We are raising students in America who are, by and large, historically illiterate.
Yeah, I love history and I loved it as a kid.
When I was really young, I wanted to be a history teacher because I was obsessed with the past.
Civics is not only how to run the country before it's your turn to run the country; it is, in fact, the study of power, practical political power. And you must start that process at an age level when kids' brains are still open and malleable.
I had become increasingly concerned in recent years about the lack of civics education in our nation's schools. In recent years, the schools have stopped teaching it. And it's unfortunate.
I'm somewhat horrified because I don't think the young people today even know what history is. Some of them don't' even study History at school anymore or Geography and they don't know where one place is from another.
The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.
However, the sciences of society and of history retained their old subservient relation to metaphysics for a long time - well into the eighteenth century.
I'm going to teach high school. History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.
My only foray into anything stock-market-related was in my eighth grade social studies class. I have steered clear ever since.
I still remember with gratitude a series for children on everyday life where we learned about the games children in other times had played and the food they ate.
When I was a kid, I loved history because history to me was a big story.
Food is the best way to teach history and geography and most everything else.
I wrote my first novel in eighth grade for a boy named Kenny on whom I had an unrequited crush and who sat behind me in social studies.
Scientific studies about relationships fascinate me, and I devour them hungrily, especially when they give big, fancy-sounding names to everyday experiences.
A new study found that women think men holding a guitar are more attractive, even if they are not playing it. In a related story, guys with an accordion will die alone.
I got into politics when I was 12, back when George H. W. Bush was running against Michael Dukakis. We did a mock election in my social studies class, and I remember how so much of what was thought of as liberal made sense to me.
Half the states have stopped making civics and government a requirement for high school. Half.
The only school that let me in was U.C. Santa Cruz, which is where I went. They didn't have a journalism program, so I took sociology, which is the closest thing to journalism.
I'm interested in history.
I think I've read all of W.E.B. Du Bois, which is a lot. He started off with comprehensive field work in Philadelphia, publishing a book in 1899 called 'The Philadelphia Negro'. It was this wonderful combination of clear statistical data and ethnographic data.
You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.
I loved psychology and I loved history.
I loved the idea of making history interesting for kids! When Scholastic approached me about 'The 39 Clues', I immediately started going through the 'greatest hits' from my years as a social studies teacher, and picked the historical characters and eras that most appealed to my students.
I'm big into social studies, the humanities. I really love history and world issues and philosophy and law.
