In many school districts throughout the United States, unfortunately, a trend toward cramming curricula with "life skills" such as personal finances, coupled with an earlier trend toward replacing history courses with "social studies" (an amalgamation of history, geographic, economics, etc., with not enough time for any) has resulted in a situation in which many high school graduates have not been exposed to "history" since elementary school.  Since this has been going on through several generations, many teachers are a product of this phenomenon which compounds the problem.  Efforts to re-establish distinct history courses usually run afoul of time and money constraints and a lack of qualified teachers, as well as arguments over course content.  The results were evident recently when a national television show queried university students who were unable to identify the general time period of the American Civil War, the identify of Winston Churchill, and similar facts once deemed essential to both good citizenship and the ability to understand the present as well as the past.

On Tue, 23 Apr 2002 22:16:36 +0200 Adriaan Linters <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


Is was astonished when recently a friend told me history is no a
compulsory course in secondary schools (12-18 yrs) in Canada anymore. Is
this true ?

Is it the case in other countries that children can pass the secondary
school without having had history courses ? And how does this affect
museums and museum interpretation, especially concerning the more recent
(19th and 20th c.) history and social history ?


In this country (Belgium) children have at least 1 hour/week of history
during the six years of the secondary schools, most have 2 hours/week of
history but of course this is continuously under threat. We recently had
a discussion with history teachers about how linking the history as
taught in schools with history presentation in museums.



Adriaan Linters


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