ABSTRACT
You may remember a very different history from the one Caitlyn describes. Too often
history instruction is simply a march through time that never quite connects to the present.
History becomes, as one second grader explains, “a main date.” The dates may mark inter-
esting stories, but the stories are finished-beginnings and middles established, climaxes
identified, and endings predictable. Figures from a pantheon of heroes and villains step
forward briefly, take their bows in stories that often fail to distinguish between myth and
history, and disappear back into the pictures displayed above chalkboards. George
Washington was the first president, had wooden teeth, and chopped down a cherry tree.
