By Chris Benevento, News Staff
As the Internet continues to play an important role in the development of education, history seems to be stuck in the past. While other subjects in fields such as math, science and the liberal arts seem to advance along with the times, history as a course has seen very little change over the years – and this hurts our perceptions of the modern world.
By the time most students graduate college, they have taken their fair share of history courses, the majority of which fall under three common titles: US history, US and world history and world history.
Typically most of these courses (from middle school on) will cover US history, the idea being that students learn about their country, its laws, the origins of those laws and how they continue to be interpreted to this day – all of which are important and necessary to be a functioning citizen.
It is perhaps because of this importance that most college students find themselves learning about the Revolutionary War in their freshman year despite having done so several times already.
Amidst the repetition of US history lie a few scattered world history courses that attempt to fill students in on what the rest of the globe was doing at the time. The teachings are selective and contemporary global history is often omitted from the coursework. The result being a student body that is up to date on US topics but drastically behind in world events unless they elect to take specifically focused courses separate from the standard curriculum.
A study done by Kent State University professors John Dunlosky and Katherine Rawson found that in 2012, 30 percent of students tested thought that Baghdad was the capital of Afghanistan. Another 21 percent believed that Budapest was the capital of India – and this is only geography. If students cannot keep the capital cities straight, how much can they possibly know about a nation’s culture?
So what’s the alternative? A contemporary approach to teaching history.
Considering most students get a solid dose of US and world history during the first nine years of their education, why not use the high school years as an opportunity to transition into modern world history? Rather than being tested on George Washington another four times, students should be learning about the United States’ role – good and bad – in the world from World War II on. They should be learning about the carving up of the Middle East, the Balkan Wars and Tiananmen Square. In other words, students should be learning about the current state of the world and how it got there.
While learning about the ancient civilizations of the world is endlessly interesting and thought provoking, extensive knowledge of Mesopotamia can only go so far when navigating current events.
When major world news breaks, and the gaps in formal education become apparent, it can be a disturbing experience. Foreign militants, religious sects – even entire cultures that were never covered in a traditional classroom are suddenly plastered all over the news. With the focus on the news, media organizations rarely have the time to provide an entire history lesson on the key players and regions involved. Yet, the news coverage continues, leaving it to the consumers to make heads or tails of whatever background information they can find. Before the Boston Marathon bombings, how many people knew about Chechnya, much less Dagestan?
Within a matter of days, the regions were on everyone’s radar. But why should it take a major event to be globally conscious?
The sudden surge of information is not always enough to keep the people properly informed. In the case of Iran, Congress is attempting to levy more sanctions on Iran despite the president’s objections. With the American public having a hand in the decision making process, it is important that we understand the origins of Iran’s distrust of the United States. It is important for us to be able to make informed decisions and judgements based off of more than the assumption that the nation’s government is inherently evil.
As other subjects adapt to meet the needs of a changing world, so too should history. As a modern economics class will aim to best equip its students with the right tools to face the challenges of a recession, a modern history class should aim to best equip students with the right tools to understand the current state of the world.
A modern history class should not use materials that were published in 1993 because there is no intention or expectation of getting anywhere close to the present. History is made moment by moment, and the course materials should reflect this.
This seems like a tall order and in some ways it is, but with the age of information comes a heightened responsibility to increase the breadth of our global knowledge – a responsibility to understand the world around us and to make educated decisions and judgments free from misinformed prejudice or bias.
-Chris Benevento can be reached at [email protected].
