The other morning I was just biding my time, reading a biography of
Margaret Sanger and enjoying summer vacation when I got an e-mail from
an NPR producer. They read my last post for the HS blog and wanted me to
come on Talk of the Nation to discuss it. I did.
It's the last segment of Monday's show. The callers got me started on
another hobby horse of mine: teaching without a textbook.
Here's a little from that Talk of the Nation piece:
In college, study of American history is often broken down into two chunks. Professors pick a date to divide time in two: 1865, after the Civil War, say, or 1900, because it looks good. So for those who teach courses on the first half, their purview is fairly well defined.
But those who teach the second half, such as Jonathan Rees, face a persistent problem: The past keeps growing. Rees teaches U.S. history and, like many teachers, every few years responds to major events by adding them to his lectures. But that means other important events get left behind. He wrote about this conundrum in a piece for The Historical Society blog, "When Is It Time To Stop Teaching Something?"
But those who teach the second half, such as Jonathan Rees, face a persistent problem: The past keeps growing. Rees teaches U.S. history and, like many teachers, every few years responds to major events by adding them to his lectures. But that means other important events get left behind. He wrote about this conundrum in a piece for The Historical Society blog, "When Is It Time To Stop Teaching Something?"
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1 comment:
Very cool, JR. And I notice you got two new comments on the original post. Which is a reminder that there's a lot of good material back in the blog archives that might continue to generate interest, discussion, and do some good, if people only knew it was there...
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