In Teaching History Then and Now, Larry Cuban explores the teaching
of history in American high schools during the past half-century.
Drawing on his early career experience as a high school history educator
and his more recent work as a historian of US education policy and
practice, Cuban examines how determined reformers have and have not
changed the teaching of history.
The book focuses on two high schools--Cleveland's Glenville High School
and Washington DC's Cardozo High School--examining both throughout the
1950s and 1960s and then at the present time. Adding to this complex
portrait are fascinating accounts of the major reform movements in
history teaching over the last half-century: the New Social Studies of
the 1960s and the New History of the 1990s. Uniting this nationwide
history of the field with his own recollections of and research on the
featured high schools, Cuban creates a rich, detailed portrait of an
important, contested high school field characterized by enduring
features and significant change.
The result is exemplary education research, capturing the gritty facts
of classroom practice and the larger currents of policy, institutional,
and national change. Cuban identifies how large reforms have
influenced--and sometimes failed to affect--classroom practice.
Teaching History Then and Now portrays a complex, often unpredictable
process whereby reformers, school leaders, policy makers, and teachers
have all struggled to make the teaching of history best serve students,
their communities, and the nation.
