In 1999, Bruce Uhrmacher developed an analytical framework to promote the study of monuments. The framework introduced three points of analysis: (1) an analysis of referent, (2) an analysis of design, and (3) an analysis of reception. This framework focused on developing a curriculum that supported a critical, interdisciplinary study of monuments.…

December 16, 2023, was the 250th anniversary of an event that has become known as the "Boston Tea Party." This article discusses an upper-level history class about that event that allowed students to take a closer look at what really happened that night. In addition to the traditional approach of having students read large volumes of…

Bridging the gap between an author's works based on real life and historical accuracy can be a challenge for literary sites that symbolize both fiction and reality. Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House, the home of the Alcott family and the place in which she wrote her most famous novel, "Little Women," also served as the setting for the…

In pursuit of an alternative perspective on the so-called 'statues controversy', this essay brings recent interpretations of the enduring 'power', 'gaze' and 'magic' of statues into alignment with critical histories of iconoclasm, sacred and secular, and New Materialist accounts of our multiple entanglements with the object histories of inherited…

Courses: Rhetorical criticism, public address, persuasion, public memory theory, argumentation. Objectives: Through analysis of public controversies about Confederate monuments on college campuses, students will: (1) explore the concept of "public memory," how groups of people form shared interpretations of the past; (2) examine how…

The main goal of the contribution is the presentation of selected results of a quantitative research investigation, the core of which was to find out the experiences and opinions of teachers working professionally at the first level of primary schools on the implementation of the Shoah (Holocaust) theme into teaching at the relevant level of…

Statues are in the news. Controversies are swirling around the slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston in Bristol, Confederate generals, soldiers and leaders in the United States, and the sculpture in honour of Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green in North London. In some cases, the attacks have been physical as well as verbal, and such…

The Black Lives Matter campaign has led many people around the world to reassess monuments that are installed in public spaces to commemorate historical figures. These reassessments raise questions about what it means to attack the statues of the past, what the rights and wrongs of such actions are, what this teaches us and how all this is passed…

The "Curator's Curiosities" program was launched at Fort Henry National Historic Site in the summer of 2017 as an object-based interpretive program. In addition to learning the history of an artifact from the collection, participants were taught how to properly handle and catalogue the artifact, under the supervision of trained museum…

Particularly for Americans, patriotic history is a kind of glue for an extraordinarily diverse republic. Civic education requires students engage with their history--not only to know whence conventions, principles, and laws have come, but also to develop an attachment to them. This article looks at how American history should educate, but also…

An educational museum is an active learning environment created for students' participation (art, music, and drama) to learn by doing and experiencing, and didactic knowledge. This research seeks to determine the effect of the Storyline Method on students' perceptions and interpretations of historical artifacts through museum education. This…

This article reports on Year 2 of a three-year project to assess historic site-based teacher professional development programs. The intended focus was assessing pre-post Q-sorts and interviews of 29 teachers regarding how they see their work at historic sites affecting their professional development. However, data analysis revealed exceptionally…

In recent years, the removal of monuments which glorify historical figures associated with racism and colonialism has become one of the most visible and contested forms of decolonisation. Yet many have objected that there is educational value in leaving such monuments standing. In this paper, I argue that public monuments can be understood as…

Many previous contributors to "Teaching History" have demonstrated the power of site visits to stimulate young people's engagement and enrich their understanding of history. It is usually assumed, however, that the young people themselves will have the opportunity to visit the site in question--an assumption that cannot always be…

This special issue of "Canadian Social Studies," entitled "Monumental Mistakes? Confronting Difficult Pasts," has brought together a diverse range of scholars offering insights into discussions regarding removing or altering monuments, buildings, and other reminders of difficult histories. The editors have requested that…