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 interesting 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. Abraham Lincoln was honest, read by firelight, and walked a mile to return a nickel. It is little wonder that children sometimes ask what the point in all this storytelling might be.
