A Need for Fresh World History Lesson Plans

The social repercussions of insufficient world history lesson plans and US history lesson plans go much deeper than a simple low student GPA. As a college professor, I am fortunate to teach history to those who have made the commitment to learn and incorporate the lessons of history into their intellects. However, before I taught at a college level, I experienced several years teaching high-school aged kids and I learned that the situation is dire. An aspect of young people that seems to degenerate with each passing generation is a social awareness and interest in the world they live in.

In my parent's time, this was not seen as an option. The effect of the second World War was felt all over the nation, no one went untouched. Before that, the Great Depression wrought havoc in every American home. Still before that, World War I took most of the country's young men and didn't give most of them back. Social conscience was not up for debate as a virtue, it simply had roots in the lives of every American.

What we are experiencing now is the dark side of a Golden Era. With the immense prosperity and comfort that our country has gleaned for itself, many Americans live in a blissful cloud of ignorance, surrounded by the comforts of this prosperous time. Walking into most American homes, the presence of the war in Iraq isn't even a presence at all. While we can feel fortunate that our children aren't suffering as the victims of war, the downside is that they seem to be growing up devoid of any grasp of the human condition outside of their own small family and social circles.

All aspects of human history deserve to be given respect and acknowledgment. Take the Civil War, for example. The Civil War lesson plans that the state approved for me to use to teach my high school classes seemed desperately one-sided to me, and focused solely on the horrors of slavery as the cause of the war. While slavery is indeed an abhorrent occurrence, it is not necessarily the cause of the Civil War and as a result of this partial elaboration on this war, the students are not given the chance to see the whole picture. I believe that the history lesson plans, both the world history lesson plans and the US history lesson plans, are in need of a remodeling. Without the whole story and the emphasis on the human condition, we are in danger more than ever of becoming a nation of imbeciles.