This passage in Chapter 8 of Dewey (p.151) really stood out to me. In every history class that I have ever had the opportunity to observe or attend history was facts to be memorized. Time and time again I heard, “the only thing we’ve learned from history is that we’ve learned nothing at all.” This always seemed a pathetic statement to me; why couldn’t we learn anything? Why do we as a country tend to repeat the same mistakes? Perhaps this is partially due to our educational system. Maybe our children are not being taught “to appreciate the values of social life, to see in imagination the forces which favor and allow men’s effective co-operation with one another, to understand the sorts of character that help on and that hold back…” As children we are taught the facts but we are not really taught what that means in our lives today and how we can change our world as children and as adults. As a future educator I can’t help but wonder if my classes will be able to apply what they’ve learned and use information from our past to positively affect the future. I agree with Dewey and will keep in mind while teaching that, “the essential thing in [historical instruction’s] presentation is to make it moving, dynamic…history must be presented…as a forceful, acting thing.”
To me this means involving my students in what is becoming history currently.
This could be as simple as researching what’s going on in wars overseas
and why and then writing friendly letters to soldiers or interviewing a grandparent
about their childhood and compare that to life in our society today. Perhaps
they could construct their own project to teach a lower level grade about an
aspect of history that is important to them and then react to that with something
that will benefit their community. If they are involved in creating history
from past history, I think this will help them to make it their own and apply
it in their futures.
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