In the past year public, secondary education has become a subject of public concern. American high schools, it would seem, are deeply troubled. Criticism has ranged from the carefully prepared reports of the National Commission on Excellence in Education and the Carnegie Foundation to often bitter, inflammatory remarks in local newspapers decrying the decline in student aptitude. Much of this criticism has been leveled at the teaching of mathematics and science; but the humanities and the social sciences have received less than flattering attention. The Commission on Excellence in Education was doubt less correct when it concluded that a “rising tide of mediocrity” has swept our schools, and that tide has flowed over all areas of instruction—including history.
Solutions to the crisis in public schools must proceed along many paths. There is no single remedy. Yet, incremental change, in both the institutional strength of school districts and the substantive competence of high school teachers seems possible. Professional historical associations can play—indeed, must play—a constructive role, especially by making a commitment across a single discipline, like American history. Professional associations, with their commitment to teaching, research, and public history, are uniquely qualified to draw high school history teachers and professional historians into a sustained collaborative enterprise.
Many leaders in higher educational ready recognize the importance of such collaboration. In August 1983, for example, the presidents of Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and the Universities of Chicago, Michigan, and Wisconsin, along with administrators from other major institutions, joined in an informal conference seeking ways to “insure excellence in a full access system of secondary education.” The participants agreed, among other goals, to encourage faculty in the arts and sciences to take the initiative in breaking down barriers that have separated them from their colleagues in the secondary schools. The time had arrived, they concluded, for faculty in the liberal arts to become as active in the public schools as have faculty of college education departments.
The History Teaching Alliance seeks to foster such collaboration. The Alliance is a joint enterprise of the American Historical Association, the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Organization of American Historians. Its goals are two-fold. First, the Alliance seeks to encourage better history instruction in secondary schools by bringing faculty and teachers into a sustained dialogue. Second, the seminars are intended to cement ties of mutual respect and understanding between history faculties and high school history teachers. To this end, the Alliance sponsors year-long seminars devoted to engaging faculty and teachers in a sustained Socratic dialogue about history. During the first two years, the Alliance seminars will concentrate on the history of the American Constitution. But the Alliance has longer term objectives; the Bicentennial provides an opportunity to nourish cooperative intellectual enterprises that will extend ultimately over a range of historical topics well beyond 1987.
The Alliance recognizes that one way of improving the quality of high school history education is to have universities collaborate with school districts. The immediate targets are high school history teachers—and administrators involved in coordinating the teaching of history—but the school districts, as institutions, offer the means of approaching them as a group. The Alliance approaches high school history teachers as professionals, and it intends to bring them into contact on a regular basis with university history faculty as well as practitioners of public history. Thus, the Alliance model stresses a systemic local approach, but it emphasizes the substantive, intellectual immersion of faculty and teachers.
The Alliance seminars operate in the following way. They begin with a two-week summer session that establishes the year’s intellectual agenda, builds group cohesion, and introduces broad substantive constitutional concerns. Thereafter, the seminars meet approximately every three weeks for the remainder of the academic year. These sessions provide a sense of continuity and common purpose; they enable teachers and faculty to pursue a common intellectual agenda while building binding ties of mutual interest. The core of the seminar materials are Lessons on the Constitution, designed by John J. Patrick and Richard C. Remy and sponsored by Project ’87, and the AHA Constitutional Bicentennial Pamphlet Series. Local seminar leaders are free to supplement these materials. Throughout, the seminars hold to a Socratic model; the purpose of the faculty seminar leader is to encourage discussion, not to provide the revealed truth about the Constitution. Indeed, the Alliance assumes that history faculty will learn as much as they give to school teachers.
The Alliance, under the auspices of the OAH Committee on the Bicentennial, conducted two pilot projects during the 1984–85 school year. The lessons learned through those pilot projects, which were funded through a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, contributed materially to the creation of the Alliance. At the same time, both the AHA and NCSS had undertaken similar programs. The directors of the three professional associations quickly decided to combine their objectives into a common project—the Alliance. Subsequently, the Alliance received funding support from the Exxon Education Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Through this support, the Alliance will conduct five seminars beginning in the summer of 1985. These seminars will bring together the following history faculty and school systems: Professor Mary K. B. Tachau, Department of History, University of Louisville and the Jefferson County, Kentucky, Schools; Professor John Johnson, Department of History, Clemson University and the Pickens County, South Carolina, Schools; Professor Gordon B. McKinney, Department of History, Western Carolina University and The Buncombe County, North Carolina, Schools; Professor Ann W. Ellis, Department of History, Kennesaw College and Cobb County, Georgia, Schools; and Professor Augustus M. Burns, Department of History, University of Florida and the Alachua County, Florida, Schools. In addition, the Alliance has already approved a seminar to begin in the summer of 1986 conducted by Professor Steven R. Boyd, Department of History, University of Texas, San Antonio, and Northside, San Antonio, Texas, Schools.
The Alliance plans to expand its operation significantly during 1986 and 1987. It welcomes, therefore, applications for the establishment of collaboratives from school districts and universities and college history departments. Further information, guidelines, and application materials are available by writing to: Project Director, The History Teaching Alliance, American Historical Association, 400 A St. SE, Washington, DC 20003.
Kermit Hall holds a joint appointment in the history department and school of law of the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is the History Teaching Alliance's Oversight Committee Chair.
