Make American History Dramatic Again

Public debates have recently focused on school history standards — what the Advanced Placement program should teach in its African-American Studies course and what the state of Florida should say about the effects of slavery. These are important questions. But I’m concerned about a longer-term problem: the danger of making American history and civics dull.

There’s a long history of depicting both history teachers and the topics they cover as boring. In 1986, Ferris Bueller’s teacher, played by Ben Stein, put people to sleep by lecturing in a monotone voice about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. In J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry and his friends have to listen to a History of Magic professor, Cuthbert Binns, drone on about uninteresting, meaningless events from the past. Professor Binns was literally a ghost — the lack of connection of his subject to the real world could hardly have been clearer. Although these are extreme examples, too often history presentations live down to such stereotypes.

JD

About the Author

Jonathan Den Hartog

Jonathan Den Hartog is a professor of history and chairman of the history department at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., and a Jack Miller Center faculty partner. He is the author of Patriotism and Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation.

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Public debates have recently focused on school history standards — what the Advanced Placement program should teach in its African-American Studies course and what the state of Florida should say about the effects of slavery. These are important questions. But I’m concerned about a longer-term problem: the danger of making American history and civics dull.

There’s a long history of depicting both history teachers and the topics they cover as boring. In 1986, Ferris Bueller’s teacher, played by Ben Stein, put people to sleep by lecturing in a monotone voice about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. In J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry and his friends have to listen to a History of Magic professor, Cuthbert Binns, drone on about uninteresting, meaningless events from the past. Professor Binns was literally a ghost — the lack of connection of his subject to the real world could hardly have been clearer. Although these are extreme examples, too often history presentations live down to such stereotypes.