The Past as Experience: A Qualitative Assessment of National History Day

Abstract

NATIONAL HISTORY DAY began as response the growing concern by professional historians in the 1970s that the once solid place of history in the public school curriculum was becoming increasingly tentative and what report by The Organization of American Historians described as a pervasive surge of presentism.I In response these two concerns, in 1974 the History Department of Case Western University invited one hundred and twenty-nine students from northeastern Ohio compete for awards for the most deserving written and visual interpretations of selected historical topic. From this modest beginning, the idea of history contest grew rapidly. Aided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, by 1984 the program had spread fortythree states, with the number of participants swelling whopping 150,000. The objective of the program has remained the same. The President of National History Day, history professor David D. Van Tassel, describes the purpose of the program to nurture academic achievement and intellectual growth, stimulate young people learn history through the excitement of original research and creative work. National History Day, then, began out of an effort reverse the