The Problem with Current American History School Books Essay

In The Death of History is Bunk, Patrick Watson argues that the decrease of historical content in the curriculum does not indicate that history, as a subject, is declining. While many complain about the decreasing prominence of history classes in Canadian schools, the content of those classes is excessively dull as it consists of memorizing lists of facts. Despite this, there are still protests that knowledge of “defining events” is required to contribute to “the National Conversation”. However, history is not so simple as a list of events—it is the sum of the small happenings in society around the events. A whole variety of factors influence history, which is created by the common people. Unlike Americans, who turn to their constitution for

The world is full of rich culture, diversity and experiences unique to each individual. When determining the validity of historic accounts we must factor in that particular historian’s point of view, which should be characterized by ethnicity, idealogy, theoretical or methodological preference. With these factors views of the past often vary from person to person. In this essay I will be discussing the four different stages that shaped the writing of American history over the last 400 years.

High school history textbooks are seen, by students, as presenting the last word on American History. Rarely, if ever, do they question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, they should be. Loewen has spent considerable time and effort reviewing history texts that were written for high school students. In Lies, he has reviewed twenty texts and has compared them to the actual history. Sadly, not one text measures up to the author's expectation of teaching students to think. What is worse, though, is that students come away from their classes without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social

When it comes to American history , the credibility of our textbooks has been a problem recent years, especially those in high school. And what we are taught in class seem to be far away from our real life. Facing such an irrelevant and boring subject, most high school students have no choice but to suffer the course and struggle for it. The book Lies My Teacher Told Me may account for this phenomenon to some extent.

textbooks only discuss the important topics on what the readers should learn about history. The

Looking back at American History, we can see many instances where bravery and courage combined with a leap of faith changed the course of our country's history. The declaration of independence was perhaps the most significant of all those actions. In the late 1700's Britain began abusing their colonies in America, this did not sit well with the colonists, and soon people could no longer endure such unfairness and hardship. The founding fathers were more than justified to declare independence from Britain, liberating the people of America from the tyranny and abuse of the British crown.

In the essay Haunted America, Patricia Nelson Limerick ponders whether or not there is any benefit for society to have historical knowledge. Limerick contradicts herself numerous times in her opinion on the usefulness of history. She implies that there are many lessons that can be learned from history. However, Limerick is disappointed in the human race because it fails to learn from the mistakes of others. She therefore wonders, "What do we gain besides a revival and restoration of the misery?" (Limerick, 473). Based on Limerick's examination of people and history, one can conclude that objectively history is useless, however, theoretically, people would be much better off if they learned from the lessons that the past presents.

Americas history is what defines us and who we are as a country. We were built on hard work, sacrifice, wanting to be free and independent to be who we want to. Now a-days, we seem to have fallen away from this. Everything is given to us so easily on our computer and through technology that we have no need to work hard anymore. This is the downfall in humanity because as we keep going, life will continue to get easier and we won’t want to do anything. History is our hope so that we can learn from what we did in our past and how things were done then.For starters, we can see what mistakes we did and make sure we don’t do them again. If we continue to the same thing over and over again, there’s no way for our society to improve from this. Our

     Although the federal governments attitudes and actions towards blacks and Native Americans civil rights in the 19th century were very different they also had lots of similarities. Both blacks and Native Americans were treated poorly and did not have many rights. Blacks were slaves and Indians (Native Americans) were fighting to stay alive. All these negative actions were a bad look for a country that was growing bigger and bigger by the day to someday reach what the United States is today.

They have found that the teachers only go over what they really want to go over and leave out a lot of the important details. “Gradually they end up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only material that will appear on the next text.”(pg.12) College professors want the students to know most of the material; or of at least heard of most of it before they get to college. “History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleague of mine calls his survey of American history “Iconoclasm I and II,” because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school. In no other field does this happen. Mathematics professors, for instance, know that non-Euclidean geometry is rarely taught in high school, but they assume that Euclidean geometry was mistaught. Professors of english literature don’t presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school.”(pg.12)

Before the Constitution, there was the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation was a new national government that reserved freedom, sovereignty, and independence for the states. The Articles of confederation provided an effective form of government for western lands, on the contrary, foreign relations were not were not as well benefited from it.

An English teacher, Benjamin Dancer states in his article, Censoring American History, “History curriculum, a framework written by the College Board and taught in high schools across the country. The framework was revamped this year and has taken heat from the Republican National Committee, which claims it “emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history”. There are positive and negative aspects of every nation’s history, students are not in the position to pick and choose which historical events are taught in schools. By picking and choosing historical events that are only positive and practical to what students want to believe, history will be lost and replaced with fraudulent and bogus events that never took

History textbooks are slowly changing over the generations which is leading students to learn “different” history than others. FritzGerald

“A Tale Intended to be After the Fact…” is how Stephan Crane introduced his harrowing story, “The Open Boat,” but this statement also shows that history influences American Literature. Throughout history, there has been a connection among literary works from different periods. The connection is that History, current events, and social events have influenced American Literature. Authors, their literary works, and the specific writing styles; are affected and influenced by the world around them. Authors have long used experiences they have lived through and/or taken out of history to help shape and express in their works. Writing styles are also affected by the current trends and opinions of the period they represent. By reading American

United States, 2006: a nation with a history of a mere 230 years, yet it stands as one of the most powerful nations in the world. Yet many of us know little about the history and cultural changes that led to the birth of this nation. We only know the bits and pieces that are taught as we sit daydreaming in our fifth grade classroom. The Puritans, the Pilgrims, Christopher Columbus, the Mayflower, we know about these people and things, yet what aspects of their lives created the change in America? The answer to this question can be found by observing the changes in religion, women's role, and colonial law as it brought about the change in the Puritan's cultural values.