ABSTRACT
Many teachers are afraid to engage students in controversial topics such as this. They worry that their students will not be able to handle conflict, that parents and others will attack them if they try it, and that their task is to help students “get along.” Not surprisingly, teachers who strive for harmony in disharmonious environments often long for consensussome shared set of values-rather than conflict. In the 1940s and 1950s American historians of the consensus school also tried to focus on uncovering a broadly shared set of values that, they argued, overrode ethnic and class distinctions. Much like current critics of multicultural education, these historians searched for something that could unify a diverse society. They, too, worried that diversity would cause fragmentation and that emphasizing conflict rather than consensus could lead to cynicism and the failure of citizens to participate in civic life. Echoes of the same charges and counter-charges continue to be heard in current debates over the place of history in the social studies curriculum.
