In designing this curriculum, as with the earlier components of the Crossroads project, we have adopted a chronological structure for American history. Our decision is not, and should not be seen as, a requirement that students memorize dates for the mere sake of the rote exercise. Rather, chronology remains a valuable historical and pedagogical tool -- if we teach it as a tool for students to use to organize their historical knowledge. Because students at the middle-school level have mastered the details of historical chronology, students at the secondary-school level can put that knowledge to work in mastering the curriculum's methodological ideas about what historians do and how they do what they do.
The following chronological framework structures the Crossroads American history curriculum:
We also have developed a set of eight "Topics of Continuity and Change" that students should carry with them, both as they proceed through the stages of their education and once they are adults. We have tried to identify themes that are both essential to general historical inquiry and particularly applicable to the study of American history:
These themes evolve over time, of course; some are more important in certain periods, and less important in other periods. Moreover, they do not exist in isolation; they interact with one another, shape one another, and occasionally reinforce one another. The following paragraphs sketch how each substantive theme evolves over time, and how the eight themes interact and often interconnect within the twelve chronological units:
A.Geography as the Setting of American History
B. The Evolution of American Political Democracy
C. The Evolution of American Political Ideas
D. The Evolution of American Society
E. The Question of a Distinctive American Culture
F. America as a Gathering of Peoples and Cultures
G. The Development of an American Economy
H. The Changing Role of America in the World
CONCLUSION
These sets of themes and chronological periods were devised together and should be used together. Only if students perceive these themes' and periods' subtle interaction will they begin to grasp the complex texture of the American past and start to develop the skills we hope to foster: critical thinking, perceiving connections and differences, gathering and using historical evidence, and making and analyzing arguments.
The summary discussions above, and the twelve chronological essays found in Crossroads Essays in American History by Richard B. Bernstein, are only introductions to the rich, complex, and challenging body of ideas, information, and interpretation that makes up American history today.{9} In conclusion, we stress the point with which we began. Those who teach history, at whatever level and by whatever means, are partners in a common enterprise. We must work together to help one another in the challenging and vitally important task of preparing our students to understand the importance of the past both in and of itself and as a part of the present and the future.
Outline: The High School Curriculum