History teaching is evolving, Arlington educator says

History is infinite, and in 2021 the challenges of teaching the subject more complicated than in previous generations.

Instant access to the internet and its vast sources of information make memorizing names, places and dates less important. Arlington Public Schools Social Studies Director Denny Conklin said that history class has a greater focus on teaching students what to do with that information.

“We are trying to be realistic about the technology students have today, they can have all that information at their fingertips. What we are trying to do is teach them what to do with all of that knowledge," Conklin said.

Conklin said teachers look for ways to tie history to modern events.  Students learning about Gilded Age robber barons in the late 1800s, are also learning about the tech giants of today; connecting the history of Standard Oil with the modern world of Facebook and Amazon.

“The biggest misconception around history education is that it is just memorizing facts and reading a textbook. It is much richer than that, we are not focusing on memorizing dates and names anymore, but how you can talk about those things and weave them into current events, that is the bigger (picture),” Conklin said.

Choice and voice

Arlington High School Principal Matthew Janger said student agency is a critical component to the learning experience, regardless of subject. As the demographics of APS have shifted to include more students of color, the department has made an effort to ensure that the educational experience reflects the background of the students in the classroom.

“Student agency is an important part of our current classes. Students bring a lot of experience and knowledge to those conversations. They choose topics that they are going to focus on for papers and research projects and so all of those things provide an opportunity for students to pursue an interest in their perspectives,” Janger said. “We make an effort to listen to students and student groups; the curriculum should be a mirror and a window, and as our population has shifted, we have had those conversations.”

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Conklin highlighted the concept of giving students ‘choice and voice’ in their education; giving students an opportunity to express what they are interested in and teachers are encouraged to consider working those interests into their lessons. 

“For example, right now our students are learning about the Progressive Era, and instead of having them all do a paper on Taft or Teddy Roosevelt, they have the opportunity to research one person in depth. A lot of them are choosing Margaret Sanger, Florence Kelley, W.E.B DuBois,” Conklin said. “It’s giving students a choice in the places of what they want to learn about, and then we can use those discussions so that all students are learning about those people.”

At the end of each school year, students are asked to fill out a survey on what they learned and what they would like to learn. The results of those surveys, as well as teacher interest, can lead to the creation of additional history courses and units that may tackle modern issues. 

“The latest course we added was a course called Gender and Society which was a result of student interest, teacher interest and a result of some of the meetings that we had,” Conklin said. “Students continue to be interested in reasons why the United States is involved in the Middle East, so we added a unit on Iran in our Modern World History class, we added a unit in Afghanistan. Students want to learn more about civil rights after the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s.”

History is always evolving

While parents getting upset about what students are being taught in history class has been headline news in other communities, Janger said that in Arlington he doesn’t get any more complaints about history class than other subjects, and that most of the time it is parents being concerned that students are not having their voices heard in a classroom. 

“We don’t teach people what to think, we teach people what happened, and we use primary sources...and there is no period in history that anybody objects to being taught about. What people are generally worried about is whether or not their child is being taught what to think, which isn’t what we do,” Janger said. 

As history courses continue to evolve Janger mentioned that education has always seen moments of evolution. 

“If you look at the Scopes trial (in the 1920s) that was all about people learning new things in schools. In the 1950s and the Cold War, and learning about the Soviet Union, in the 1960s there were numerous series of reviews. It’s true that education is always evolving, but it’s not true that something brand new is happening right now,” Janger said.

Conklin said that the department is always looking for new courses to add and new ways to teach the student population in a way that reflects their surroundings. 

“We want to make sure we have different diverse perspectives reflected in the curriculum,” Conklin said. “We are trying to incorporate more indigenous history into the curriculum. Arlington renamed Columbus Day Indigenous People’s Day, and we are trying to help people understand what that means and what local indigenous history is.”