National History Standards

Nothing can better serve the promotion of a deeply humanistic but analytic history in precollegiate classrooms than discourse among an internationally diverse body of reform-minded history educators. This books delivers just that. The essays in National History Standards: The Problem of the Canon and the Future of Teaching History, by leading history educators on both sides of the Atlantic, offer cogent critiques of the tangled reform efforts on how history should be taught in the schools as well as sophisticated models for constructing both national and trans-national history for the young people who will determine the course of twenty-first- century human affairs. Gary B. Nash, Director, National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA

• Acknowledgements; Linda Symcox and Arie Wilschut.Series Introduction: International Review of History Education, Volume 5; Rosalyn Ashby, Stuart Foster and Peter Lee.Chapter 1. Introduction; Linda Symcox and Arie Wilschut.Section I. New Curricula in a Post-National World.Chapter 2. The Evaporated Canon and the Overvalued Source: History Education in Belgium: An Historical Perspective; Kaat Wils.Chapter 3. Internationalizing the U.S. History Curriculum: From Nationalism to Cosmopolitanism; Linda Symcox.Chapter 4. The Two World Histories; Ross E. Dunn.Section II. The Persistence of Traditional Curricula.Chapter 5. Yearning for Yesterday: Efforts of History Professionals in Europe at Designing Meaningful and Effective School History Curricula; Joke van der Leeuw-Roord.Chapter 6. Containing and Regulating Knowledge: Some Thoughts on Standards and Canonization as a Response to the Complex Demands of a Globalizing World; Hanna Schissler.Section III. The Educational Debate Over How to Teach History.Chapter 7. Canonical Standards or Orientational Frames of Reference? The Cultural and the Educational Approach to the Debate About Standards in History Teaching; Arie Wilschut.Chapter 8. Drinking an Ocean and Pissing a Cupful: How Adolescents Make Sense of History; Denis Shemilt.Chapter 9. Two Out of Five Did Not Know That Henry VIII Had Six Wives: History Education, Historical Literacy, and Historical Consciousness; Peter Lee and Jonathan Howson.Section IV. The Debate Over How Students Learn History.Chapter 10. The Denial of Desire: How to Make History Education Meaningless; Keith Barton.Chapter 11. Competence in Historical Thinking, Mastering of a Historical Framework, or Knowledge of the Historical Canon; Bodo von Borries.Chapter 12. Closing Comments; Wijnand M. Mijnhardt.About the Authors.