The Two Kinds of History American History Taught (original) (raw)
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What Counts as History: A Cross-National and Longitudinal Study of University Curricula
Comparative Education Review, 2000
Each people has, at each moment of its history, its own conception of man.' Within the sociological and educational literatures, there is a dearth of comparative and longitudinal work on changes in university curricula. Systematic empirical studies are especially rare. This article addresses the gap with a study of university history curricula in many countries between 1895 and 1994. History is socially constructed to provide a realistic account of the putatively objective development of "society." 2 But what and who count in society and how society is thought to develop changed over the twentieth century, catalyzing changes in what counts as history. In particular, we hypothesize that what counts as history shifted from a focus on civilization to a focus on nation-states as "imagined communities";3 that the latter were increasingly seen through a rationalizing social science discourse, depicting nation-states as "societies" with common identities and problems; and that this rationalizing social science discourse broke down nation-states into subnational and supranational elements, giving rise to common subnational groups and supranational organizations and environments in university history curricula. For helpful assistance and comments, we thank Susan Gayle Duncan, Christine Wotipka, and the anonymous reviewers at Comparative Education Review. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the
Public outreach is a growing concern within anthropology, but anthropological research that focuses on what is being taught in K-12 classrooms is nearly non-existent. However, this thesis lies at an intersection of anthropology, education, and public outreach. I begin by providing background information on the current state of educational inequity in the United States before reviewing John Ogbu’s cultural ecology model (CEM). When problematized, CEM becomes a useful tool for analyzing the connection between curriculum content and student engagement. To further elucidate this connection, I looked at two recent sociological investigations of curriculum content and student engagement. From this grounding in anthropological theory and sociological literature, I examined The American Republic Since 1877, a high school American history textbook approved for use in the state of Florida, and analyzed its representation of race, class, and gender. I found that the textbook frequently included the history of underrepresented groups such as African Americans, the working class, and women, but that the historical significance of people from subordinate groups was often downplayed. Such depictions of history can affect both students’ abilities to understand and identify present-day discrimination as well as their capacity to become full democratic participants. To counteract the negative effects of exclusive histories, I suggest the adoption of multicultural curricula. The conclusion evaluates three separate ways to make curricula both more inclusive and more engaging.
The Sacred and the Profane in American History Curriculum
The Social Studies, 2007
The question of why students think there are two kinds of American history taught—one in the K—12 system and one in the university system—can be examined critically using Emile Durkheim's (1973) description of the sacred and the profane. The history taught in K—12 classrooms often focuses on idealized accounts of the past that protect the status quo. K—12 history emphasizes the underlying values that Durkheim calls the sacred, which are reproduced through the development of a triumphal history. The sacred values in K—12 history emphasize selfless acts of people who sacrificed on behalf of society. In contrast, the curriculum emphasized in college courses often focuses on failings that do not reflect the highest ideals of society, which Durkheim calls the profane. The dissonance between these types of history is important for understanding why different types of history are taught and why social change can be difficult to accomplish.
Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2014
Through an interpretive analysis of how high school American history textbooks depict the urban-riots of the late-1960s, in this article the author discusses how textbooks incorporate and abject official knowledge related to the intersections of race and poverty. Incorporation is related with Raymond Williams’ theory of the selective tradition and Michael Apple's theory of official knowledge. Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic theory of abjection is utilized throughout this article as a counterpoint to these theories of incorporation and to reflexively elucidate how textbooks expel resistant knowledge and students from the curricular body of official knowledge.