3247 Straight-from-the-book classes are history

was the headline of the Columbus Dispatch story on Monday. Actually, they were history when I was in elementary school in the 1940s, and when my parents were in school in the 1920s, and when my kids were in school in the 1970s-80s. Except my parents and I also studied real "history." My children's teachers didn't want to load up their impressionable minds with boring facts, so they never knew which came first WWII, Korea or VietNam.

How I remember building walls for a medieval fort by cutting up bars of soap (the whole class worked on this plan), and making a poster of Georgia showing all the agricultural products with my friend Nancy. And I also remember the less able students who were part of the team and learned nothing--not even how to cut up soap. Whatever. Each generation of journalists and teachers seem to think they invented hands-on, group learning.

However, this article in the CD was about teaching teachers who had no required history courses in college--how to teach children what the teacher doesn't know. It's a program--funded with federal money, of course--by the Ohio Historical Society, Ohio State University and the Columbus Public Schools called "History Works II." Seventy-five Columbus teachers have been through the $1 million dollar program to teach creative ways (costumes, journals, mock-government) to teach history.

Here's an idea. Let's reset the college requirements with more history courses for education majors, so we don't have million dollar programs to correct the oversight later on (federal site says $119,790,000 for 130 programs). I was a foreign language/education major and was within about one credit hour of a history minor, with some political science courses, too. So, how are ed majors filling their class time these days?

Check here for Jennifer Smith Richard's article.