New Directions for the History Curriculum: A Challenge for the 1980s

Abstract

Vith the publication of the findings of the National Commission on Excellence in Education and various other reports on the condition of in the United States,' the discussion of education for the '80s has moved onto center stage on the national agenda. In a certain sense, the American public has finally been compelled to recognize what teachers at all levels of have always known: the democratic ideal of creating a truly educated citizenry has yet to be achieved. And the reaction has been one of dismay and concern. If media coverage is any indication, the level of public interest in and scrutiny of the educational enterprise resulting from the depressing details of this revelation rivals that stimulated by the Sputnik crisis some thirty years ago. A crisis mentality, unfortunately, is not unfamiliar in the context of the teaching of history. One is drawn to Charles Sellers' speech to the American Historical Association in which he asked rhetorically, Is History on the Way Out of the Schools and Do Historians Care?2 Sellers charged that historians had too long assumed that history's virtues and educational importance were self-evident; that smug satisfaction had reaped a harvest of social science offerings at the secondary school level which seemed likely to drive history from its preeminent pedestal in the social studies. For Sellers, the solution was the new history, with inquiry and process as its guiding