Why Students Think There Are Two Kinds of American History

STUDENTS IN MY UNDERGRADUATE Sociology and Social Science classes often tell me that the "history" they learned in high schools was different than the "history" they learned in our university classes. They often claim that what they learned in K-12 was "wrong" and that they did not learn the "real" history until they got to college. They usually focus on the fact that K-12 history is typically taught from a triumphal "grand sweep" perspective emphasizing places and dates, and the glories of the past in general. They contrast this with a college curriculum that they say emphasizes that there were great injustices in the past. Students often feel as if they have to choose between one version, or the other. Often my students' history preferences are based on their pre-existing political views about the role of the state in ordering society. Those on the right choose to believe in the "glorious past" version of K-12, and those from the left focus on the "persistence of oppression" version often emphasized by college courses in history and education departments. The "glorious past" version of history has in its corner the millions of K-12 textbooks distributed to schools around the country. The persistence of oppression school uses a different "clandestine" history of which the most popular right now seems to be James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. This