Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Dayton Daily News : Good vs. evil and other great stories | Get on the Bus blog

Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott relays a story from World War II, and uses it as a jumping off place for a discussion on how history is taught to school kids:

What a story. History is filled with amazing tales like this.

And yet, how many of our kids recoil at the word “history,” telling us how “boring” it all is.

Here’s what that tells me — not enough teachers are using the right strategies to bring history to life for kids. They too often find it to be rote and irrelevant to their lives. But it doesn’t have to be, and it shouldn’t be.

Hear! Hear!

hat tip: The Carnival of Education: Week 37 at The Education Wonks

Update: Elliott has a related post at The war of the words over what kids need to know. It's about textbooks, specifically the ideological fights over what goes into them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the mention! -Scott (www.daytondailynews.com/getonthebus)

Kathryn Judson said...

Glad to to do it. Thanks for noticing.