The Purpose of High School History

>>47370
>I often find myself wondering what my students absolutely need to learn in a high school history class.
textual criticism, ie: historiography

History isn't about content, it is about method.

>>47370
The only reason to learn anything in high school besides consumer education and government is to broaden your horizon before you go off to college and choose what degree to live your life around.

This is why I would never be a teacher. I refuse to teach anyone who isn't willing to learn the particular subject I'm teaching.

The main purpose of high school history should be to teach children to be skeptical of authority, so that they don't get fooled by communists, fascists, or demagogues.

>>47370
Your students need to learn how to write. Consider yourself an english teacher who bases his writing lessons on historical subjects.

>>47394
Yeah, that's mostly our focus. Primary/secondary source analysis with a focus on writing argumentative essays. It's better than just memorizing content, but Social Studies department usually ends up being English department's bitch because every school is focused on English and Math test scores.

>>47480
I try to work this in when possible. Right now I'm discussing the Triangle Trade and showing how unchecked greed can lead to things like human beings being sold for guns and liquor.

You need to teach them to be agile with information. A small amount of knowledge on a subject, when it is deconstructed, and really understood, can be stretched and used in many other ways.

Teach them in a way to understand how history repeats.

History doesnt exactly repeat. What repeats is human nature. History is about studying human nature and that is about studying politics, which is the true goal of history.

>>47555
>unchecked greed

Okay. So I know you have to teach "lies for children" to broaden them to the point where they're capable of being taught how things are claimed by historians to have really happened…but I think you might want to evaluate which lies you teach.

I mean I doubt you have curriculum freedom, but you might want to summarise three or four academic positions in a debate, and as part of secondary source textual criticism encourage students to compare historical theories to their secondary and primary sources.

The other poster who suggested writing is also spot on, but allow me to also suggest speaking.

One technique I've used is the "Mock debate" where some students defend a person or practice, and others attempt to convict them. Other students act as witnesses. You act as the judge.

Planning, preparing and then speaking can really help students prepare for tutorial work and improve speaking. It can also be a technique to break through the "shy girl" phenomena because it is a more formalised speaking exercise. Also costumes, though I honestly hate undergraduates doing costumes.

The major problem is the dominant boy problem.

>>47370
Well, first off, what books do they make you give them? For me it was Lord of the Flies, Beowulf, and Catcher in the Rye.

>>47728
>Catcher in the Rye.
He rapes his sister, Phoebe.

>>47370
I think the Napoleonic Wars are a pretty good case study in the evolution of Nations and nationalism. 30 Years War is good for showing how religions develop as well as a solid introduction to politics. The World Wars are pretty much a necessity and maybe bring in the Franco-Prussian War as a background to WW1. I reckon the key is making them understand what it really was like at the time, like what they valued and why events happened instead of just what happened

>>47705
We don't really have a curriculum because it's me (a first year teacher) and another young teacher that's jaded and has a Spanish degree but somehow ended up teaching World History. So I'm basically trying to develop my own curriculum based on a set of broad standards without much help while juggling all the other first year public school teacher problems. I also have to teach myself bits of history that I didn't really study in college, but that's not really a big deal.

After I muddle through the rest of the Age of Exploration/Columbian Exchange stuff, we'll be moving on to the Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, and Reformation.

>>47728
We don't actually read books in History. I barely even use the textbook because it's 10+ years old and tries to cram way too much history in 1000 pages.

In the English classes I teach though, we're reading The Great Gatsby and I'm working in poetry that has similar themes so we can do a bit of literary analysis. I'm not even qualified English so I'm just flying by the seat of my pants with the English coursework.

>>47893
It's fudged and left to you to fill in the details if he did that. Also, I don't think that was an answer in my English work, either.

The purpose of High school should be to teach people to think for themselves and question everything. So you should teach them everything purposefully wrong, changing dates and conflating historical figures with each other so that even the cleverest pupils will be fooled. Then, the day before the AP history exam, tell them you tricked them and they're gonna fail and not get into college. The bitterness will motivate them to learn true history.

>>48066
Your exams were computer marked multiple choice, weren't they?

Is getting a history teacher job worth it? I want to get my bachelors degree in history and then be a teacher.

>>47705
>dominant boy problem
Top kek,the woe and ruin of any attempt of high school debate, those 2-3 guys who are actually interested and overbearing enough that they dominate discussion to the point of discouraging the already uninterested rest of the class. When teacher's pet becomes teacher's nightmare.

>>47893
>He rapes his sister, Phoebe.
Goddamnit now I have to reread the book because it would not be the first time that I missed something like this in books I've read as a kid.

>>47370
Basically your job is to keep their butts in the seats for 50 minutes without anyone getting into fights.

>>47370
The purpose of public education is to mold young minds into whatever you want them to believe, or at least what the system you work in wants them to believe.

The very nature of history as a field is tremendously important for this cause.

>>48178
Doesn't end in high school mate. Doesn't end with undergraduate either.

>>48240
in ghetto schools maybe

>>48222
Pay particular attention to the first page of the book where he explains that his father molested him. Pay particular attention to how he deals with the women he wants to fuck and how he treats Phoebe when he goes over to the house drunk.

p.s.: he's in a mental ward.

>>48147
OP here. I got my bachelor's degree in Secondary Education with a qualification in Social Studies education. I got a job within six weeks of graduating, but I hear that in most parts of the country it's difficult to get a job teaching social studies because there aren't a lot of openings.

I'm only in my first year of teaching, but it can be rewarding and fun. Also I have a union, health insurance, and a retirement plan so that's nice. Additionally, I get all state and federal holidays off in addition to school breaks. My salary isn't amazing, but it's decent for someone with a bachelor's degree in a non-STEM field.

The downsides have mostly been classroom management, having to deal with shit head teenagers, all the other shit they want you to do on top of actually teaching.

>>48240
I teach in one of the whitest and wealthiest areas of Hawaii, so I deal more with snotty entitled brats than ghetto kids.

>>48321
I've taught in NE prep schools and I can tell you that there's little to no difference between the ultimate end goal of high school instruction between upperclass schools and ghetto schools.

>>48402
In relation to your first point:
What country are you living/teaching in? I'm in Canada

>>48034
each them about Cannibalistic tribes! You WILL be educating them and the topic remains relevant today in places like the Indian Ocean & Australia!

>>47893
/lit/ pls

>>48298
I started the post writing that I don't notice it anymore.
But then I remembered that the reason for it is that it's not nearly as noticeable outside the class context and in fact the behaviour is still there.
[spoiler]it's me and it embarrases me to all hell to see my enthusiasm for "intellectual" subjects confronted by total indifference and sometimes even mild contempt for caring about such stuff[/goddamnit why can't all 4chan have spoilers?]

>>47394
Sadly it's also the only contact most of these people will ever have with history as something to seriously look at.

>>47370
>As as first year high school history teacher teaching World History, I often find myself wondering what my students absolutely need to learn in a high school history class.


Make like most high-school teachers do and impress upon them the evils of white men and western civilization.

what history books do you recommend / what sites do you recommend to learn world history, especially relating to development of things like agriculture and technology

The Goose plays a teacher? Which flick, senpai?

>>48455
I'm teaching in Hawaii, USA. The culture here is a bit more laid back than on the mainland, but it's but overall it's a decent place to teach.

>>48561
Surprisingly, most of the standards are Euro-centric and really emphasize things like the Reformation and Enlightenment, while the Ottoman Empire, Qing China, and Tokugawa Japan get sort of shoved into one standard.

>>47436
If you're into having it feel rewarding, wouldn't converting someone who isn't interested feel even better than teaching kids who are already into it?

>>48469
>the topic remains relevant today in places like the Indian Ocean & Australia!
really?

>>48650
I think a lot of history nerds want to get into teaching history because they think they'll have a captive audience to lecture to about whatever esoteric topic interests them.

>>48668
>really?
Pretty sure Papua New Guinea is still chockfull of actual cannibals. Australia most certainly not.

>>48034
Assuming you have time to fit it into the curriculum, I do believe there are some short, historically relevant texts you could give your students. Candide and The Prince, for example.

>>48786
Visit Darwin...

>>48809
>Candide and The Prince, for example.
I actually had those as choices for obligatory summer readings in high school. Candide (while not bad) was a disappointment. All Voltaire was a disappointment for that matter.

>>47370
First things first:
Make sure they have a chronological notion of history.
What I mean by this, is that they should be able to understand historical facts and events as something that isnt isolated. Everything has causes and consequences. Thats what makes history (and the present) in the first place.

This is, of course, the bare basics

>>47555
>with a focus on writing argumentative essays
That sounds a bit unconvincing. How exactly does that work?
Do essays try to explain something? Or do they just make some half-assed critic? Tell me the students dont use adjectives.

>>47595
this. This is ultimately, I think, one of the final objectives that a student should have

>>47370
Tell them history is written by the victor and not to trust everything they learn.
Tell them about how much evil the communists did to their own people.
Tell them about the reasons Germany hated Jews so much(Balfour declaration/great stab in the back, German communist revolution of 1918 ran by Jewish Bolsheviks, Weimar hyperinflation partially due to policies of Jew owned central bank, Jewish boycot of German goods in 1933, etc..). Tell them how the woman's suffrage and feminist movements started(white feather campaign to shame men into going to ww1). Tell them about Detroit before the blacks took it over. Tell them about Lincoln's plans to send blacks in America back to Africa before he was assassinated. Tell them how South Africa was during apartheid and how it is now a shithole. Tell them about how America put Japanese into concentration camps in WW2. Tell them why Anericans have a right to bear arms to resist an oppressive government. Tell them about how all the "death camps" in Nazi Germany were conveniently only on the soviet (Jewish Bolshevik) side of Europe and never inspected by western nations until many years after the war. Tell them about how Irish and Asian immigrants were discriminated against in the early 1900s. Tell them how the slaves were sold to the slave traders by other African blacks. Tell them how most slaves had decent conditions during slavery, and how much even shitty conditions were better than Africa. Tell them about the rampant propaganda in both world wars. Tell them how the nazis had many Jews, blacks, etc In the SS and the Wehrmacht. Tell them about the Nuremberg trials which suspended any need for evidence to convict someone of war crimes.

Most importantly, tell them the truth does not fear investigation, and to personally research as much as they can. Tell them they have access to more information at their fingertips than anyone else throughout history, and they should use it to their advantage.

>>48809
While it would be nice to do that, I guarantee at least half my students wouldn't read it. I'd also need to get copies of the book somehow. The easiest and cheapest way would probably be just printing them all out myself. It might be worth it though.

>>48986
Well, they do the AP style DBQ essays. The ones where they're given a writing prompt and then seven or eight primary source/secondary sources. They then have to write an essay using their own knowledge of content and the sources to construct their thesis/argument.

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>tfw Ryan Gosling will never be your teacher
>ywn be his pupil
>ywn have manly sex with him

>>49366
Maybe I'm underestimating the work ethic of high school students, as I was only in honours classes in my time, but The Prince is incredibly short at only 80 pages, so I imagine you could at least get them to read that.

Hell, since it's an old work with no copyright you wouldn't even need to print it out. They can read it for free on their phones or computers or what not.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm

>>47370

In my opinion, history should be taught only as an interesting front for the historiography behind it.

As >>47394 says, there are academic and useful skills that can be learned, and they're far more valuable than learning about what historians say happened in the past.

Teach the historical enquiry, not history.

>>47370
I'm not a storm fag but please don't shame white history with the big bad colonist BS

>>48639
How would a howlie like me get a teaching job in hawaii? Is there an online database for job postings for hawaii? I am a secondary school teacher in california. Ive always wanted to move out to hawaii.

>>47370

Just refrain from the propaganda and they'll be fine.

>>47370
Taking a class on European Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict right now and I find the conflict in Northern Ireland to be incredibly interesting. But some antsy high schooler would be bored to tears unless it's about explicit violence and sex.

I'd say try to pick out more interesting and not well spoken pieces of history and tie it in with the more popular subjects like WWII or the Civil Rights movement. Going back to Northern Ireland, how the Irish had their own Civil Rights movement.

>>49366
Have fun grading an assload of dbq's

...just pop on some crash course history and put your feet up on the desk. Inject some memes and blame every problem on white people and the American government. How many students you got, senpai?

>>49653
It's not too hard. The Hawaii Department of Education is statewide, so once you're in the system you can get a job anywhere in the state. I got my degree at the University of Hawaii and went through their teacher accreditation program so part of that involved applying to the DOE.

If you're licensed in California, it would probably be as easy as figuring out how to get your out of state license transferred over and then applying to be put into the system. After you're in the system and have submitted all the paperwork, schools will call you if they have openings. I managed to get a job like 6 weeks after graduation teaching history, but only because it was a split line of World History and English.

>>49744
5 classes with a rough average of 30 students per class. So something like 90 History students and 60 English students since I teach a split line.

>>49844
Thanks man. Any particular schools to keep an eye out for? Oahu is ideal since that is im better connected there.

Encourage questions and be able to elaborate on those questions. Also, ask them to think critically about the subject material. By the end of the year, they should understand that the subject material is more flexible then any of their other subjects aside from maybe English. Too many high schoolers think History Class is just memorizing dates when it's so much more than that.

>>49744
You can grade a dbq in three minutes if you don't really get a shit.
>Did he say something that wasn't retarded
>Yes
>Did he cite any of the sources
>Yes
>A+

>>47370
>I often find myself wondering what my students absolutely need to learn in a high school history class

It's a remnant from when universities actually lived up their names instead of being glorified vocational daycare facilities.

i'm still buttmad about the obscene quantity of useless nothing information I had to learn about the indians (feathers). Every fucking grade the class must have spent a solid month on tipis and wigwams and fucking cedar log cabins and igloos.

this was Canada. They didn't even bother to call the class 'history'. It was 'social studies'.

>>50321
I'm on Oahu so it's the only island I know. I'd say the worst schools are the ones with large Native Hawaiian or immigrant populations since they tend to be lower income areas. The kids tend to be respectful to authority though since Polynesian/Asian culture tends to emphasize that.

I guess my recommendation would be to be open minded, and realize that there's going to be some culture shock when you come to the only state in the US where white people are not the majority. Learning a little bit about the local culture would be a good idea so you don't come across as the stereotypical ignorant white guy that came to Hawaii to teach because you're trying to find yourself or something.

>>52748
Decently written DBQs are easy to grade. The hard ones are the ones where they don't use any punctuation, capitalization and can't spell anything longer than four letters correctly. Those take the most time to correct and decipher.

>>52956
God forbid you have to learn about the peoples that used to live on the land you're currently living on.

>>53148
I'm not complaining about that content showing up. Once would have been fine. But no. Every grade from late elementary school straight through to grade 12 featured an extensive section on them. Largely the same information over and over.

If it's a mandatory class try to boil it down to things everybody should know. Remember most of these kids are not interested in history and will absolutely not bother to research or read anything related to it on their own time, so your class is your only chance to teach them and remove their ignorance. Think of any subject you see people commonly ignorant of, and wish somebody had taught them better about it.

>>53113
>The hard ones are the ones where they don't use any punctuation, capitalization and can't spell anything longer than four letters correctly.

What the actual fuck? Some of your students really don't even try, do they? People like that must be hard to teach, when you can tell they don't give a shit about the subject material at all and just want to graduate with a D in all their Social Studies classes.

All you have to do is ensure the class gradually peters out in an endless slog through the industrial revolution, like all high school history surveys do.

>>53336

I've worked as a writing tutor at a college level. A lot of people who make it that far, even, are almost totally illiterate. And it isn't just foreigners.

>>53229
Well, if you live in the U.S. you learn about the American Revolution no less than three times. The same decade over and over and over again. And then they have the nerve to barly even talk about the Consitution until you're in high school.

>>49240

>This fucking post

Is this a pasta ive not seen before? cringy and wrong as fuck

>>53456
The United State's failure to teach students successful writing skills is embarrassing. I'm not one to talk, I didn't ever know I had dyslexia until I was a Junior, but hey, that just proves my point even more.

>>53336
This isn't even in just my general education History class. I had 15 year olds in 10th Grade English Honors class not following basic spelling, capitalization, and punctuation rules and then getting up set because "no one else has ever graded us on that!". They've gotten better at it now that I've handed out a few D's and F's to them. I chalk it up more to laziness than an actual inability to follow basic grammar rules.

>>53530
Better that than six months squandered on wigwams and Rosa Parks. Whole units, everywhere between 3rd and 10th grade. And people wonder why young dudes are bored by history.

>>48121
Wow.
That would seriously fucking suck for the students.

>>48121
Then the teacher would probably be fired, unless they have tenure.

>>48121
You being a shitty history teacher would have made it so they couldn't even pass the test anyways. If the College Board decides you didn't do a good job teaching AP classes, then your students aren't allowed to pass the test. Not sure why this system is in place considering you can not take the class at all and still take and pass the test. Also, I guess this scenario also assumes that you wrote your own textbook and swapped them out for the actually AP History textbook?

>>54017
Also being this bad of a history teacher is probably way harder than being a mediocre or decent history teacher.

>>53728
From my experience, a lot of the students who actually end up in AP classes think they're hot shit when they're really just B students, maybe not even that.

>>49485
if you aren't sure they have access to a computer make damn sure they have an actual book to read.

I can back up this statement. In my English Honors class for example, I'd say maybe like half of them are actual hard workers and/or intellectually gifted. But to be fair, I do have students that literally didn't sign up for Honors, but the school shoved them in there anyways because the general education classes were overflowing.

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I'd say that if you can impart one concept, it's that people make choices based on perspectives that we may not be aware of.

Good luck actually achieving that.

>>54017
>tenure
Tenure is not a thing that exists for high school level teachers.

>>54194
I can back up this statement. In my English Honors class for example, I'd say maybe like half of them are actual hard workers and/or intellectually gifted. But to be fair, I do have students that literally didn't sign up for Honors, but the school shoved them in there anyways because the general educaiton classes were overflowing.

>>54790
Yes it is. I get tenure after teaching 3 years and 1 day. The purpose of it is mostly a job security thing rather than a system in place to keep teachers from being fired for unpopular opinions.

>>47370
bump for interest

>>47370
I teach IGCSE history, so its mostly contemporary history we deal with. It's great seeing the kids see now the past shaped the present.

I remember well from my history teacher in high school that there's always another point of view to everything, and it's important to consider those points of views before placing an opinion on something. My teacher demonstrated that very often through his teachings of events in history.

>>47370
they're all going to believe what the television tells them to believe anyway. they think your class is even more useless than you think it is.

anyway, "teachers" are the worst people in our society. you should probably jump in front of a truck, you condescending little prick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTFB1k5RAck
Isn't teaching great?

>>47370
Teach them with history memes to maintain their attention. They'll easily remember the material, but make sure to give a quick explanation afterwards on how the memes were off-point.

>>53653
>cringy and wrong as fuck

I can see the cringe, but where is it wrong?

I wish a degree in history wasn't worthless economically.

I'm considering making it my minor just to get the education.

>>47480
How ironic

>>47370
My HS World and Euro History teacher, one of the best teachers I've ever had, was of the opinion that his goals were to
1: give us at least a broad understanding of the general history of the world and basic geography, i.e if someone mentioned a certain historical period and location, we would be able to follow
2: teach us how to read historical documents for bias, point of view, and underlying arguments/assumptions
3: making us able to see "past" the facts and to be aware of/able to find more broad trends and directions peoples, entities, and movements were taking
4: to at least try to instill a love, or at least an appreciation, of history and the study of it.
Essentially, he knew he could teach us everything, so he wanted us to have the tools to be able to teach ourselves, and the desire to actually do it.

Also, NO ONE is without bias, and most people believe their actions are the best thing to do at the time, the point of history being to figure out why they thought that.

Teach them about every culture out there and compare and contrast between the two. Teach everything from the extravagant castles and monuments in Europe to the mudshacks in Sub-Saharan Africa. Being in a diverse, multicultural world, kids need to hear about the history of each culture and how it applies to society today.

Also, teach both sides of historical controversies, such as the various controversies surrounding the Holocaust. Children need to hear both sides of these controversies so they can make up their own mind.

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>>57781
Bro just do what I'm doing
>Major in History
>Pay for it all in student loans
>Have fun learning
>Graduate
>Blow your brains out
>Learn the the answer to the most important question
>mfw

>>58241
Sadly, I've fallen for CompE, and if I went full history, not only would I be poor, but my grandparents would also disown me.

When I was in high school my attention to my history classes depended on the current material (I liked learning about wars and empires a lot more than hearing about stupid natives doing worthless shit before "evil" people conquered them) and the quality of the teacher.
One teacher I had was a self proclaimed communist who pushed some propaganda on us about Muslims. Those days in class were pretty boring, but sometimes when learning about European history he could be pretty funny when talking about how much it sucked to be a peasant.