From Goodreads
“Education exists to impart important knowledge of the world that can help students and society function effectively in the future.”
This book, written by heroic, grizzled history teaching veteran (not some guy hopelessly out of touch in an ivory tower) Mike Maxwell, was the best book about history education I have come across in a long time. His ideas need to spread immediately.
As a fellow world history teacher who takes his job extremely seriously, I could not agree with Maxwell more about the importance of imparting (and clearly defining) history’s wisdom, the importance of assigning weight to certain topics, the importance to teach students situational awareness, and more. Also, we are in total agreement that history’s “standards” (state standards, AP standards, etc.) are hopelessly convoluted and unrealistic to cover pacing-wise. Our schools make colossal mistakes in history: many districts/schools race through history too fast, omit history entirely, replace history with quasi-history classes like the Big History Project, or teach Common Core-obsessed, literacy skill-based “history”. I hope that school districts and history teachers all over the country read this book and re-discover the importance of historical wisdom.
If we don’t, we risk continuing down the current path of overrated “skill building”, byzantine standards, and a negligence of building an educated citizenry. Thank you, Mr. Maxwell and I will do my best help.
Future-Focused History blog 