Teaching How Official History Is Made: State Standards as Primary Sources

Abstract

This article traces the controversial rise and uses of state history standards for K-12 education and offers teachers a flexible lesson plan that encourages them to draw upon the standards in their own state to help students better understand the complexities of how local constructions of official knowledge are formulated. Jackson provides a quick history of the rise of state history standards in the American context beginning in the 1970s and 1980s; an ensemble of discussion questions about what history standards include, what they leave out, and how they balance critical thinking and content coverage; and a writing assignment that asks students to identify and revise what they see as a problematic single history standard.