The Importance of Teaching and Applying Historical Thinking Skills

ATTENTION: While still worth the read, this article is outdated. Please read Historical thinking skills in the classroom, Part 1: Shifting your mindset for the most updated ideas on historical thinking skills in the classroom.

We’ve all been there before: after reading a section in your history book and answering the comprehension questions the night before, your teacher gives a PowerPoint lecture on some important historical events followed by a review where you’re expected to regurgitate important dates and facts – or at least what your teacher and the textbook deem important. This routine plays out again and again, and you start to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Finally, two days of review and a test – possibly multiple choice – imploring you to recall some facts and dates break the monotony before starting the process over again.

This was my experience as a student teacher. My cooperative teacher was a 20-year veteran educator in an upscale school district who was paid over $100,000 per year to give PowerPoint lectures about American history to middle-schoolers, followed by a multiple-choice Scantron test. To be fair, he was a passionate, well-meaning teacher who wanted to make sure students knew their history well so they could be civically informed citizens. Even then, I knew that was not the teacher I wanted to be. I was going to be “hands-on” with my lessons, whatever that meant. While I did lecture frequently, I attempted to break it up with cutesy activities such as having groups of students put together newscasts about the Alamo and having students research the Oregon Trail and concoct a story of their journey using common experiences.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that both of us were stuck in a Stone Age mindset about Social Studies education which anoints the teacher as primary arbiter of information for students to cram and recall someday in the future, say if they ever compete on Jeopardy. We were not alone in this paradigm. The debates over whether the 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory, and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States have a place in the history classroom, along with those who want to legislate against “indoctrination” or advocate for teaching “true history,” show that many non-educators also hold these outdated beliefs. In an age where dates, facts, and information about important events and people can be Googled in mere seconds, less important is what content is taught or which sources are used. Rather, the focus should be on teaching students how to think (in this case, like historians) as opposed to what to think. In turn, this would make the aforementioned controversies largely irrelevant since people would be able to decide for themselves which sources are valid or not.

In his book “Why Don’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”, veteran history teacher Bruce A. Lesh observed that in other disciplines, students learn skills and processes instead of memorizing and regurgitating information.¹ In math, students learn the algorithms needed to solve problems and apply these methods to new situations instead of memorizing the answers. Students in science class perform experiments and go through the scientific method to test and confirm theories. In English, students are asked to analyze themes, characters, plots, and writing structure instead of simply recalling specific details from a book. Yet in history classrooms, students are taught to memorize information as opposed to thinking like a historian. Furthermore, distinguished Stanford professor Sam Wineburg made the case that while many younger students had some idea of what scientists did for a living, they could not identify the duties of a historian.

So what do historians do? Certainly they don’t read textbooks and answer comprehension questions all day. In fact, we take for granted that these textbooks and other general summary sources exist so readily that we often don’t consider where the information comes from to begin with. It is the job of a historian to create such narratives as accurately as possible using the available primary and secondary sources as evidence. Moreover, historians use narratives and evidence to synthesize arguments (of which a narrative is one type); formulate interpretations; determine the significance of events, periods, and figures; hypothesize how the lessons of the past can help shape the future; and engage in debate with other historians regarding their narratives, arguments, and interpretations. Since most history is written about events which took place well before the authors were born, historians use a framework of inquiry as they weigh all the available evidence of the past, taking into consideration credibility and usability of sources, before making determinations. The end result is that very little in history has a definitively correct answer.

Lesh argues that a more engaging and productive history classroom is one that teaches students to:

• See history as a discipline driven by questions
• Understand the nature of historical evidence and be able to analyze a variety of sources and apply them to historical questions
• Develop and defend evidence-based interpretations of the past²

In order to accomplish this result, Lesh identifies specific skills students need to learn:

• Critical analysis of primary and secondary sources
• Construction of narratives
• Chronological thinking and causality
• Multiple perspectives
• Continuity and change over time
• Historical significance
• Historical empathy

In this approach, the process of historical inquiry and development of skills takes precedent over the cramming of facts and information, which makes many feel uncomfortable. How can they possibly be tolerant and inclusive citizens if they can’t recall a play-by-play narrative of the Stonewall Riots? How will students have a patriotic appreciation of America if they’re not taught to worship Davie Crockett and Jim Bowie as heroes? As Wineburg points out, most students’ performances on standardized tests show they retain little of this factual information once the course has concluded, so why not teach the students transferrable skills instead? Why not allow students to investigate the figures and decide for themselves whether they believe they’re worthy of hero worship or not? Students are also likely to retain more information and have a deeper understanding of the topics they conduct investigations on than they otherwise would.

Besides, history doesn’t stop happening once you leave school. The aforementioned skills, in conjunction with each other, create a lens essential for making sense of the world around us and being informed citizens. Unfortunately, many adults lack these skills and the result has been a bitter food fight over the past and present.

Critical analysis of sources

Analyzing sources, both primary and secondary, is the foundation of historical thought. In order to construct narratives or compose arguments, historians have to consult sources for evidence and determine which sources are useful and how. Lesh provides a simple framework for evaluating sources:

• Text – What is visible or readable? What information is provided by the source?
• Context – What was happening during the time? What background information do you have about the source?
• Subtext – Reading between the lines, determining author, audience, purpose. What does the source imply? What is left out?³

I’d be willing to bet that most people reading have probably been exposed to something similar to this, but do they know how to apply it? In Wineburg’s Why Learn History, he gave a copy of Benjamin Harrison’s Proclamation 335 to a high school student who scored 4.0 on the AP US History exam, and asked him to examine the document historically. The student identified that President Harrison was proclaiming Columbus Day a holiday, but from there he spiraled into musings about oppression of the natives and whether Columbus Day should be celebrated or replaced. All well and good, but none of that shows historical thinking. Sadly, a number of high school history teachers who were shown the student’s responses were unable to identify what he did wrong.

On the contrary, a PhD student was given the same prompt and asked the same question, with completely different results. After identifying it as a proclamation of Columbus Day as a holiday, this person investigated the context, and observed that there was a large influx of immigrants during that time period – many of them Italian. An examination of a major newspaper of the time showed a mention of the event all the way on the eighth page, implying that it wasn’t very significant. This notion was corroborated by the fact that many Italian-Americans had been celebrating Columbus Day in America as early as 1866. After examining the results of the 1888 presidential election and observing that Harrison defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland despite losing the popular vote, this person concluded that the proclamation was issued in order to gain favor with the Italian community and shore up support for the coming election.

Most people would probably have a reaction closer to the first one, either defending Columbus Day or advocating for its replacement, even though the second person demonstrates historical thinking. This must be done with all sources in order to determine which evidence a person can use to reconstruct the past.

In pursuit of critical analysis of all sources, I am firmly against banning controversial sources from the classroom because it robs students of valuable learning experiences. Take Howard Zinn’s ever-popular polemic of American History. A source analysis reveals the following:

• A People’s History, which takes an overwhelmingly negative view of American history, was published in 1980, a few years after the unceremonious end of the unpopular Vietnam War and a period of high unemployment and inflation.
• In an FBI file on Zinn, there is evidence that he admitted to being a member of the Communist Party, who champion a Marxist philosophy that advocates the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system.
• The book universally extols the virtues of Communism and Communists and highlights the negatives of free market capitalism, while omitting any mention of atrocities committed by or hardships faced by those living under Communist regimes.
• Numerous articles have been written pointing out the dishonest methods of Zinn’s writing.⁴

Taken separately, the aforementioned points may not indicate anything conclusive, but together they provide strong evidence that the information in the book should be taken with a grain of salt. This is not to say that there’s nothing useful in the book. It could serve as a starting point for historical inquiries based on frequently overlooked topics in American history, such as the Anti-Rent Movement at the semi-feudal New York estate of the Van Rensselaers.

Constructing narratives, chronological thinking, and causality

Narratives, sequences of events, and causality are at the heart of what most people think of when studying history. Often, activities and books that claim to teach these skills are really just assessing students’ abilities to remember and repeat a specific narrative, sequence, or cause and effect. Think about your standard textbook in regards to the American Revolution. There will be a section titled something like “The Road to Revolution” containing a timeline of events such as the Stamp Act, Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Intolerable Acts, and the First Continental Congress presented as an inexorable march toward a violent divorce from Great Britain, culminating with the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” at Lexington Green. Questions at the end of the section will ask you recall the textbook’s version of events under the guise of assessing “cause and effect,” when in reality they’re testing reading comprehension and working memory.

Furthermore, textbook history often has an implicit “occurrence bias” where major turning points are presented as having been inevitable because they happened. Once the Seven Year’s War ended and a debt-laden Great Britain started taxing the colonies, revolution was inevitable. Once large portions of Mexico were annexed to the United States following war, continued struggle over slave states and free states made a civil war inevitable. Once African-Americans recognized their vast contributions to the victorious World War II effort, a movement toward full civil rights was inevitable. These are common arguments largely accepted as truth that undermine the individuals and groups of people who made them happen. Furthermore, it robs the students of the opportunity to examine whether certain events were indeed inevitable or could have been prevented.

As mentioned above, very few things in history have a simple answer and most major events have multiple causes. In a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, it was lamented that students did poorly on multiple-choice questions regarding slavery, including one asking for “the reason” the south seceded from the Union. One problem with the wording of this question is it implies there was only one cause of the Civil War, even though all of the potential choices played a role. While most reputable historians are in consensus that slavery was overwhelmingly the primary cause of the Civil War, debates over states’ rights and tariffs played a smaller, but not negligible role.

In A Splendid Exchange, author William J. Bernstein draws attention to the importance of tariffs in bringing about the Civil War. As a largely agrarian society, the South was usually on the losing end of tariffs designed to protect northern manufacturing industries from foreign competition. These struggles almost came to a boiling point in 1832, when South Carolina motioned to nullify the so-called “Tariff of Abominations”⁵ and threatened secession. But multiple-choice questions such as these send the message that history consists of simple, clear-cut answers to complicated issues; discourage nuance, inquiry, debate, discussion, and attempts to understand the intricacies of history;⁶ and develop myopic world views that often persist into adulthood (eg. “Republican good, Democrat bad” or vice versa).

Narratives, sequences of events, and causalities are all forms of historical argument, and need to be understood as so. Whenever people talk about teaching “truth” or “real history,” the next questions should be “Whose history?” and “Whose truth?” As previously alluded to, the historical narrative can differ greatly depending on who’s presenting it, for whom, and for what purpose. Students should be afforded the opportunity to use a smattering of primary and secondary sources as evidence to create their own narratives and arguments about history, along with critiquing others.

In this regard, any source, argument, or narrative should be welcomed in the classroom. The 1619 Project can serve as a thought-provoking account of history along with being analyzed and claims tested for points of agreement and disagreement. Students can research the events surrounding passages in Zinn’s narrative and critique the way information is presented and omitted. Even the textbook and the teacher’s lectures could be viewed critically and critiqued by students. These provide valuable learning experiences and show students that all historical sources need to be examined as pieces of a larger puzzle and not accepted as definitive gospel.

Multiple perspectives

No study of history is complete without shifting perspective. This is what Zinn claim’s to do in A People’s History, but sadly his dishonest scholarship makes for a huge missed opportunity: How great would it be to learn about an honest day in the life of people from different races, ethnicities, and classes throughout American history? Most textbook history focuses on major events with larger than life figures, but often leaves out the daily lives of ordinary people in favor of generalizations. Students need to be afforded the opportunity to examine as many unique perspectives of daily life and major events as the historical record allows. This includes examining and comparing competing interpretations.

Analyzing media portrayals of current events is a great exercise in multiple perspectives, since it requires viewing many sources to get the full story. A salient example of this occurred in 2019 when a short video went viral of Nick Sandmann, a student from Covington Catholic High School, smirking at Nathan Phillips, a Native American man, playing his drum in the middle of a group of chanting students. The initial narrative pushed by many claimed that Sandmann, who was wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, was ‘mocking’ Phillips. Shortly after, more videos came out providing context to the situation and undermining the initial narrative.

What makes this incident so intriguing is the number of sources from different perspectives available. At first, one short video went viral which showed the Sandmann smiling at Phillips, who was pounding a drum in his face and conflicting statements from both were released. Soon after, a myriad of other videos were released, including a one-hour forty-six minute long video from the perspective of the Black Hebrew Israelites (a fringe group with racist beliefs) showing the students being insulted by them and initiating school spirit chants to counter. It was then that Phillips walked into the crowd of students and walked up to Sandmann. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, as students from the school received numerous death threats due to the incident. Ultimately, Sandmann settled with both CNN and Washington Post after filing defamation suits. Despite the numerous videos and statements available, many people still hold to their initial views of the incident, which shows just how hard it is to come to an agreement on facts and interpretations of events.

Historical significance and empathy

Historical empathy refers to the analysis of history through the eyes of those who lived it while taking into account the context of the time period. Little understanding can come of history when analyzed through 21st century eyes, yet that’s what I see being done on a daily basis. A movement to demonize slave-holding founding fathers and rename schools usually show both a lack of historical empathy and understanding of significance.

Take George Washington for example. He grew up the son of a slave-holding father in a society where the institution had been entrenched for well over a century, and was willed his first slaves at the age of 11. Are we supposed to expect that an 11-year-old boy will have the wherewithal deny cultural norms and refuse the slaves? Of course not. As with the rest of the slave-holding Founding Fathers, he was a product of his time, and his act of ensuring the freedom of his slaves not long after his death was unique for the time. None of this is to say that slavery was good or justified – it wasn’t. Even under the most benign circumstances (historians are in general agreement that Washington treated his slaves better than many other slave owners when compared to the standards of the time), chattel slavery was brutal and dehumanizing.

But to hide behind a 21st century wall of chronological ethnocentrism by demonizing historical figures for the culturally acceptable sins of whole societies shows a lack of historical empathy. It is to make a blanket statement that all human societies that came before us are evil – African kingdoms who began capturing and selling slaves in the 7th century, the Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice en masse, and even Hammurabi’s code which is cruel and unusual by today’s standards – and thusly imply that they have nothing positive to teach us. In that case, why even study history?

In addition, when groups of people launch historical which hunts like the San Francisco school board did when it motioned to rename 44 schools (which thankfully, fell through), it not only discourages thoughtful discussion and the practice of historical empathy in the classroom, but sends a perverse message about what’s historically significant. Is it really more significant to Abraham Lincoln’s legacy that he ordered 39 Sioux warriors executed after an uprising (an episode most people have never heard of)⁷ than the fact that he prosecuted a war that ended slavery and issued the Emancipation Proclamation? Is it more important to George Washington’s legacy that he was a slaveholder like thousands of others at the time than his role in winning the Revolution and setting the foundation for our nation?

These are all questions that would make for great classroom inquiry. As always, we should let the students critically analyze the past and develop their own interpretations. Students can recognize Washington’s contributions to the founding of our nation while at the same time acknowledging the barbarity of slavery. Societies do grow and change over time, and without historical thinking, that fact gets lost to culture war, replaced by Zinn’s dichotomous style of black-and-white, “either/or” history (eg. Washington is either a great hero of American history, or an evil, genocidal, slaveholder).

Historiography

Historiography refers to the study of how history is written and what reflections it has on society. Let’s do a thought experiment – what might an American history textbook used in 1950s Alabama say about the Civil War? If we look at the society and their racist attitudes, we will likely see that reflected in the textbook as a sympathetic stance towards the South’s motives and a narrative about a war over “states’ rights” brought on by a “tyrannical” Abraham Lincoln.

We still see this all around us today. In Teaching What Really Happened, author James Loewen points out that most of the Confederate statues at the heart of the current controversy were erected in the early 20th century, during a period of worsening race relations known as the “Great Nadir,” in order for the people of those communities to justify their racial hierarchy and Jim Crow laws. Viewed in this light, many would conclude that it’s disturbing that there are currently schools named after Jefferson Davis, whose main contribution to history is being the president of a short-lived slavocracy.

Recently, I had a discussion about the renaming of Army bases bearing Confederate generals, as many were upset about Ft. Benning, home of the infantry. Even though it is commonly seen as a point of pride to have become an infantryman at Ft. Benning like I did, looking at it through a historiographical lens makes a strong case for renaming. Founded in 1918, Camp Benning was named after General Henry Benning, commander of the 17th Georgia Infantry during the Civil War. He was a leading voice for secession and gave a rousing, racist speech at the Georgia convention, declaring that he’d rather see white people die of plague and famine than see blacks in a position of power. While he was said to have been a brave soldier as many others were on both sides of the war, his military accomplishments were nothing extraordinary. Are those who trained at Ft. Benning proud of celebrating such a man?

This doesn’t mean that there’s not sometimes an argument for recognition of these figures, as the fierce controversy over Robert E. Lee at West Point shows.⁸ Few would argue that Lee is one of American history’s greatest military leaders, exemplified as early as the Mexican-American War, where his ability as an engineer and mastery of terrain played a crucial role in the victory at Cerro Gordo. During the Civil War, Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia to numerous victories over an often numerically superior force. At West Point, whose mission is to develop the best officers for the United States Army, can’t a case be made for using Lee’s generalship as an example for young cadets to aspire?

To play devil’s advocate, historiography may also provide cases for removing a statue of Washington. Let’s imagine for a second that the Ku Klux Klan donated a statue of Washington to honor the nation’s founder for his slaveholding and use it as a justification for the sustainment of white supremacy. Because the record would show that the purpose of the statue was to honor a racist notion, a compelling case to remove that statue could be made. Either way, the purpose here is not to argue that one side is correct, but to acknowledge the complicated gray area that develops when people discard simple black-and-white answers in favor of nuance using historical skills.

In the classroom, older textbooks and sources can serve as valuable resources for teaching historiography. Loewen’s book has a litany of examples which includes using old textbooks to compare passages and analyze how a particular version of history reflected the societal norms of the time. This is a simple exercise that can be conducted in any history class.

Legislating the classroom hinders the development of historical skills

In “1619 Project vs. 1776 Commission,” I go in depth about the importance of using historical inquiry to drive learning in the classroom and teach critical thinking skills. However, legislation banning ideas or sources from the classroom or mandating certain ideas or sources be used hinder the teacher’s freedom to engage students.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the latest hot-button, educational controversy, and a number of states have passed bills banning it and other divisive concepts from being taught. This comes from a largely unfounded fear that teachers everywhere are telling students they’re automatically racist because they’re white, which not only distorts the basic tenets of CRT, but shows the prevalence of the outdated notion of the teacher as sole arbiter of information. CRT can be used as a starting point to an inquiry into race relations in the United States. What were the conditions for African-Americans when it was developed? How have African-Americans been treated throughout American history? Students can then examine each of the main points of CRT and decide whether they agree or disagree after a thorough examination of these points. Even if students don’t agree with all of the arguments advocated by CRT, they will certainly know a lot more about the history of race in America and have relevant connections to relate to.

Legislation requiring certain topics be included in curriculum come with their own set of problems as well. A well-meaning bill passed in Illinois last week requiring a unit of Asian-American history taught in elementary, middle, and high school classes will only further complicate the job of the teachers. Most American history teachers touch upon the history and accomplishments of different ethnic and immigrant groups throughout the course, and others do a unit on multicultural history where the accomplishments of diverse groups of Americans are celebrated. Illinois’ bill would require teachers who are already strapped for time to not only restructure their curricula to make sure they have a separate unit, but also cut out content that they already struggle to cover over the course of the year.

Digital literacy

Anyone who’s been on social media in the last few years has seen the cesspool of fake news, misleading memes and headlines, and garbage websites providing sketchy “evidence” of election fraud. Such rapid spread of misinformation and lack of judiciousness undoubtedly contributed to the January 6th insurrection.

Wineburg devotes a large portion of Why Learn History to the importance of digital literacy. To see how supposed experts vet webpages, he gave the following two articles about bullying to ten historians and asked them which they thought was more credible:

• “Bullying at School: Never Acceptable” – American College of Pediatricians

• “Bullying: It’s Not OK” – American Academy of Pediatrics

What do you think? If you were like the seven out of the ten who chose the first article, you’d be wrong. Despite both looking legitimate, The American College of Pediatricians is an anti-LGBT advocacy organization defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Not even acclaimed scholar Ibram X. Kendi, author of the best-selling books How to be an Antiracist and Stamped From the Beginning (both I highly recommend reading), is immune. Recently on his Facebook page, he shared an article headlined “Gov. Ron DeSantis Wants to Defund Florida Universities That Teach Anti-Racism,” referring to the recent intellectual diversity bill passed in Florida. The main thrust of the bill is to ensure that students are exposed to intellectual diversity and not shielded from opposing viewpoints. Nowhere in the bill or any of DeSantis’s correspondences did it say anything about being unable to teach anti-racism, and the headline represents quite the interpretive leap being passed off as fact.

Similar activities to the one above can and should be conducted in the classroom frequently to ensure a generation of civically judicious citizens. For more on this, Wineburg has an edX class through MITx called “Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online Reasoning.“⁹ I highly recommend all take it, regardless of whether you’re a teacher or not.

Concluding remarks

Many schools have recently shifted towards a competency-based model which puts the acquisition of transferrable skills above content. Yet the general public, lawmakers, and those fighting the culture war over whose version of history to teach show a lack of understanding of the true nature of Social Studies education. In a classroom where historical skills are at the forefront of instruction, all sources, ideas, and interpretations are welcome because they drive inquiry and allow students develop the skills needed to scrutinize ideas and sources and formulate their own interpretations. Just because a source or idea is present in the classroom does not necessarily mean students need to agree with it, and in the case of Zinn’s A People’s History, dishonest sources can provide a valuable learning experience. This renders irrelevant the whole debate over what to teach and what sources to use – the answer is yes to both of those.

Furthermore, evidence abounds that many adults who feel they are informed lack significant historical thinking skills, as this approach was not widespread until fairly recently. Since Wineburg points out that most students only retain a portion of the information expected in curricula focused on factual retention and recall, an emphasis on developing skills will not only ensure students have something to take with them after school, but will likely boost understanding of major concepts and make class more enjoyable.

To clarify, focusing on skills does not mean content will be thrown by the wayside. In practice, content is used as a medium to teach historical skills – a means to an end if you will – as opposed to memorization of vast amounts of information being the end goal. I believe the litany of examples presented here show that society as a whole could benefit from having such skills, which provide a lens to critically analyze the past, present, and future. Ultimately, this will encourage collaboration, discussion, and problem solving instead of the divisive, acrimonious atmosphere that currently pervades civic discourse.

Footnotes

1. “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?” Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12 by Bruce A. Lesh, pages 9-11.
2. Lesh, page 4.
3. Lesh, page 20. Many other similar ways of looking at sources exist, such as “Audience, author, date, and purpose” and “SOAP” (source, occasion, audience, purpose) from Teaching U.S. History Beyond the Textbook by Yohuru Rashied Williams.
4. A few examples: “Undue Certainty: Where Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Falls Short” by Sam Wineburg; “Howard Zinn’s Biased History” by Daniel J. Flynn; Mary Grabar wrote a whole book, Debunking Howard Zinn, and while very biased to the right, she points many egregious examples of Zinn’s distorting of sources; In the footnotes of 1619 Project vs. 1776 Commission, I pointed out an example from Zinn’s book along with a link to the primary source referenced so all can see how dishonest his representation of that source is.
5. The Tariff of 1828, or “Tariff of Abominations” as it was called in the south, was a tax on imported goods that disproportionately hurt the South. Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina developed the theory that a state could nullify within its borders any federal law it deemed unconstitutional. This brought about the Nullification Crisis, which almost ended in secession.
6. Instead of telling students that slavery is the only cause of the Civil War, they should be allowed to investigate the arguments for the different causes, and what they’ll likely find is that even though states’ rights and tariffs played a role, it all came back to slavery in the end. Some may even subscribe to the viewpoint that tariffs and states’ rights played no role in the Civil War, but to relegate multiple causation to a simple, one-word answer robs students of this opportunity.
7. This seems to have been the main reason Abraham Lincoln High School was on the renaming list, but as the Associated Press points out, the military originally intended to execute 303 of them. However, Lincoln recognized that many of those trials were a farce, and after his intervention, only 39 were executed. It is incredibly deceitful and shortsighted of the San Francisco school board to focus on the 39 executed instead of the 264 who were saved by Lincoln.
8. Lee was a distinguished graduate and superintendent of West Point 1852-1855.
9. I was recently made aware of this course by a coworker.

Note: The main image in the article was copied from https://asiawise.weebly.com/historical-inquiry-1.html.

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Resources for Teachers

Here are a few resources to help teachers get started with a competency-based, inquiry driven history class:

• College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework – a curriculum philosophy for implementing inquiry in the classroom. There are archived online webinars for teachers to watch to help them understand how it works.
• Stanford Online History Group – Run by Sam Wineburg. Has a multitude of historical thinking skills lessons and assessments for teachers to use.
• Newsela – great resource for leveled reading and also has C3 inquiries to browse.
• OER World History Project – an open site full of historical thinking activities for world history
• Why Learn History (When It’s Already on your Phone) and Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts – by Sam Wineburg
• Teaching What Really Happened – by James Loewen
• “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?” – by Bruce A. Lesh
• Teaching U.S. History Beyond the Textbook – by Yohuru Rashied Williams