Another Article Review

Critical Review on "New Approaches to Teaching History: To What Questions are Schools Answers? And What of Our Courses? Animating Throughline Questions to Promote Students' Questionabilities"

In this article, Kent den Heyer is critical of the way teachers and in particular social studies teachers address the curriculum. Heyer mainly questions how as teachers we are too quick to give answers to questions that are rarely ever addressed. Instead, Heyer argues that we should be encouraging our students to question the curriculum. Den Heyer's main argument is that teachers need to take more risks in their classrooms, teachers need to be more ambitious and engage in what den heyer calls "dangerous teaching." This term is used throughout his article to "describe teaching that helps students connect what they learn in schools to politically charged debates over what is worth knowing." (p. 2) Having those open discussions in the classroom and questioning the rationale behind the curriculum is important. It is important for students to understand why they are learning what they are and why it should be meaningful to them. There are many questions that den Heyer asks in his article that I think need to be attended to, such as "Do we as social studies teachers teach about the past in a profoundly ahistorical manner?" In what ways do schools reconstitute a colonial space in which those it assumes to serve are permitted little opportunity to analyze the conditions that shape a good portion of their adolescent lives? And "in what ways might we clarify the questions or concerns to which our courses are but one response?" (p. 3) The ideas and suggestions that den Heyer discusses in his article are of value. Take a look!