty minutes for a robust discussion among the panelists and the audience on how to incorporate local projects into the classroom. The panel also demonstrates that local history can be done in all academic regions and settings. The first panelist will be Lauren M. Colley, University Cincinnati, who will introduce the theory behind the impact of local history in the classroom. Cacee Mabis, of the University of Southern Indiana, will introduce the ways in which local urban history can be explored by creating historic walking tours. Constanze Weise, University of East Tennessee, will demonstrate how working with local community partners can enhance student’s understanding of historical methods and illuminate the often-overlooked history of African American History in Appalachia. Finally, Jason Morgan, Collin College, will explain how he uses two local history assignments to engage student interest and build research skills using oral interviews and investigating the identity of those listed on the 1850 and 1860 Census Slave Schedules in Collin County. Each panelist brings local history into the classroom in different ways, which demonstrates the power that local history can have in the classroom.

We are excited to bring this important pedogeological tool to our colleagues and want to make sure that all participants leave with the recognition that they too can do local history in the classroom.

Colley

– Local history can be used it to connect to students – placed-based inquiry.
– Local history benefits place-based critical inquiry.
– Today teachers often don’t live in the communities where they teach.
– Teaching local history helps students become advocates in their community.

Mabis

1. Teaching local history is a required college level class in the community of Evansville, population of 150,000.
2. The walking tour component includes:
– local history topics
– guest speakers design walking tours
– group workshops
– archive work
– field days walk tours and taking photographs
– in-class workshops and writing days
– peer review where students walk each other’s tours
– final presentations and public tours
3. work with local library
4. driving tour- problems of logistics of where to park and sufficient space
5. segregation and demolition – urban renewal areas have become parking lots where once there were neighborhoods
6. historic churches/neighborhoods/schools in the Baptisttown community
7.students often had not been in other neighborhoods
8. use of Clio in the classroom
9. poorer neighborhoods included
10. students can impact the public and are not taken lightly because they were present and the results were published

Weise

– required class at her college
– community of 74,000 people, 84% white, and no historical society
– limited scholarships available
– historical markers at former segregated high school
– marginalized rural black southern communities
– students asked how was it to live in a segregated community? – public presentation and TV coverage of the students’ work
– students work with community partners – differences in interests are revealed
Morgan

– 1960 rural county to county of 1,000,000+ people today due to tech jobs
– participating students are not history majors
– the population explosion means no one is from there
– population increase from south and east Asia immigrants
– the communities are still segregated by immigrants
– class includes an oral history project
– the final question is “why are you where you are?”
– participants are asked if they have experienced/witnessed racism?
– Collin has always been interested in education since it was settled in the 1850s
– question for the students: why the disparity in neighborhood incomes

Q&A issue of developing community partnerships

Weiss

– Need gatekeeper: Students were white whereas community patrons were black<
– Time required to develop trust between the students and the community

Morgan – volunteered for preservation group
– Plano Museum closed for five years
– curators are not there to serve the students
Hoyer Mabis- not from the area in the local history program area but used teaching colleagues to connect her

Q&A New Orleans chess club goes back to 1830s

Utilizing Local History through Place-Based Critical Inquiry in the P–12 Classroom

Sunday, January 5, 2025: 10:30 AM
Lauren Colley, University of Cincinnati

One way to utilize local history within the P-12 classroom is through the use an “Inquiry Arc”. An “Inquiry Arc’s” focus on developing questions, applying disciplinary tools, evaluating sources, communicating conclusions and taking informed action. Using local history as a central part of this inquiry model provides a way for students to feel connected to their communities and themselves.[1] Part of this personal experience is what social studies education research describes as “place-consciousness.” By being more aware of their communities, its history, its geography, and its landmarks, students develop a sense of attachment to their communities.[2] Using place-based inquiry thus allows teachers to use landmarks and places as sources and prompts students through deliberation of questions that even our youngest learners can engage with. Moreover, research suggests that teachers who engage in place-based historical inquiry shift their perspectives on hard history.[3] By combining place-based inquiry with critical inquiry, students can question how systems of power influence their own place-consciousness. By examining places, local history, and sources of marginalized perspectives, asking questions that critique oppression, and by examining how history has shaped our present, critical inquiry becomes a powerful lens to examine local history.[4] This presentation describes ways to engage our teachers and P-12 students in local place-based critical inquiry.

[1] Rebecca Mueller, “Local history as a Pathway for Powerful Social Studies” in Social Education, 36 (3), 2024, 25–30.

[2] Annie M. Whitlock, “Walking the City: Developing Place-Consciousness through Inquiry” in Social Studies and the Young Learner, 33(2) 2020, 20-24.

[3] Christine Baron, Sherri Sklarwitz, Hyeyoung Bang, & Hanadi Shatara, “What Teachers Retain from Historic Site-Based Professional Development” in Journal of Teacher Education, 71(4), 2020, 392–408.

[4] Ryan M. Crowley & LaGarrett J. King, “Making Inquiry Critical: Examining Power and Inequity in the Classroom” in Social Education, 82(1) 2018, 14-17.

Digital Historical Walking Tours: Bringing Local History to Life

Sunday, January 5, 2025: 10:50 AM
Cacee Hoyer, University of Southern Indiana

Creating digital historical walking tours is an engaging and interactive method for students to learn about local history by pursuing urban historical themes, moments, and spaces in an innovative and useful way. Local history projects are a powerful way for students to develop historical skills, connect with their community, reveal societal changes, and cultivate their own identity. This presentation shares my method of implementing a digital historical walking tour project using two free programs: Pocketsights and Clio. The presentation will include the student learning goals and scaffolded assignments to support student learning throughout the project. Student learning goals for this methodology include a critical analysis of local events/locations, an in-depth examination of the impact of the events/locations on the development of urban space, and to make connections to change over time. Students are required to provide detailed descriptions for local ten sites of historical significance on their walking tour. Each site must include a historical explanation of the importance of the site and include images or videos from the location. The final step for this project is a reflection paper which requires students to evaluate what they have learned from the project and explain how it relates to what they have learned in the course. The digital walking tour enables students to build empathy through seeking connections to local history, while engaging students in “doing” social studies. Many historical institutions include digital walking tours; thus, this project is not only novel and engaging but practical for modern realities.

Where Do We Come From: Using Oral and Local History to Understand Our Communities

Sunday, January 5, 2025: 11:30 AM
Jason Morgan, Collin College

This presentation will focus on two local history projects that I have incorporated into my US History Survey courses. Over the last few semesters my students have participated in the “Collin Naming Project,” in conjunction with the Plano African American Museum. The Collin Naming Project’s goal is to identify as many people as we can that were enslaved in Collin County. By utilizing census data, wills, tax records and local documents we are attempting to give names to those who have been nameless. This project is challenging and often frustrating, but it has shown my students how difficult it can be to fully understand the past and sometimes just establish basic facts. Working on the “Collin Naming Project,” has not only benefited the families whose ancestors are identified, but has also shown my students the ways in which individuals can be absent in the historical narrative. I have also implemented an oral history interview in the second half of the US History Survey. Students are required to interview someone that is at least forty years older than them and who currently lives in the area. For the first time in almost two decades of teaching my students were genuinely excited to participate in a major history project. They were able to not only build stronger and better connections with their families and friends, but also gain a better appreciation of the diversity of our local communities. The vast majority of my students’ families are not from Collin County even though they live in it and they grew up there. Conducting interviews not only personalizes history, it also creates local connections to broader historical events.

New Directions in Public Histories of New York City

AHA Session 277
Sunday, January 5, 2025: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM

Chair: Katharine Uva, Baruch College, City University of New York
Panel:
Emily Brooks, New York Public Library
Shirley Brown Alleyne, Tenement Museum
Anna Klein Danziger Halperin, New-York Historical Society
Maeve K. Montalvo, Museum of the City of New York

Session Abstract

Today, public history sites and institutions have come under intense scrutiny in the United States as campaigns against “divisive concepts” mobilize activists to target histories presented in museums, libraries, public spaces, and classrooms. At the same time, these educational spaces have increasingly sought to make their exhibitions and curricula more inclusive of diverse experiences and marginalized voices. In addition, as the United States faces what many political scientists have labeled a decline in democracy, broad calls have emerged for more public engagement with history. In this roundtable, representatives from the New-York Historical Society, the Tenement Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Museum of the City of New York will discuss new works and initiatives produced by their institutions. Roundtable participants will consider how the exhibitions and curricula produced by their institutions present inclusive and diverse stories, how their institutions conceive of the public, and how they seek to help this public make meaning out of historical objects and at times how their institutions contend with opposition. With a particular focus on New York City, this roundtable will consider how new perspectives on the past have relevance for education and democracy in the city’s present.

American Historical Association Conference (2025): American Revolution Presentations

November 17, 2025
by Peter Feinman

This blog is part of an ongoing series about the presentations in the annual conference of the American Historical Association in January, 2025. This blog focuses on the American Revolution. Snippets from the new documentary were previewed.

The Plenary Sunday January 5 8:00-9:30

American Revolution-A New Film Directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt. Written by Geoffrey Ward

1. Jim Grossman, Executive Director AHA, announced that Ken Burns will partner with AHA for local screenings.
2. Lauren DuVal, University of Oklahoma characterized it as a scholarly work.
3. Brown referred to the American Revolution as a bitterly polarized time.
4. Ken Burns called it a civil war and not a sectional war. There were patriots and loyalists throughout the country unlike the more sectional confrontation in the second civil war. The documentary filmed many battles. Burns called it the most consequential revolution in human history.
5. Alan Taylor, University of Virginia, noted the patriots were a diverse military force fighting together in behalf of something in which they really believed.
6. Geoffrey Ward simply referred to it as a brutal vicious war.

State of the Field for Busy Teachers: Eve of American Revolution
AHA Session 263
Sunday, January 5, 2025: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Chair: Karin Wulf, Brown University and the John Carter Brown Library
Panel:
Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University
Samantha Futrell, Virginia Council for the Social Studies
Benjamin L. Carp, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Tracey Prince, East Orange STEM Academy

Session Abstract

We are now in the midst of local, state, and national celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States. This panel highlights the pivotal years of 1774 and 1775, as the lines of division that defined the American Revolution took shape. What can classroom teachers learn from recent scholarship about the opening chapters of the American Revolution? What sources and perspectives can help students engage with this history? And how might teachers navigate political pressures around the significance of the founding era?

The AHA’s State of the Field for Busy Teachers series provides a forum for history teachers at all levels to interact with leading historians and discuss content, sources, and trends in scholarly interpretation on a theme related to topics commonly addressed in the history classroom. We invite leading historians to outline current debates, new lines of inquiry, useful primary sources, historiographic developments, and/or revised periodizations. For the rest of the session, a panel of educators moderates a discussion, with robust audience participation, about how to incorporate insights from new research into the classroom. We anticipate a lively exchange in which all participants can walk away with new insights and resources.

General comments from the session included:
1. What can we do about the Trump impact?
2. The Revolution created opportunities and possibilities for immigrants.
3. The debate on the cause of the Revolution started with the Revolution itself.

AHA Session 89
Women in Revolutionary-Era New York City: Opportunities and Consequences
Saturday, January 4, 2025: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Chair: Serena R. Zabin, Carleton College
Panel:
Charlene Boyer Lewis, Kalamazoo College
Lauren Duval, University of Oklahoma
Carolyn Eastman, Virginia Commonwealth University
Alisa J. Wade, California State University, Chico

Session Abstract

A thriving commercial and cultural hub in the revolutionary era, New York City functioned as the British army’s North American headquarters for the majority of the American Revolution as well as the first capital of the United States. The experience of daily life in revolutionary-era New York therefore offers a unique perspective on the war and the nation that emerged from it.

Throughout the imperial crisis, and later, as war descended upon the city, New Yorkers experienced novel, often disorienting and frequently violent changes to their daily lives. Prewar boycotts and food shortages introduced new pressures into daily life. Once the war was underway, armies brought diseases and increased the potential for violence. In occupied New York, British troops and their families intermingled with civilian inhabitants, including New Yorkers of various statuses, races, and political affiliations, loyalist refugees from throughout the colonies, and enslaved freedom-seekers. Within the occupied city, property destruction and theft were rampant. Quartered troops disrupted the routines civilian households. Yet, amid this disruption, life went on. Families adapted to wartime constraints, adjusting their budgets and modifying their strategies of financial management. Businesses and labor markets rebounded. Neighbors looked out for one another.

But in addition to the perils of garrison life, it also introduced new possibilities, especially for women. Enslaved women flooded British garrisons in search of freedom for themselves and their kin. As the favored social companions of British officers, young elite white women wielded enhanced levels of social power within the garrison. Other elite women, benefiting from the privileges of from their status, whiteness, and familial ties, harnessed kinship-driven commercial networks to maintain financial security, and even profit, throughout the revolutionary period. And as diseases ran rampant, both during the war and into the yellow fever epidemics that occurred in the early years of the republic, many poor women found financial security in their work as nurses, and continued to benefit from visibility and respect these labors earned them. The opportunities and consequences of the war years continued to resonate far beyond the conflict and into the early years of the nation.

Throughout the revolutionary era, women—Black and white, free and enslaved, loyalists, revolutionaries, and disaffected—were integral to daily life in New York City. Their experiences illustrate the daily, quotidian experience of the American Revolution and the revolutionary era and demonstrate both the opportunities and the consequences that it introduced into people’s lives. Exploring diverse women’s experiences, this roundtable will explore how centering these perspectives sheds new light on revolutionary and founding-era New York City in ways that illustrate the centrality of gender to this period and this place.

1. What had NYC learned from 1793 Yellow Fever outbreak regarding quarantines and the myth of black immunity.
2. The male death rate doubled that of women in NYC.
3. The demographics of the city changed with 30,000 men descending into the city. It became more cosmopolitan. There were interactions between the British officers and the American women who remained in the city. The American males couldn’t compete with their British counterparts and American women adopted European styles versus the American plain-style.
– long tenure of British
– Dutch law differed from British law and American law on the treatment of women.
– There were differences between the elite women in the city and patriot women outside the city.
– The Revolution happened in the houses and on the streets and not just on the battlefield.

Q&A The question was raised about the impact of fire which burned the city.

Earthly Bodies, Heavenly Bodies, Bodies Politic: Conceptualizing Republics and Their Defenders in Europe, Britain, and America
AHA Session 153
North American Conference on British Studies 2
Saturday, January 4, 2025: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Chair: Rachel J. Weil, Cornell University

Session Abstract

Those who defended and crafted republics in Britain, America, and Europe drew upon a vast range of languages and conceptual vocabularies to define republicanism, forge political unions, and warn of the dangers of excess and fanaticism. This panel offers a comparative perspective of the long republican tradition, emphasizing the vigorous and energetic analogies and metaphors that writers adopted in the early modern and modern period to defend republicanism as a political system against monarchism, fanaticism, or corruption. As each paper demonstrates, the “languages” and discourses which shaped republicanism included broad influences past and present; whereas early modern writers in Britain and America adopted medical and cosmic ideas of cooperation and citizenship to champion republican ideas of liberty, modern writers seeking to combat fascism revived republican languages previously mired in debates over commerce, enlightenment, and war. Through this range of case studies, the panel shows how a classical mode of thinking – republicanism – became conceptualized and communicated in new political contexts.

The Star-Spangled Republic: Cosmic Republicanism, the American Revolution, and Beyond
Eran Shalev, University of Haifa

From the fifty-star flag to the Great Seal, from Greenbacks to the Star Spangled Banner, the star-as-American state, and consequently the United States as a constellation of star-states, is arguably the most salient – and least explored – symbol in American public language. The configuration of the star-as-state, and the consequent image of the United States as a “new constellation,” emerged in the early days of the American Revolution. The republicanism and anti-monarchism of the Revolution shattered the traditional political view based on the imagery of a single solar power center, habitually associated with monarchical systems. Instead of the king as Sun around which the political realm revolves and which holds the nation in equilibrium, in the 1770s an alternative and revolutionary republican cosmology emerged and was enshrined in the new nation’s symbols: a diffuse constellation of uniform floating stars devoid of a solar center that embodied egalitarian and republican values. The American Revolution would thus give rise to new modes of understanding and communicating the political order: no kingly star overshadowed and dominated others; together they constituted a novel federal republican system in which a plurality of individual stars held together, comprising a unity that was more perfect than its discrete parts.

Throughout the republic’s founding, expansion and the consequent addition of stars to its spangled banner, when it temporarily collapsed during the Civil War – and beyond, the language of political astronomy provided a distinct and rich vocabulary to articulate and express contemporaries’ shifting attitudes toward, and understanding of their federal republic. This unique, prevalent and overlooked language enabled contemporaries to communicate their positions regarding state and society, justify and vindicate their republicanism, and express their doubts regarding the fate of the United States.

What Do We Do When Liberty Dies? Republicanism and Fanaticism after Enlightenment
Richard Whatmore, University of St. Andrews

Most republics owe their origins to the perception that liberty has been lost and that action needs to be taken to restore or create anew such liberty. In the eighteenth century most of the surviving republics or free states – Venice, Genoa, the Dutch Republic, Geneva, the Swiss Confederation (and some would include the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth) – were seen to be losing their liberty and no longer had the tools to do anything about it. They gradually lost their independence in the turn to empire that accompanied what Hume termed commerce becoming a reason of state. For most republicans in the eighteenth century, the doctrine looked as if might go the way of the dodo; it appeared unsuited to commercial society, enlightenment and the large states generated by the necessity of expanding markets. The irony is that republicanism not only survived but thrived to become the foundational ideology of free states. This paper explores the republican legacies of the two free states that reversed the association between republicanism and military defeat: Britain and the First French Republic. Each accused the other of fomenting fanatic forms of liberty, addictions to war and empire and the renewal of wars of religion via republican patriotism. In the 1940s, Hayek, Popper, Talmon and others were searching for tools to combat fanaticism in the form of fascism, in the contested republican histories of the eighteenth century. They were certain that tools to prevent the death of liberty in the present could be found in the intellectual history of the European past.

The War on History: November 2024 to November 2025

November 13, 2025
by Peter Feinman
Button received at 2025 Conference

The war on history continues. A lot has happened in the past year. On November 24, 2024, I published the first of a six-blog series on What Are American Students Learning about US History?, about a two-year study by the American Historical Association. See below for the links to the six blogs.

Now almost exactly one year later, Ken Burns documentary “The American Revolution” is scheduled to begin. This block buster will change the national dialogue on the American Revolution. The topic has been subject of The New York Times 1619 Project, various executive orders from the President of the United States, dedicated issues by the Atlantic magazine and the Journal of the Early Republic along with numerous conferences and journal articles. And, oh yes, the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, Fort Ticonderoga, and Bunker Hill. There even was a failed invasion of Canada in 1775. Our good friend Benedict Arnold participated in two of these events.

November 2025 to November 2026 will prove to be another blockbuster year. All eyes will turn towards Philadelphia along for the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with a professional wrestling match in what’s left of the White House. From July 9, 1776 to November 18, 1776, New York will be the center of the American Revolution even though the state and the city aren’t doing much to commemorate those events (The New York State 250th Update, October 20, 2025).

Keeping track of all that is going on will be a challenge. The next blog will jump forward to January 2026, the annual conference of the American Historical Association. The conference is better known for its action on the Palestinians (The Hamas Wing versus the Hamilton Wing at the American Historical Association Conference, January 13, 2025) than for the presentations by Ken Burns on his documentary in the following session or the session on “What Are American Students Learning about US History Today?” It’s difficult to separate history and current events today.

What Are American Students Learning about US History Today? (Part 1 of 6: Introduction)
November 14, 2024

The American Historical Association (AHA) launched a two-year study on the topic of what are American students learning about US history today. The full report of 198 pages is available for download on its website. The study examined all 50 states for their standards and legislation. In addition, nine states covering a range of characteristics were selected for more in-depth analysis.

The release of the study was covered in the New York Times under the title “How History Teachers Navigate the Political Divide (September 22, 2024 print). According to that account, textbooks are out and digital sources and primary documents are in. Popular websites include the Smithsonian Institution and other federal archives and PBS. Others include the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History…..

…4. Room for improvement remains. A lack of resources, instructional time, and professional respect are among the clearest threats to the integrity of history education across the United States. Many of the teachers in our sample wished for more time and opportunity for professional learning focused on historical content—in essence, what happened, how, and why. If there is any wholly inaccurate message being sent by our public schools to millions of students and their families, it is that history is not important enough to command time, attention, and public resources.

What Are American Students Learning About US History? (Part 2 of 6: Overview)
November 15, 2024

This section notes the stormy debate which has engulfed the country: the stereotypes, the assumptions, the overtly ideological agendas. Even without evidence about “’inherently divisive concepts,’” state governments have plunged ahead to create unprecedented legal restrictions on the content of history instruction (7).

What has been missing is evidence. AHA found that “US history typically taught in public schools is not riddled with distortions or omissions” (10). [Home school? Private schools?] The curricula works best when questions of causation, context, and significance frame the content.

At times the materials fall short of the expectations of professional historians. The reasons being that history instruction has been streamlined to focus “on bare facts, banal platitudes, flat inevitabilities, or a vague set of literacy skills rather than meaningful knowledge” (10). One might add that these are exactly the traits that make history boring.

One conclusion should have been written in bold:

…social studies teachers need more classroom time and more professional development

One might add that these are precisely the areas that are most easily cut because they are direct reductions in spending just as bus trips are.

What Are American Students Learning about American History (Part 3 of 6: National Patterns)
November 23, 2024

High schools were and are universal. This led to multiple changes.

The high school building became a fixture in the civic landscape of a community. The physical state of the building became a comment on the state of the local community.

The high school became a center for non-academic activities, particularly sports, bands, cheer leading, and theater. These activities were visible to the general community in a way strictly classroom activities were not. Mascots became an important logo and symbol of identity for the school and the community.

Two new terms developed to describe the students attending these high schools – teenagers and adolescence. This meant such people were spending more and more time with their peers and less and less with their kin on the family farm.

The high school graduation ceremony became a de facto and unofficial form of naturalization where the graduating senior was recognized as an adult person in the community witnessed by family, friends, and elected officials.

Technological change provided increased mobility for these teenage adolescents independent of adult supervision..

Technological change provided increased means of communication for teenage adolescents independent of adult supervision.

Think of all the movies there have been related to these changes often with music.

Teaching now had to operate in a vastly different world then a few decades ago yet a century or more.

The AHA could not be expected to study all these developments. On the other hand, isolating a topic like history teaching from the surrounding world is incomplete too.

What Are American Students Learning About US History (Part 4: Curricular Decisions)
November 27, 2024

As for the state standards, AHA reports that a “great many teachers carry on with minimal awareness of the state agency’s alleged role in their work” (52)

Those “standards offer a rationale focused on preparing students for citizenship with critical thinking skills and an understanding of a complex world” (57”.

According to the AHA, “[t]eachers give mixed signals about history’s position in the accountability landscape” (60). Teachers “consistently cite social studies’ low priority status as a source of frustration” (60). Sometimes teachers in states with no state social studies testing wish there was such testing if only to boost the status of the discipline.

Still what happens in the schoolhouse often begins in the statehouse. AHA tracked 808 legislative acts passed between 1980 and 2022 which seems like a lot. “There’s also the much longer and quite widespread effort to incorporate diversity—namely the notion that the narrative of American history should incorporate stories from multiple perspectives, inclusive of the various groups that constitute the national population” (63). Between 1980 and 2022, there were 199 instances of state legislatures requiring that specifically named groups be accorded coverage in US history curriculum” (63). I suspect this in one reason why professional historians tend not to write general histories of the United States.

State legislators then may complicate the teaching of chronology-based courses.

State legislators are particularly fond of designating specific times of year (holidays, weeks, or months) as moments for concentrated study of a particular historical event, theme, group, or person (66).

AHA found 79 such laws between 1980 and 2022. The result is the civic calendar is prioritized over the chronological pacing for United States history.

[It] seems likely to encourage a series of ceremonial non sequiturs, rather than historical exploration of content and significance (66).

What Are American Students Learning About US History? (Part 5 of 6: Curricular Content)
November 29, 2024

Surveyed teachers were asked to respond on the importance of a series of goals and values. High rated items include

Building a shared sense of national identity among students across social groups

Building an appreciation for diversity

Cultivating an appreciation of the United States as an exceptional nation – 25% said not at all important

Developing informed citizens foe participation in a democratic society – highest rated

Expecting students to confront the role of racism in our nation’s character

Focusing on challenging/controversial topics – 4% said not at all important

Helping students see the role of God in our nation’s destiny – 67% said not at all important, more than double the second place topic

Installing civic pride in the nation

Installing core knowledge of national heritage – 5% said not at all important

Making connections to the present – 93% important/very important, the highest rating

Presenting us history as a consistent fulfillment of the promise of the nation’s founders -30% said not at all important, the second highest after seeing God’s role

Presenting us history as a story of violence, oppression, and/or injustice – 29% said not at all important.

AHA proposes these results are an index of a common national teaching culture among educators (134).

What Are American Students Learning About US History? (Part 6 of 6: Conclusions)
December 1, 2024

AHA CONCLUSIONS

AHA noted the highly visible controversies in the public arena … and also the lack of evidence behind those debates. As AHA began this study

…we realized that tensions and conflicts within a school community rarely matched the conflagrations depicted in national and social media (182).

AHA strongly supported the teachers who they found to be strongly committed to keeping their contemporary preferences from skewing how they teach. They are committed to teaching students how to think and not what to think (183).

Overall, “the edifice of secondary history education in the United States rests on solid foundations” (183).

AHA found that the typical tensions derive from fundamental struggles over authority and autonomy: with adolescents who aren’t necessarily motivated by what teachers have to offer and with administrators’ expectations (184).

The AHA strongly supports history-rich professional development for social studies teachers. The cancellation of the Teaching American History federal grant program in 2011 was mentioned. AHA says there is a desperate need for renewed professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers. Teachers want access to the high-quality content-specific programs essential to maintaining their qualifications as historians and their enthusiasm for history (185). The licensing to become a social studies teacher in the first place requires passing a test and typically taking history courses (192).

For two centuries, the basic rational for teaching US history in public schools has been consistent: to instill in students a sense of belonging to the nation and to prepare them for participation as citizens of a republic (185). History is a thrilling way for students to learn about their communities, whether understood locally, nationally, or globally (186).

History Wars: Patriots versus Loyalists, The Battle Is Engaged

October 10, 2025
by Peter Feinman
Button received at 2025 Conference

I am writing this post wearing my “Defend History!” button. The button was distributed by David Blight, Yale University, president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) at the annual conference last spring. Blight has been quite active and prominent in defending history from the assault by Donald Trump, president of the United States.

My original intention was to review the battle in 2025 since January. The focus was to be the annual conferences of the AHA in January and OAH in April, the various executive orders, and the AHA study on what social studies teachers actually teach. I still hope to do so and to include the American Revolution 250th in the discussion. However, there are some current events which deserve attention now.

LOYALISTS

U.S. Department of Education, AFPI, TPUSA, Hillsdale College, and Over 40 National and State Organizations Launch America 250 Civics Coalition

ED and 40 Partners Launch America 250 Civics Education Coalition

September 17, 2025

The U.S. Department of Education (the Department), alongside the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, and more than 40 leading national and state-based organizations today announced the launch of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition. This landmark initiative is dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge, and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation. 

The coalition, announced on Constitution Day, builds upon the Trump Administration’s commitment to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary next July.

With oversight from U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and the Department, the AFPI-led coalition will spearhead nationwide initiatives to engage students, educators, and communities in conversations about liberty, citizenship, and America’s enduring values. 

“As America approaches 250 years since its founding, we are proud to announce this coalition to ensure every young American understands the beauty of our nation and is equipped with the civic knowledge required to contribute meaningfully to its future,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “A country cannot survive if its values are forgotten by its people. More than ever, we need to restore the vitality of the American spirit, and this coalition will take bold steps to educate, inspire, and mobilize youth toward active and informed citizenship.”

On surface, there is merit to this initiative and the need to reinvigorate pride in the country, respect for the law, and familiarity with American history. But this ignores that Trump is in the process of dismantling the Department of Education with the intention of eliminating it. At some point he may realize that he needs the Department of Education around to implement his vision and to monitor compliance by the school systems.

It also ignores the erasing of American history currently underway by the NPS, the Smithsonian, and other federal institutions. It overlooks the rival with the Confederacy, one of the most divisive events in American history. The list of participating organizations omits many of the leading history organizations in the United States plus the very institutions of higher learning with expertise in these areas. Of course, it is precisely those organizations that have been under attack by Trump.

PATRIOTS

Not surprisingly, this action by Trump led to a vigorous response by these leading history organizations. Action alerts were emailed to the members of them as well as shown below.

Action Alert: Submit Comments on Proposed Patriotic Education Funding Priority

On September 17, 2025, the US Department of Education announced plans to prioritize patriotic education in its discretionary grant programs, initiating a mandatory 30-day public comment period. The American Historical Association (AHA), National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), and Organization of American Historians (OAH) jointly encourage our members and other supporters of a full account of history to submit comments to the federal register by October 17, 2025.

How You Can Help

Earlier this year, the AHA and the OAH outlined in a statement, endorsed by the NCSS, the damaging effects such a “narrow conception of patriotism and patriotic education” would have on US history education. We encourage members of our organizations and other supporters of public education to submit public comments by October 17, 2025. This is our opportunity to help the Department of Education refine its understanding of what constitutes “an accurate and honest account of American history.”

Students deserve an honest and full account of US history. This funding priority promises to support the teaching of “accurate and honest” content. We consider this goal profoundly important, and this is why we are concerned about efforts to scrub historical content from federal websites, remove factual signage at historic sites, and attack curatorial decisions at Smithsonian museums, alleging that this history is insufficiently celebratory in its depiction of the United States. A 2024 NCSS and Encourage survey of more than 50,000 students and almost 1,000 educators showed that social studies teachers and their students identified the ability to visit museums and historic sites as a top priority for both groups.

We do not need to think alike in order to find common purpose; the founders of the United States found common purpose amid multiple conflicts and divisions. The proposed Department of Education priority states that “a shared understanding of our political, economic, intellectual, and cultural history—including our national symbols and heroes” is a prerequisite for informed patriotism. The founding generation of the United States did not have a shared understanding of their history, their symbols, or their heroes; nor have subsequent generations. US patriotism is diverse and multifaceted and it is capacious enough to include even those who are critical and skeptical about patriotism.

The Department of Education’s rule asserts that there can only be one interpretation of an event, an assertion that runs contrary to the practice of history and the importance of allowing people to engage in civil deliberations. Disagreement also is a strength of our political system and not a flaw.

Good history instruction opens doors—it invites students to ask compelling questions and encourages intellectual curiosity and supports informed debate. In a recent survey conducted by NCSS and Encourage, 55% of students participating noted that the main benefit of social studies education is “understanding my role as a citizen.”

  • Many history and social studies educators already provide a strong foundation for reflective patriotism, including regular teaching of the founding documents. In 2024, the AHA published results from a survey [completed in 2022] of over 3,000 middle and high school US history educators. This research underscored the point that social studies and history teachers are professionals who are primarily concerned with helping their students learn central elements of our nation’s history. Nearly 100% of the teachers surveyed rated “developing informed citizens for participation in a democratic society” as a goal for their history courses, and 94% identified this as an important or very important outcome.

As organizations that together represent educators in all 50 states (and their respective school districts), we have consistently supported the idea that states and local education entities are best positioned to develop social studies standards, and we have long defended the intellectual freedom of both students and teachers.

The teaching of US history should invite discussion, encourage inquiry, and reflect the diverse people, places, and events that shape our shared human experience. A strong social studies education helps students develop the ability to analyze information, engage in meaningful discourse, and contribute thoughtfully to their communities.

The commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence must provide opportunities for all Americans to learn from our shared history, one that includes recognition of the complex challenges, aspirations, and struggles across this history to enact a more perfect union.

The Declaration of Independence has worldwide significance, and the US Constitution was not solely the derivative of Western political thought. … The founding of the United States occupies a profound and complex place in the larger context of world history, and the rule’s narrow limitation to “Western Civilization” promotes incomplete history and is a disservice to students, to Americans, and to the larger world.

It is both misleading and ahistorical to describe “Judeo-Christianity” as an organizing principle of patriotic education about US history. It not only minimizes the contributions of other religious traditions but also downplays the long history of religious discrimination, division, exclusion, and persecution within diverse worlds that this policy would flatten into a singular tradition.

 The devil is in the details. It remains to be seen exactly what curriculum this coalition produces. Will its implementation be voluntary? Will state superintendents accept the proposed curriculum whatever it should turn out to be? Will the appropriate teacher-training sessions be held so the new curriculum can be implemented? Where exactly within the existing curriculum will the new one be inserted? Will there be any beta-site testing of the new curriculum or will it simply be promulgated full stop? What will the penalty be if a state or local school system declines to implement it? What happened to the vaunted cry of states’ rights? What happened to the constantly expressed opposition to having students indoctrinated with un-American values? Will such indoctrination suddenly be championed?

The petitions are likely to have no effect on Trump. He will go full-speed ahead to develop and implement his curriculum. The odds are such efforts will be met by the same resistance as demonstrated in the recent “No Kings” rally. Plus he continues to accumulate power and seeks to extend his rule beyond 2028.

My position has been that we are reliving America’s first civil war. For the Patriots to remove the Loyalists from power will prove quite difficult. Skirmishes are already occurring such as in Chicago. Gerrymandering  is altering the battlefield. Voter suppression is planned. So far there is no modern George Washington or Founding Fathers to rally the citizens and lead the Patriots. There is no Thomas Paine either, no Declaration of Independence for the 21st century, and the prospect of rigged elections starting in November 2025 looms large. The first campaign of the current civil war between the Patriots and the Loyalists will come to a head on November 4, 2025, only days from now. It will provide an opportunity to gauge the strength of the two sides.

The Hamas Wing versus the Hamilton Wing at the American Historical Association Conference

January 13, 2025
by Peter Feinman

The annual conference January 3-6, 2025, in New York City, of the American Historical Association exposed the two wings of the organization: the Hamas wing and the Hamilton Wing. The exposure occurred Sunday evening, January 5. So far the event has been covered by two articles in The New York Times.

“Historians’ Group Votes to Condemn ‘Scholasticide’ in Gaza” by Jennifer Schuessler (online January 6, print January 8). She reported on the Hamas event. I was sitting by her at the Hamilton one and said I would not blog about it until after her article appeared. She also had written about another history organization, the Society for Historians of the Early Republic (SHEAR), when it had its contretemps that also made the news (SHEAR CHAOS: A Culture Wars Train Wreck for a History Organization, August 19, 2020). Her article, Clash of the Historians Over Andrew Jackson,” (July 27, 2020, print), had appeared a few weeks earlier.

The second article was an op-ed piece by Pamela Paul, “Historians Condemn Israel’s ‘Scholasticide.’ The Question Is Why (online January 8) and “Historians Take a Misguided Stand on Gaza” (print January 10). Last time I looked, it had generated 701 comments, some rather lengthy, before being closed.

HAMAS WING

The impetus for this clash was the proposed resolution:

Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza

Whereas the US government has underwritten the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign in Gaza with over $12.5 billion in military aid between October 2023 and June 2024;

Whereas that campaign, beyond causing massive death and injury to Palestinian civilians and the collapse of basic life structures, has effectively obliterated Gaza’s education system;

Whereas in April 2024, UN experts expressed “grave concern over the pattern of attacks on schools, universities, teachers, and students in the Gaza Strip” including “the killing of 261 teachers and 95 university professors . . . which may constitute an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as scholasticide.”

The bases for this charge include:

  • The IDF’s destruction of 80 percent of schools in Gaza, leaving 625,000 children with no educational access;
  • The IDF’s destruction of all 12 Gaza university campuses;
  • The IDF’s destruction of Gaza’s archives, libraries, cultural centers, museums, and bookstores, including 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques, three churches, and the al-Aqsa University library, which preserved crucial documents and other materials related to the history and culture of Gaza;
  • The IDF’s repeated violent displacements of Gaza’s people, leading to the irreplaceable loss of students’ and teachers’ educational and research materials, which will extinguish the future study of Palestinian history;

 

Whereas the United States government has supplied Israel with the weapons being used to commit this scholasticide;

Therefore, be it resolved that the AHA, which supports the right of all peoples to freely teach and learn about their past, condemns the Israeli violence in Gaza that undermines that right;

Be it further resolved that the AHA calls for a permanent ceasefire to halt the scholasticide documented above;

Finally, be it resolved that the AHA form a committee to assist in rebuilding Gaza’s educational infrastructure.

Paul asked in her opening paragraph:

The history profession has plenty of questions to grapple with right now. Between those on the right who want it to accentuate America’s uniqueness and greatness and those on the left who want it to emphasize America’s failings and blind spots, how should historians tell the nation’s story? What is history’s role in a society with a seriously short attention span? And what can the field do — if anything — to stem the decline in history majors, which, at most recent count, was an abysmal 1.2 percent of American college students?

She then observed:

But the most pressing question at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, which I just attended in New York, had nothing to do with any of this. It wasn’t even about the study or practice of history. Instead, it was about what was called Israel’s scholasticide — defined as the intentional destruction of an education system — in Gaza, and how the A.H.A., which represents historians in academia, K-12 schools, public institutions and museums in the United States, should respond.

The suggestion appears to be that the historians have taken their eyes off the ball as to what should be of primary importance to them (us) as historians.

According to Schuessler, the vote followed months of organizing by supporters of the resolution. According to Paul, there was a rally prior to the business meeting. The meeting itself was jam-packed. It was standing room only with an excess spilling over into the foyer beyond the reach of the sound system. Each of us was given five index cards of different colors for voting. That was in case there were multiple votes. Then we were told to use the white index card only for the vote. Not everyone had cards. Finally we were told we could use anyone of the cards. The person sitting behind me kept saying a person could then submit five cards as they were passed to the aisles.

The debate consisted of five speakers for each side with two minutes. In general, the speakers observed the restriction. As for the civility, it was somewhat lacking particularly against those who were against the resolution. One argument repeatedly made was that the AHA would lose credibility in its advocacy work. The AHA frequently advocates in (Republican) states considering legislative restrictions on the teaching of history. The passage of the resolution would undermine that credibility particularly during the Trump presidency. Here is where the boos and the laughter were at their strongest.

Many of the attendees appeared to be grad students. These are the people in a diminished market and with student loans who would be most in need of federal assistance. Schuessler ended her article by quoting a professor who voted against the resolution as saying after the resolution had passed, “This feeds directly into the idea that academics are unapologetically political and are all on board with a pretty far left-wing view of the Israel-Hamas war….[I]f a resolution” like this goes through at the biggest organization of historians in America, that’s really bad for us.” In other words, by giving the President, Congress, and Republican (and some Democratic) legislatures the finger will be counterproductive when extending the hand for funding.

Paul quotes one of the speakers in opposition to the resolution:

“If this vote succeeds, it will destroy the A.H.A.,” Jeffrey Herf, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Maryland and one of five historians who spoke against the resolution on Sunday, told me. “At that point, public opinion and political actors outside the academy will say that the A.H.A. has become a political organization and they’ll completely lose trust in us. Why should we believe anything they have to say about slavery or the New Deal or anything else?”

She also quotes Executive Director Jim Grossman, an opponent of the resolution in a message to the members:

“The A.H.A. cannot, does not, and should not intervene everywhere… As a membership organization, we keep our distance from issues that are controversial within and among our members. And we keep in mind that our effectiveness rests on our legitimacy, our reputation for even-handedness, professional integrity and appropriately narrow boundaries.”

Here one may observe the disconnect between the institutional position of those who appear before legislators and who speak to Congressional representatives and those who call for the AHA to take a stand on principle assuming they understand the consequences of such actions.

Paul noted:

Enrollment in history classes is in decline and departments are shrinking. The job market for history Ph.Ds is abysmal.

Finally the resolution substantiates and hardens the perception that academia has become fundamentally politicized at precisely the moment Donald Trump, hostile to academia, is entering office and already threatening to crack down on left wing activism in the classroom. Why fan those flames?

One only has to think of the fate to the university presidents at Harvard, MIT, and Penn questioned by then Representative Elise Stefanik on anti-Semitism on their campuses. She is moving on to become the Ambassador to the United Nations while those three university presidents lost their jobs

She noted that the sponsors of the resolution were an affiliate of a group founded in 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq. Indeed, one of the speakers on behalf on the resolution noted he had been fighting the fight since 2003.

The audience reaction to the speakers made it clear that the resolution would pass. It so in a vote 428 in support, 88 against, and 4 abstained. Paul reported hearing the chant “Free, free Palestine!” after the results were announced.

Let’s put the vote in context to use a favored history approach.

By coincidence and subsequent to the conference there was an article in The New York Times on the changes in the school curriculum being imposed by the new Syrian rulers (Ridding Syrian Classroom of More Than al-Assad, January 8, 2025 print). For example, the Roman-era Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, has been deleted. Syrian Christians and Jews are now singled out as people who have been led astray. Interestingly, Egyptians have no problems with glorifying the pre-Moslem pyramids while Iran sometimes struggles with Cyrus the Great and Persia.

By coincidence and again subsequent to the conference, there was an article in The New York Times about the genocide in Sudan (Sudan Rebels Are Guilty of Genocide, The U.S. Says, January 8, 2025 print). It condemns the systematic murders of black Africans in particular the Masalit ethnic group by Arab Africans. And when people are not directly murdered, aid to them is restricted. More than eleven million people have fled the country making Sudan the largest source of refugees for a single country.

By coincidence and again subsequent to the conference, there was an article in The New York Times about Nicolás Maduro, the incumbent Venezuelan president who successfully stole an election (Maduro, Accused of Stealing Election, Seizes a Third Term, January 11, 2025 print). At his inauguration he promised peace, prosperity, democracy, and equality with the words:

“I swear before history.

In addition, he is stockpiling foreign hostages including Americans as bargaining chips for future negotiations. In the meantime President Biden has extended protections for the nearly 600,000 Venezuelans refugees living in the United States for another 18 months. Maduro biggest export has become the people of his country who have left by the millions.

Finally, by coincidence and again subsequent to the conference, there was an article in The New York Times about China’s efforts to eliminate the Tibetan culture one child at a time (Erasing Tibetans’ Culture, One Child at a Time, January, 12, 2025, front page Sunday print). The article recounts the Chinese actions to assimilate Tibetan children in ways that are very similar to the Boarding schools once common in the United States. These actions are very similar to what Russia is doing today with the children from the Ukrainian lands it has occupied.

Although these articles appear subsequent to the conference, they all refer to longstanding conditions prior to the conference. There was ample opportunity to propose a resolution to condemn these actions as well. Obviously there was none.

The first reaction might be because the intent was to single out Israel. This does not mean that all the supporters on the resolution are anti-Semitic or support the Hamas call of “river to the sea,” the goal it teaches in its schools. But there may be more to it than simply being anti Israel.

There is a longstanding tradition of protest going back to the war in Iraq. Such protests are against the United States. In other words, to condemn Israel also is to condemn the United States, Israel’s closest ally. One can’t help but wonder how many of the supporters of the resolution also embrace the Semiquincentennial celebration. I suspect not many.

HAMILTON WING

By coincidence, the next session after the business meeting was a plenary session “The American Revolution: A New Film Directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, Written by Geoffrey Ward.” This session was directly across the hall from the business meeting (with a break for dinner). The room may be slightly larger but the audience size seemed roughly the same.

The demographics of the meeting were substantially different. It was older and whiter, more traditional as someone said. By coincidence I was sitting by Jennifer Schuessler so we had an opportunity to compare notes about the two meetings. The difference in the audiences in the two sessions was remarkable.

Now the resolution is winding its way through the AHA council for eventual voting by the full 10,000 member organization, more than the 4,000 who attended the conference, and more than the 520 who voted at the business meeting. I expect there may be more articles and blogs when that vote is announced.

What Are American Students Learning About US History? (Part 6 of 6: Conclusions)

December 1, 2024
by Peter Feinman

In the previous blogs, I reported on the topic of “What Are American Students Learning About US History?” The first blog introduced the two-year study conducted by the American Historical Association (AHA). The second blog provided an overview of the report. The third blog reviewed the national patterns observed by the AHA in the teaching of social studies. The fourth blog examined the decision-making curricular materials. The fifth blog surveyed the issue of curricular content in the teaching of social studies. The sixth and final blog covers the AHA conclusions plus an analysis on what was omitted.

AHA CONCLUSIONS

AHA noted the highly visible controversies in the public arena … and also the lack of evidence behind those debates. As AHA began this study

…we realized that tensions and conflicts within a school community rarely matched the conflagrations depicted in national and social media (182).

AHA strongly supported the teachers who they found to be strongly committed to keeping their contemporary preferences from skewing how they teach. They are committed to teaching students how to think and not what to think (183).

Overall, “the edifice of secondary history education in the United States rests on solid foundations” (183).

AHA found that the typical tensions derive from fundamental struggles over authority and autonomy: with adolescents who aren’t necessarily motivated by what teachers have to offer and with administrators’ expectations (184).

The AHA strongly supports history-rich professional development for social studies teachers. The cancellation of the Teaching American History federal grant program in 2011 was mentioned. AHA says there is a desperate need for renewed professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers. Teachers want access to the high-quality content-specific programs essential to maintaining their qualifications as historians and their enthusiasm for history (185). The licensing to become a social studies teacher in the first place requires passing a test and typically taking history courses (192).

For two centuries, the basic rational for teaching US history in public schools has been consistent: to instill in students a sense of belonging to the nation and to prepare them for participation as citizens of a republic (185). History is a thrilling way for students to learn about their communities, whether understood locally, nationally, or globally (186).

CRITIQUE

A class in civics on paper does not mean that students and students who are now adults are knowledgeable about American history or how the government operates.

For example Shelly Mayer, my state senator and chair of the New York State Education Committee was just interviewed (November 29, 2024, Westmore News) for my local weekly newspaper. The following comes from the notes of the Westmore News reporter as presented by the op-ed writer:

New York’s per pupil spending has been the highest in the nation since about 2005 with mediocre results and very little, if any academic improvements for decades. The changes in graduation requirements just approved by the Regents will require a massive overall of the entire system.

The purpose of public education has been changed from raising academic achievement for all students (No Child Left Behind) to Equity defined as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Is this what parents, businesses and colleges want given the divisiveness DEI has caused in the workplace, in colleges, in the military, such that it is being cut back, and even eliminated in many places.

What is the cost? It is likely to cost millions if not billons. There has been no public discussion of how much or where it will come from. How many hires to work on transformation of high schools? What about professional development?

According to Senator Mayer, when she goes to visit schools and is introduced as a State Senator, the students are usually baffled. They know about Senators but they are in Washington!

It was at this point we all shard a collective frustration about the lack of civics education and the dangers of turning out an ignorant electorate.

Note: My local newspaper closed December 20, 2024, which will be the subject of another blog.

Unfortunately history and civics scores are dropping nationally. Covid witnessed a decline in scores that continues even now that the pandemic ended. The Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational progress recorded a decline in the number of students who attained basic standards.in US history.

One possible explanation given is the corresponding reduction in classroom time dedicated to social studies. No Child Left Behind promotes reading and math with there being no federal mandate for social studies. If it’s not tested, it’s not taught. That diminishment has consequences for the future of democracy (“History and Civics Test Scores Are Dropping: A Existing Trend Sped Up as Students Endured the Panic” [New York Times May 24, 2023, print]).

The ripple effects of the decline in civics caries forward from high school to college (“By Dropping Civics, Colleges Gave Fuel to the Culture Wars” [Debra Satz and a Edelstein, New York Times, September 7, 2023, print). Students lack a shared intellectual framework that is called civics education. College courses “provided a mutually intelligible set of reference that situation student’s disagreements on common ground” (Satz and Edelstein). These courses have been abandoned except at Columbia. They were replaced by often excellent courses “that had no common core of readings nor any transparent rationale for why they were required” (Satz and Edelstein).

Civic education as a public good cannot compete with STEM, vocationalism, and career-oriented classes. We the People always comes in second to I, the individual and the country is the loser.

One should keep in mind that we have a Senator from Alabama who did know what the three branches of the government were and who were our allies and who were our foes in World War II. One might add given Supreme Court decisions on presidential immunity and Seal 6 teams and the lack of commitment to the Constitution, determining exactly what civics is and what it is not are problematical.

We also live in a time of school closings not expansion or stability. These closings are due to demographic declines and the post-Covid growth of private schools and homeschooling.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers said “At the end of the days, kids need to be together in community” (quoted in “The Unequal Effects of School Closings,” Alec MacGillis, The New Yorker, August 26, 2024).

Despite the rosy picture painted by the AHA there is a decline in the belief in American Exceptionalism. Among the young, that belief is rapidly dying. The surveyed students indicated a positive response by 27% in 2022 (“The Death of American Exceptionalism,” Jean M. Twenge, The Atlantic, October 15, 2024).

Even the belief that the founding of the United States was a positive development seems to be on the way out (Twenge).

Four of 10 Gen Zers identified the Founder as “villains.” What is the explanation for the disillusionment? One explanation is the mental health of depressed teens. Negative news is king. The death of newspapers which printed both sides of an issue has contributed to this perpetual negative spin (Twenge).

Twenge suggests another reason may be in shifts in high-school American-history curricula. In some states, especially the liberal ones, more time is spent on the deplorable facts of the nation’s history. That includes the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the massacre of Native Americans, and the ownership of slaves by the Founders. As a social psychologist Twenge expressed concerns about the impact these conditions are having.

The call for more professional development for history teachers is exactly right. However that raises the question of which history by the “experts” will be taught.

But since the 1960s, academic historians have splintered into narrow subfields that speak only to one another in increasingly esoteric jargon, while the public has become incurious and incapable of reading anything longer than a few paragraphs. Popular history has come to mean political biography and military history, two fields that academic historians often avoid or even disdain (“Uses and Abuses,” Scott Spillman, Popular History 33, September 29, 2024).

This topic has been the subject of multiple blogs for many years. Spillman extends kudos to Jill Lepore and Heather Cox Richardson. He also notes the impact of the 1619 Project which the teachers in the survey specifically downplayed as a source.

Spillman comments that to achieve popularity, a book needs to be interesting and fun to read. The problems with academic books is not that the authors are terrible writers on a sentence-by-sentence level [this excludes German writers where a sentence can be a paragraph or page long!], but that they are overwritten. The popular postwar historians who did not write like that were not primarily historians.

There was a need for a new narrative synthesis of American history. Spillman provides examples of 18 such books from the 1980s to 2009 that fit the bill. “Taken collectively, these books told the whole story of the United States from the colonial period to the present, defying the conventional wisdom that professional spurned synthesis, narrative or the reading public in these decades. Left unsaid in the AHA report is when are teachers expected to have time to read these books assuming of course that they can identify them in the first place.

Spillman observes a change has occurred.

A generation earlier, in the previous round of culture wars, the battles over American history ultimately died away because almost everyone involved still agreed that the American story was fundamentally a story about the promise of freedom, even as they disagreed over whether and when that promise had been achieved. By the 2010s, that had changed.  

Spillman complains that the books “often lack any acknowledgement that people of good faith might hold conflicting ideas about the story of American history or hat, even if they agree about the basic story, they might draw starkly different lessons from it.”

One area not included in the AHA report is the effect of influences from outside the classroom. Teaching United States history does not exist independent of family and community. Take for example, slavery and the Confederacy. In addition to the prominent monuments which have been toppled there are Confederate streets, parks, buildings, battlefield re-enactments, family traditions and mementos right inside the home … to say nothing of Gone with the Wind and decals on a whole range of items. A Confederate flag was even waved inside the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection which the incoming President calls a day of love. So regardless of what happens inside the classroom, teachers are not teaching in a vacuum.

Now since October 7, 2023, the issue of anti-Semitism has come to the fore. True, the AHA report predates that event, but the issue of contentious topics really was not addressed in it. Here the true measure of the effectiveness of the teaching of social studies may be measured in events outside the classroom rather than curriculum boxes checked off inside the classroom.

To sum up, the AHA report paints a somewhat rosy picture for the teaching of social studies in American education. There may a gap between what is presented on paper and what is learned by the students. If the primary goals are teach students critical thinking, civics, and to be prepared to be adult citizens in the United States more work needs to be done. As we are beginning to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of the country if a growing percentage of the population thinks the country was born in sin twice and is not fit to play a leading role on behalf of freedom in the world, then the consequences will be dire not just for the country but the planet.

What Are American Students Learning About US History? (Part 5 of 6: Curricular Content)

November 29, 2024
by Peter Feinman

In the previous blogs, I reported on the topic of “What Are American Students Learning About US History?” The first blog introduced the two-year study conducted by the American Historical Association (AHA). The second blog provided an overview of the study. The third blog reviewed national patterns which the AHA observed over time in the history social studies teaching. The fourth blog focused on curriculum decision-making. In this blog the focus is curricular content.

Goals and Values

Surveyed teachers were asked to respond on the importance of a series of goals and values. High rated items include

Building a shared sense of national identity among students across social groups
Building an appreciation for diversity
Cultivating an appreciation of the United States as an exceptional nation – 25% said not at all important
Developing informed citizens foe participation in a democratic society – highest rated
Expecting students to confront the role of racism in our nation’s character
Focusing on challenging/controversial topics – 4% said not at all important
Helping students see the role of God in our nation’s destiny – 67% said not at all important, more than double the second place topic
Installing civic pride in the nation
Installing core knowledge of national heritage – 5% said not at all important
Making connections to the present – 93% important/very important, the highest rating

Presenting us history as a consistent fulfillment of the promise of the nation’s founders -30% said not at all important, the second highest after seeing God’s role

Presenting us history as a story of violence, oppression, and/or injustice – 29% said not at all important.

AHA proposes these results are an index of a common national teaching culture among educators (134).

The topics and era that were the favorites to teach include

81% Civil Rights Movement
79% American Revolution and Founding of the republic
74% World War II
70% Great Depression and New Deal
70% Slavery and Antebellum South,

The least favorite were

11% Clinton and the New Democrats
15% The Great Recession and Present Day
16% The Information Age
17% The Counterculture

“This picture doesn’t square with ideological caricatures of politicized classrooms” (136). When there is a problem with the curricular materials it is more likely due to sacrificing detail and complexity in pursuit of streamlining.

Historiography rates low as a skill set. This means that teachers and students do not learn about the behind-the-scene debates which occur over these topics.

The following is a review through the timeline in the teaching of US history. It identifies some of key events and issues in that teaching.

[C]urricular coverage of Native American history is the most likely to blur into generalities and the least likely to reflect recent scholarship from professional historians. Surveyed teachers confess to feelings of inadequacy on this topic (140).

They tend to be grouped together and generalized save for specific acts in history like the Trail off Tears. There is a “sharp drop-off of Indians after the close of the Plains Wars” (141).

It’s as if Indians disappear in the 20th century as historical actors. That disappearance of the “abstract Indian” may be counteracted in state and local history classes were the Indians are rooted in a particular place. The greater the presence of federally recognized tribes the more curricular time will be devoted to them (142).

There is a naming issue. European peoples and nations tend to be named despite their regional and cultural diversity. By contrast, Indian nations and peoples tend to be collapsed into a single entity [You’ve seen one, you’ve seen all – not in the report].

Problems of abstraction and timelessness in Native history have not been solved by various gestures of sensitivity, sympathy, or a decolonized pedagogy… While perhaps well-intentioned, these approaches obscure the political, cultural, and material contexts that shaped Native American societies and empires (145-146).

As you might expect, this leads to problems.

The framing of Native history as a moral quandary for contemporary Americans is a recurrent theme in classroom coverage.

“The most common ideological synthesis among teachers described the founding as an expansive and unfinished struggle” (157) – a work in progress.

John Gast’s painting American Progress is one of the most assigned sources for students studying westward expansion….But the painting is also a handy symbol for the overemphasis on the concept of Manifest Destiny that predominates in K-12 materials” (157).

Indian removal, specifically the Trail of Tears, frequently is taught in this era but often disconnected from the broader story of westward expansion. Rarely do standards or curriculum give much detail about the dozens of distinct efforts undertaken by Native tribes to resist or determine the path of removal. And seldom does the curriculum tie the removal of Indians to other antebellum events, including the expansion of slavery (159).

[S]ome curriculum plans indicate overly general questions and descriptions that give students the wrong impression about the significance of westward expansion (160).

[T]here no longer appears to be any serious controversy among teachers about slavery’s central role as the cause of the Civil War (161).

AHA comments that slavery still could be covered more comprehensively. But it is recognized that it is a uniquely challenging topic due to its potential for controversy (162).

Frederick Douglass’s “the Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” is the go-to text for this period (163).

[W]hile no teachers we spoke to or surveyed apologize for slavery in their courses, their efforts to explain the economic existence of slavery sometimes gives it a sense of inevitability that should not be applied to its existence or its end….[C]urriculum textbooks consistently overemphasize the importance of Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to the spread of plantation slavery (165).

[A]n excessive focus on military history leaves out far too much of the other histories that students should learn about (166).

AHA favors more coherently incorporating the insights of social and economic history (166).

The post-Reconstruction eras are challenging for teachers. Students are uninterested, disengaged, or academically unprepared (167). It may be taught at the beginning of the school year up to three years after the student’s last US history class and with a different teacher. Teachers spoke of the shaky transitions between middle school and high school history classes (168).

It is the time of the masses and not the individual of the earlier American history.

…keywords from both the Gilded Age and Progressive Era form a barrier of anonymity that only the most well-known and elite historical actors, like Carnegie and Rockefeller, can breach (170).

Technology and the improvement of daily like is a common idea (171).

The Civil Rights Movement is the only content area that can be critiqued by still-living participants and witnesses (173).

Local resources can be invaluable here but in general, the story of the Civil Rights Movement is told with a southern accent (180).

Room for improvement clearly remains, most notably in expanding treatment of events outside of the South (181).

This concludes the review of the curriculum. The next and final blog on this topic will report the conclusions of the AHA plus what it missed.