Urban Education at a Crossroads: Changing How We Teach History

Abstract

Urban education is currently at a crossroads. Urban schools as a whole are failing to address the crisis. This issue is most apparent in the social studies, where contemporary urban high school students are struggling to connect their lives to the historical content being covered in their history classrooms. One way to address this issue is to revisit an old concept in the social studies, teaching history backwards. By employing a reverse chronological approach, social studies instructors are able to anchor historical content to student prior knowledge of the world around them. The current educational focus on standardized testing as a means of discerning student learning has clouded the issue of what is the true goal of social studies instruction. Contemporary students lack critical thinking skills and the ability to solve real world problems. One of the main reasons for this is that students are not challenged to think creatively about the world around them. By seeing themselves and the world that they understand in the history, students become a part of the learning, while developing critical thinking skills. This approach to teaching history through inquiry addresses the disinterest of contemporary high school students and the increased marginalization of the social studies in American schools.