What is the role of Education in History? Is it critical thinking first and foremost or something else?

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/

Wilfred M. McClay is the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Professor in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. He has also taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Tulane University, Georgetown University, and Pepperdine University, and he served for eleven years as a member of the National Council on the Humanities. His books include The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, The Student’s Guide to U.S. History, and Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past. He received his Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University.

"The chief purpose of a high school education in American history is not the development of critical thinking and analytic skills, although the acquisition of such skills is vitally important; nor is it the mastery of facts, although a solid grasp of the factual basis of American history is surely essential; nor is it the acquisition of a genuine historical consciousness, although that certainly would be nice to have too, particularly under the present circumstances, in which historical memory seems to run at about 15 minutes, especially with the young.

No, the chief purpose of a high school education in American history is as a rite of civic membership, an act of inculcation and formation, a way in which the young are introduced to the fullness of their political and cultural inheritance as Americans, enabling them to become literate and conversant in its many features, and to appropriate fully all that it has to offer them, both its privileges and its burdens. To make its stories theirs, and thereby let them come into possession of the common treasure of its cultural life."

My take is that all successful endeavors require certain inherent core beliefs. To be continually arguing over every single aspect in minutia, how about agreeing to the preservation of what unites us all. Yes, we have burdened minorities at certain times but this theme is not exclusive to this country.

IMHO, we need to pull the baby out of the bathwater while there still is time to do so. Being aware that even ISIS has a game plan of sorts and we need that cohesiveness, not openly antagonistic rhetoric but a sense of America in it's unique place in the whole. Can we recapture that? Is there time?



PO2 Ed C. MSgt (Join to see) CSM Michael J. Uhlig MSG Floyd Williams Col (Join to see) @LTC MSG Wade Huffman CPT L S LTC (Join to see) LTC Stephen C. LTC Stephen F. TSgt (Join to see) SrA Matthew Knight PV2 (Join to see) 1SG Michael Blount PO2 Corey Ferretti Cpl (Join to see) Cpl Ray Fernandez