Teaching history

<p>That splendid flower of New England— the town meeting—wilts under the scrutiny of a native son</p>

<p><span class="deck">NO, SAY THREE AMERICAN HISTORIANS. BUT THE PATIENT IS AILING AND THEY THINK THEY KNOW WHY AND WHAT TO PRESCRIBE.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Historians have failed to help Americans understand what the war was all about. So charges this scholar, author, and Vietnam veteran.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">If the historians themselves are no longer interested in defining the structure of the American past, how can the citizenry understand its heritage? The author examines the disrepair in which the professors have left their subject.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">David McCullough explains why he thinks that history is the most challenging, exhilarating, and immediate of subjects.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Learning about history is an antidote to the hubris of the present, the idea that everything in our lives is the ultimate.</span></p>

<p>In order to have a well-informed citizenry, it's critical to focus on history and civics education in our schools.</p>

<p>We will never learn from the past if we've forgotten it. Now there's been a dramatic decline in the number of college students studying history.</p>

<p>Our classrooms are failing to pass down the essentials of what it means to be an American, a citizen of the United States.</p>

<p>Although numerous studies show a failure in the teaching of our history and values of democracy, there are models to rebuild the civic bargains by which democracy survives.</p>