ABSTRACT
Teaching world history is both necessary and impossible. It is necessary because we know that the conventional boundaries of historical knowledge are too narrow for the world today. It is impossible because the expanse of world history across space and time is too broad for the classroom. Our curricular appetites are admirable; so, too, is our indigestion. Steering the instructional straits between the flatlands of coverage and the cliffs of coherence, we veer first one way, then the other. The lure of coverage seems to me the greater danger, materialized by the heft of most world history textbooks and the drop-a-pencil, miss-an-empire syllabi that, bowing to good global intentions, find it hard to leave anyplace or anybody out. It is hard, and there is no single solution to the problem of inclusion. Selection, often brutal in its excisions, is the only answer. And if it leaves much of world history on the curricular cutting-room floor, at least the story that remains may make compelling narrative sense. The bad news is that we cannot do it all in one course. The good news is that the possible principles of selection are varied enough to enable each of us to teach to our strengths and still be true, historically, to the world.
