Since the subject of history was first introduced into the American classroom over a century ago, there has been a debate over how history should both be taught to and learned by students. From the beginning, historians argued that the study of history in schools provided students with numerous valuable critical thinking and analytical skills like historical thinking. In order for students to achieve these skills, historians have emphasized certain methods of teaching and learning history. However, historians do not have unilateral control over the teaching and learning of history. External expectations, coming from outside the academic field of history, have placed various constraints on both the teaching and learning of history.
The history curriculum that is taught in the classroom is often not created by professional historians, but instead by educational committees at the state level. These committees create standards that define what single historical narrative should be taught and learned in the classroom. These historical narratives are created to present the United States and its history in one particular way, emphasizing certain elements of American history and excluding others. These states will also insist on the use of textbooks in the classroom that present this one singular narrative of American history. Many of these state standards also define history as unchanging and set in stone, meaning that the historical narrative that is defined in their standards is the absolute truth and cannot be subjected to different interpretations.
The adoption of a singular historical narrative that must be taught in history classrooms has led to history classes being organized around a single learning structure. A typical history class consists of students simply memorizing names, dates, and other historical facts and then being tested on their ability to recite these facts. This type of learning misses the fact that history often does not consist of a single narrative and that a historical event can often have multiple different historical interpretations. The memorization approach to learning history is problematic because it does not teach students the skills of historical thinking that are crucial to the work of historians. As any historian would note, the past is often not just one simple narrative, any historical events often consists of many different conflicting perspectives and narratives of that event. Historians argue that the history class should not only teach students historical facts but should also teach students to challenge those facts based on historical evidence.
It has only been within the past few years that teachers in the history classroom have been able to move beyond just teaching history as a set of facts to be memorized and instead can emphasize and teach elements of historical thinking to students. Before the digital age, the only resource that history teachers had available was the history textbook, that often presented one singular historical narrative. Today, there is a wealth of resources online that teachers in a history classroom can use to teach historical thinking to students. Teachers can find different primary and secondary sources about a historical event that can allow students to view the event from multiple different perspectives and viewpoints than what is presented in a typical history textbook.
