ACTA's Must-Reads
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Broadening our history horizons
From Inside Higher Ed comes news of a recent report from the National History Center funded by the Teagle Foundation on the topic of history and its role in promoting a liberal education. Among other things, the report addresses the question of giving undergraduates, both majors and non-majors, a broad and coherent curriculum in history that will enhance their overall education. This is surely an important call to action since ACTA's studies show that most colleges today fail to require any history at all. The report also encourages graduate programs to train students as future teachers -- an excellent suggestion given the fact that most graduates will not become researchers in the academy.
The National History Center deserves kudos for promoting historical and analytical thinking necessary for an educated citizenry. Since history is such an integral part of a liberal education, it is important that students are given the proper tools to assess different sources and viewpoints. While it celebrates the emergence of social history as a field, the report also rightly acknowledges that the comparative decline of categories such as intellectual and political history threatens the "loss of a synthetic understanding of the past."
One must take issue, however, with the report's approval of "deprivileging" American and Western history -- at a time when most studies show students are woefully ignorant of their own history, with little ability to put it in a broader context. That is one blind spot in an otherwise thought-provoking and pertinent publication.
Posted by Sandra E. Czelusniak on October 28, 2008 at October 28, 2008 11:30 AM
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