This has been a puzzling proposition for me, since changing curricula simply because some teachers ‘think’ that learning ‘names and dates’ might be boring for their students is (to me) ridiculous. To get away from a more chronological means of covering history in a manner which allows teaches to deal with recurring themes strikes me as exchanging some tests with point details (e.g. a potential in a chronological presentation of history) with essay questions dealing with certain themes (and using history only as a means to bolster some points) doesn’t look to be some sort of net gain for any students. As a matter of fact, this also entrusts teachers with having to go through essay questions on tests (a problematic exercise…).
I have already mentioned that thematic methods of teaching history deal with the themes and that history takes a supporting role…in a history class. There are plenty of methods to cover history in a more ‘qualitative’ manner than merely presenting lots of facts and data points. I always thought that this was where the rubber hit the road as a social studies teacher. You needed (by implication) to (1) know your topic, and (2) like to present this topic in a manner which was interesting. If you can’t do this, you have boredom as a result, and all of the resulting class management issues…
I always get the feeling that thematic teaching of history is a bit like the idea of “a spoon full of sugar” with which to dilute the potential pain that many students have come to regard as history classes. This might have some short term worth as a tactic, but as a strategy, using this different method as a means to acquiesce to what students want versus what they need seems to be poorly thought out. Bear with me here… I am saying that a thematic method of teaching history is perfectly appropriate for students who already have some basic grounding in the topic. To use this method only as a means to minimize classroom management issues seems to be simply wrong.
While I consider the idea of history and how to teach it, I found a few interesting things in my internet research. While high schools, colleges, and universities have all kinds of ‘hyphenated’ history subjects (e.g. various gender, race, and environmental headings to classes…), there are some topics which seem to have been relegated to the dustbin of history (sorry…a bad pun here!). Military History used to be in the forefront of history classes. From a classical standpoint, it was appropriate for almost anyone presuming to have a classical education to be very well versed in Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, as well as a variety of perspectives on Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and this was a prime underpinning of European History classes. Now, it seems that this particular ‘theme’ (anything dealing with the concept of War…) is presumably uncouth and a verboten topic.
I find this rather strange, in that if you look at the challenges which confront western civilization, world peace, and almost any international current events, a rational understanding of what war really brings (all of the good, the bad, and the ugly) would be quite appropriate to know for students who might end up in the military themselves within only a few years. This whole topic area of themes conflated with this latest idea (i.e. the dearth of military history being taught anymore…) looks a bit like an ostrich with its head in the sand…
As a final point about Military History, I have a link to a video interview of Victor Davis Hanson (a great military historian), where he mentions that while most school campuses have gotten this sort of retrograde sort of history long ago. The interesting thing is that if you were to go to any major book store (Borders Books, Barnes & Noble, etc.) and check out the history section, you would see mostly military history books… Maybe the ostriches are still in school…
