The Teaching of American History
 

Perhaps this should go in general, I'm not too sure. Depends what angle it skewes

Basically I'm doing an honours paper on historical method and preparing a short piece on the changes in American political history. As a sample point I'm focusing on changes between the 19th century and the 20th century leading up to "The New Deal".
Basically there has been a change amongst scholars to move from a liberal, president centered approach to an insititutionalist/social approach stressing the margins of society as well as the limits of the institution that groups work in as well as a bit of Geertzian analysis and post-structuralism.
I'm curious, and it will help some of the wider focii of my essay, as to whether this has been reflected in the teaching of history to say High school students and perhaps younger kids as well (obviously I'm going to research and reference this as properly as I can but I'd like a general overview to know what direction my research is likely to take me, as well as what the public- not crazy scholars think)
So I'd like to know what kinds of things students are taught in your high schools and what is focused on. Do you guys focus on presidents and the progressive development of the state? Do you focus on social histories- the lives of people? Also if you do any primary source analysis what do you look at (for example- memoirs of presidents vs legal documents vs recollections of regular people etc etc).
Any help would be most appreciated.

IIRC most of my high school history education was in the vein of "There was a Great Depression, which was bad, then Congress passed laws and made it go away, which was good," and glossing over the actual social conflicts and debate and role of the government in facilitating a lot of society's shortcomings. This of course being to the extent that we even got into history of the Gilded Age and thereafter, which tended not to be the case.

Everything I've heard of what goes on in schools nowadays is to the effect of "they spend all their time cramming for Goddamn NCLB Tests," dunno if that helps you any.

When I took American Studies it wasn't anything like that, of course Vermont is about as liberal a state as you can find these days. Pretty much this whole part happened, of course it was also a 3 hour class three times a week and was crazy, but it was what we did.

Well Fifth's summary of American schooling is pretty much how it get portrayed over here mostly through American TV shows and is the narrow view I had which is why I asked for help.

Demetrius suggests a wider more nuanced view which is kind of where most of the scholarly attention is at (when they not just calling each other silly names, ha ha!)
I'd be keen to here some other opinions though.

I would attribute many of those changes to the influence of marginalist, neoclassical, Socialist and Keynesian schools of economic thought. It might be worth your while to look into them. If you expanded furthur into the 70's, you can see the appearance of stagflation leading into things like Reagonomics and the Chicago School.

American education depends on how much you want to get out of it. The bare minimum is an inch deep and a mile wide.

Well, I'm Canadian, so all I know about American history is the war of 1812.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/030701.jpg

The only real thing I can think of to note is how slavery was abolished, America outbids France in the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, and the Depression.

Sycophant, as a senior history major whose area of concentration is historical perception and revisionism, I have to recommend checking out or buying Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. It is an in-depth look at the perpetuation of classic American history myths, omissions, obfuscations and outright lies presented in modern history textbooks. The book is actually a very addicting read, and I suspect you will find much of use in it for your project, including its works cited. hint. hint.

High school history "education" in America is abysmal, both public and private. I'd be happy to help out or point you in the direction of more useful research materials if you want, just shoot me a PM.

It all really depends on the state, since that's where school's curricula are set and funded. So the states with the lowest taxes and budgets tend to have the crappiest schools (I'm looking at you Alabama) in terms of facilities, resources, and teacher per student ratios. I grew up in Washington State; the second highest taxed state in the Union, so my experience was probably better than a lot of other people. I always had decent textbooks, and my teachers attempted to provide a large cross-section of the history in question. So our study of the Indian Wars, for instance, was presented from both the view of the average person and the leadership with serious discussion of American atrocities, etc. By and large Washington has a very nice education system, but it isn't indicative of the entire country. For your research purposes you're probably going to have to take a sampling of each state from each region as well as each tax bracket to get an overall view of how things are run here. There really isn't an overarching American Education Policy, not counting No Child Left Behind.

Heh, Vermont has had that silly no child thing going on forever, we just call it Act 60... At least that's what I think it is, I've been at work for 13.5 hours and my mind is getting muddled.

Ah, I was made aware of Columbus brutal slaughter of the Arawaks, how we screwed over all the Native Americans, and otherwise made life miserable for everybody non-white male. Personally, though, I would expect an American history book to be fairly "Eurocentric" overall--WORLD History books shouldn't be, obviously, and they so often are.

Also I would point out that the reason all the detail is gleaned out is because High Schools like to get it all done in one year's time. If they really wanted to teach American history they should probably focus on just part of it each year. The only problem with that is that is there simply isn't enough time.

Also what someone said about getting as much out of it as you put in is important too. You can just read the chapter on the Great Depression or you can also read The Grapes of Wrath (though I was not FORCED to as part of the curriculum and perhaps that is the problem), and various other works. Instead of just talking about the horrid state of labor in the early 1900s, have the students read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (the best my high school history book managed was an excerpt from that book...though it was a lurid enough excerpt to make me read the book...)

All of this besides-which they just teach to the No Child Left Behind tests now, which does not have anything about History on it so who cares what the kiddies learn about it?