Contrasting

Covering, Uncovering and Discovering Curriculum 

 

 

 

This page focuses on contrasting content as a democratic teaching strategy.

Topics on the Page
 

Learning History Through Hidden Histories and Untold Stories

 

Teaching Multicultural and Culturally Relevant History

 

• State Laws and Curriculum Mandates for Diverse Histories

 

LEARNING PLAN: Who are the Most Famous Americans?  

 
LEARNING PLAN: Opening Up the Textbook (OUT) 

• Why Social Studies Textbooks Are So Difficult to Read
• Strategies for Opening Up the Textbook

 

LEARNING PLAN: Teaching the Book Encounter

 

Digital Textbooks for History and Social Studies

Politics of Textbooks and Standards

For more books and resources for curriculum uncoverage, go to the Web Resources page on this wiki.

 

Learning History Through Hidden Histories and Untold Stories

 

Overlooked No More series from The New York Times

 

 

If We Knew Our History, Zinn Education Project, features articles highlighting the inadequacies of mainstream textbooks in presenting history

 

 

Shifting Out of Neutral. Jonathan Gold, Teaching Tolerance (Spring 2016).

 

 

Uncoverage in History Survey Courses, TeachingHistory.org

• Calder, L. (2006). Uncoverage: Toward a signature pedagogy for the history survey. Journal of American History

The End of the History Survey Course: The Rise and Fall of the Coverage Model. Joel M. Sipress & David J. Voelker, The Journal of American History, March 2011

Multiperspectivity: What Is It and Why Use It?

Undue Certainty: Where Howard Zinn's A People's History Falls Short, Sam Wineburg (American Educator, Winter 2012-2013, pp. 27-34).

Politics in the Classroom: How Much Is Too Much?, NPR (August 6, 2015)

Teaching Multicultural History

Levels of Integration of Multicultural Content, James A. Banks

The Causal Effects of Cultural Relevance: Evidence from an Ethnic Studies Curriculum, American Educational Research Journal, 2016

• High school students taking a course examining "the roles of race, nationality and culture on identity and experience" improved grades, attendance, and graduation rates

Academic Benefits of Mexican-American Studies Reaffirmed in New Analysis

• Students who participated in the ethnic studies courses were more likely to graduate from high school and pass standardized exams they had previously failed

 

State Laws and Curriculum Mandates for Diverse History and LGBTQ+ Inclusive Curriculum

 

 

Six States Have Passed LGBTQ+ Inclusive Curriculum Laws -- Each with a Different Definition of Inclusion (June 17, 2021)

 

States Mandating Teaching Native American History (The Hechinger Report, November 24, 2022)

 

• Includes information about statues and mandates in Oregon, California, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Washington, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Michigan, and New Mexico

 

 Colorado State Board Approves New Inclusive Social Studies Standards (November 10, 2022)

Social Science Curriculum Mandates: Illinois

 

• Mandates teaching African American history, women's history, and holocaust and genocide studies

 

African American History, School District of Philadelphia

 

• First major city to require African American history for all high school graduates in 2005

 

Montana State Constitution Article X and Indian Education For All, Montana Office of Public Instruction

 

• 1972 constitutional amendment requires teachers to integrate information about Native American cultures and history in all instruction

 

• Native American History is often overlooked in schools. One state is trying to change that, Huffington Post (March 17, 2015)

 

California's FAIR Education Act

 

• The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act, Senate Bill 48 in California, requires representation in public school learning resources of diverse populations' contributions to the development of the United States and the state of California.

 

• “Pacific Islanders, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, and persons with disabilities” are included in this law.

 

Christopher Columbus Image from the Library of Congress

Learning Plan: Who are the Most Famous Americans?

 
Please list 10 names that you consider the most famous Americans in history, with no U.S. presidents or first ladies on the list.

Compare your list of 10 most famous names with lists by high schoolers and historians to think about how different generations recall famous Americans.

 

• Click on the following article to compare your choices with the high schoolers' choices at the time the article was written from Stanford University historian Sam Wineburg

 

• Click on the following article to compare your choices to those of 10 professional historians.

 

Meet the 100 Most Significant Americans of all Time from Smithsonian Magazine

 

• Ten Historic Female Scientists You Should Know from Smithsonian Magazine

 

• Top 10 Greatest Scientists Who Changed the World from Linked In

 

Who's Bigger: Where Historical Figures Really Rank. Steven S. Skiena & Charles B. Ward. Cambridge University Press, 2013

 

LEARNING PLAN: Opening Up the Textbook (OUT)

Why Social Studies Textbooks Are So Difficult to Read

 

Young People's History of Virginia, 1896

Overview of Opening Up the Textbook from TeachingHistory.org

Opening Up the Textbook from University of Texas El Paso

 

Lesson Plans for Opening Up the Textbook from Historical Thinking Matters

 

• Teacher Educator Lesson: Opening Up the Textbook (OUT) on Rosa Parks

OUTS Opening Up the Textbook from Northern Nevada Teaching American History Project

Beyond the Bubble: Opening Up the Textbook from Stanford History Education Group on YouTube

 

Learning Plan: Teaching the book Encounter

Book Trailer for Jane Yolen's picture book, Encounter

Read the comments after seeing this to learn about a Native American perspective, presented here by Debbie Reese. on the American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) website

 

• Recommended resource for non-Native teachers: http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Broken_Flute.html?id=7HTrr5656G0C

Teaching African American History

6 Teaching Tools for Black History Month


  Digital Textbooks for History and Social Studies

• United States History
• World and Global History
• American Government
• Economics
• Geography

 

Politics of Textbooks and Standards

Writing to the Standards: Reviews of Proposed Social Studies Textbooks for Texas Public Schools, Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, September 2014

 

Advanced Placement History Test Accused of Being Unpatriotic, NPR, February 23, 2015

 

Oklahoma May Scrap AP History for Focusing on America's "Bad Parts" NPR, February 18, 2015

 

Can Teaching Patriotism Protect France? The Boston Globe, February 8, 2015

 

Teaching the Movement 2014: The State of Civil Rights Education in the United States from Teaching Tolerance

 

NCAC Writes to Hanover, VA: School District's Fix Could Actually Make Things Worse.

 

 

Citizen Group Reviewing Collier Co. (Florida) School Textbooks, December 29, 2014

 

 

AP History Class Standards Spark Colorado Censorship, PBS Newshour, October 3, 2014

 

ISIS Eradicates Art, History and Music in Iraq. CBS News, September 15, 2014.

 

Bill Gates Wants Your Kids to Learn History This Way--and He's Paying to Get it into Schools. The Washington Post. September 9, 2014.

 

Republican National Committee Condemns New AP Framework, August 11, 2014

 

In Textbook Fight, Japan Leaders Seek to Recast History. The New York Times, December 28, 2013.

• See also, Examining the Japanese History Textbook Controversies from the Stanford University Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education
• The History Textbook Controversy in South Korea and Japan. St. Olaf College, January 14, 2014.

 

Controversy Over Textbook Biased "in Favor of Islam" Continues in Volusia County Schools. Orlando Sentinel, November 11, 2013

 

The Great Textbook War: The Kanawha County Textbook Wars, 1974-75 from American Radio Works.

 

 

The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies.  Christine E. Sleeter, 2011

Books and Resources

 

 

• See Kyle Ward. Not Written in Stone: Learning and Unlearning American History Through 200 Years of Textbooks. New Press, 2010.

 

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Beacon Press, 2015

 

• A People's History of the World, Chris Harman

 

• A Little History of the World, E. H. Gombrich

We Knew Our History Series from the Zinn Education Project features articles highlighting the inadequacies of history textbooks

 

• Missing from Presidents' Day: The People They Enslaved

American History Textbook Lies: Everything Your Teacher Got Wrong on YouTube

Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me and James Loewen, Lies Across America

Ray Raphael, Founding Myths

See Citizendium (A citizen's compendium of everything) for an open source complement to Wikipedia.

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University

 

• Children and Youth in History

Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States

World History for All of US, National Center for History in the Schools