Sources, Standards, and the Teacher’s Dilemma

Middle school and high school history teachers have in recent years faced revised state standards that require them increasingly to engage students in the sources and methods of history, as well as in its content.  On the one hand, such change in school curricula is generally welcomed by teachers because of the opportunity it provides to engage students directly in identifying and analyzing primary sources, the type of work an undergraduate history major might be expected to do.  On the other hand, state standards still mandate that students master a considerable amount of content about the cultural, political, economic, and social history of the United States, the sort of fact-based accumulation that is most easily measured on standardized tests.  The teacher’s dilemma, therefore, is one of balancing the sources—which by their nature are open to multifaceted analysis and interpretation—with the content students need to perform well on AP and college admission tests.

Using the Pennsylvania History standards as its focus, this paper will explore some of the ways in which teachers might try to resolve this dilemma when teaching early American history.  It will briefly introduce some web resources that model the integration of sources and content for secondary and middle school students as well as offer a brief analysis of a recent wave of textbooks aimed at bridging this same gap.