“We do need to learn history. Not the kind that puts its main emphasis on memorizing presidents and Supreme Court decisions, but the kind that inspires a new generation to resist the madness of government, trying to carve the world and our minds into their spheres of influence.”                                                                                                             -Howard Zinn.

This quote hangs on a wall in my classroom. Black magic marker on red construction paper, scrawled by my own hand. To me it says it all. Yet I fully know that on their first day in my class, my eighth graders do not know what it means. It is my ultimate goal that on the last day of class they do, and they desire to show it to someone else.

I cannot begin to fathom how many times I have heard from adults, when I tell them that I teach history, “I HATED history in school. It was the most boring subject.” I do cringe when I hear that. Yet, I understand. By relying solely upon traditional methods of teaching history, it can be the most boring subject for anyone. But it is not the history that is boring. It is the instruction, combined with the philosophy, and the purpose behind the instruction.

Why do we study history? Is it to learn that George Washington was our nation’s first president and that he never told a lie? Or, is it to memorize the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue and “discovered” America? Do you remember who the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was? Why not? You must not have been a good student in history class. To borrow a phrase coined by James Loewen, this is all BS (bad sociology). When history is taught so that students memorize trivial facts (or bold lies!), when students must only read textbooks published by major companies seeking lucrative contracts with school districts, we are turning our students away from, perhaps, the most important subject to their lives.

So why then do we study history? “So we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.” I have heard that bland response a multitude of times, but it is far from the truth. The more I study history, the more I see the endless recurrence of past mistakes. I believe this is the result of the traditional methods for teaching history. To force students to listen in the most passive way to drawn out lectures, to read the most insipid texts, to answer questions that require no critical thinking, we are not inspiring our students. To correct this familiar trend, our ambition must be to teach our students that it is their responsibility, as students of history, to acquire the habits of mind to become effective and productive citizens. We must empower our students to realize that it is precisely their responsibility to stop the mistakes from recurring.

One of the most dangerous results of the traditional teaching of history is that through rote memorization of names and dates that dead, white, men have declared important, students come to believe that history is inevitable. Example, once there was slavery, now there isn’t. Everything can only get better. Women were once treated as less than second-class citizens, now the sexes are equal. All problems always get worked out in time. BS! It is imperative that we show students, quoting Frederick Douglass, that without struggle, there is no progress. That the civil liberties we enjoy now began as protests and organizing, and long periods of stepping out of comfort zones. Of being active!

We must provide students with the skills to identify the problems in our society, to investigate and discover their origins, research alternatives and become the active citizenry that will develop into the new reformers of our society. Because if we don’t, who will?