Core Purpose
Leading the Teaching and Learning of History
History's Vital Unifying Themes
* Civilization, Cultural Diffusion, and Innovation
* Human Interaction with the Environment
* Values, Beliefs, Political Ideas, and Institutions
* Conflict and Cooperation
* Comparative History of Major Developments
* Patterns of Social and Political Interaction
History's Habits of the Mind
History’s Habits of the Mind
* Understand the significance of the past to their own lives, both private and public, and to their society.
* Distinguish between the important and the inconsequential, to develop the “discriminating memory” needed for a discerning judgment in public and personal life.
* Perceive past events and issues as they were experienced by people at the time, to develop historical empathy as opposed to present-mindedness.
* Acquire at one and the same time a comprehension of diverse cultures and of shared humanity.
* Understand how things happen and how things change, how human intentions matter, but also how their consequences are shaped by the means of carrying them out, in a tangle of purpose and process.
* Comprehend the interplay of change and continuity, and avoid assuming that either is somehow more natural, or more to be expected, than the other.
* Prepare to live with uncertainties and exasperating even perilous, unfinished business, realizing that not all problems have solutions.
* Grasp the complexity of historical causation, respect particularity, and avoid excessively abstract generalizations.
* Appreciate the often tentative nature of judgments about the past, and thereby avoid the temptation to seize upon particular “lessons” of history as cures for present ills.
* Recognize the importance of individuals who have made a difference in history, and the significance of personal character for both good and ill.
* Appreciate the force of the nonrational, the irrational, the accidental, in history and human affairs.
* Understand the relationship between geography and history as a matrix of time and place and as context for events.
* Read widely and critically in order to recognize the difference between fact and conjecture, between evidence and assertion, and thereby to frame useful questions.
