Flathead may revamp history course

Why memorize names, dates and facts when most students have access to Internet search engines?

That is a question teachers at Flathead High School have been asking themselves over the last two years. Instructors in the history department have designed a revamped curriculum that will emphasize skills and concepts rather than dry lists of information. The curriculum could take effect starting next fall.

History teachers Sean O’Donnell and Bruce Guthrie presented information about the proposed new curriculum at the Kalispell school board’s special meeting Tuesday. The changes they are suggesting affect Western Civilization, a sophomore survey class.

The way the class is set up now, “we feel it’s a race through history,” O’Donnell explained.

Important historical eras are broken into two- or three-week units, forcing the class to pace through history at breakneck speed. At the end of the year, “kids don’t have a sense of what’s important or what they should take from a history class,” O’Donnell said.

They also seem to struggle to succeed in the class, he said. Over the last 15 years, Western Civ has been one of the most-failed courses at the high school.

Under the new plan, all students will study the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions. But after that, teachers will choose topics they want to cover.

Each teacher will choose one topic from what the history department has labeled “the hinges”: Greece and Rome, the making of modern Europe or Imperialism. That topic will take students through the end of the first semester.

During the second semester, students will study one topic in “the making of the modern world”: the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, modern China or the modern Middle East. They will finish the year studying either World War I or World War II.

“The fundamental question we have to ask ourselves is one that we don’t do enough: What are we teaching when we’re teaching history?” Guthrie told the school board. “Are we teaching factoids, little things that you need to memorize?”

That, he said, is what most people remember from their high school history classes: memorizing names and dates. The kids who were naturally good at memorization were deemed good at history.

But “history is not an aptitude. You can’t be good at it or bad at it, per se,” he said.

Instead, Flathead hopes to teach students not just about the past but about how people form their views of the past and where the narrative comes from.

“What are the concepts that stick? We want to gravitate toward emphasizing the processes of history, the concepts of history,” he said.

In the process, students will learn “factoids,” he said. But they’ll also be reading more and doing more collaborative work.

The new curriculum will better match state standards than the current curriculum, O’Donnell said. Montana’s history standards don’t test on specific facts or dates; they want students to be able to be able to process information.

“I think this fits the standards. In fact, I would argue this is closer to the standards than we have been,” he said. “I think this will be a better approach down the road.”

There has been some concern that Western Civ at Flathead will now be different from the class taught at Glacier High School. But Flathead is naturally equipped for classes that allow for more in-depth study, O’Donnell said. The school’s International Baccalaureate classes focus on depth rather than breadth.

Glacier is, however, interested in seeing how the curriculum works, O’Donnell said.

“I’m not sure they’ve closed the door on this possibility,” he said.

The change won’t require a change in materials or scheduling — only in departmental philosophy, Guthrie said. He said he thinks the new curriculum will be a boon to students.

“It lets kids walk away with a little bit of a grasp of what history is,” he said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.