critical thinking history lessons

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You are here, teaching students to think like historians.

History class should not simply be a space where students learn through rote memorization. Abby Reisman offers tips on how educators should frame class sessions to develop students' critical thinking skills instead.

History class should be a space where students learn to think and reason, not just memorize. We want students to be able to answer not only “What happened?” but “How do you know?” and “Why do you believe your interpretation is valid?” Such questions align with the Common Core State Standards, which specify that college-ready students be able identify an author’s perspective, develop claims, and cite evidence to support their analyses.   Penn GSE Professor Abby Reisman helped develop the award-winning  Reading Like a Historian  curriculum, which develops students’ critical thinking skills. Here are her tips for history class: [1]  Use texts as evidence.  Shifting through multiple interpretations of an event is neither natural nor automatic. Few students recognize that every historical narrative is also an argument or an interpretation from its author. Students can learn to weigh and evaluate competing truth claims, consider the author’s motive and purpose, and draw inferences about the broader social and political context. These are especially important skills in a world where information, both useful and bogus, is a mouse click away. [2]  Develop historical reading skills . Train students in the four key strategies historians use to analyze documents: sourcing, corroboration, close reading, and contextualization. With these skills, students can read, evaluate, and interpret historical documents in order to determine what happened in the past. [3]  Demonstrate through modeling.  Students greatly benefit from seeing their teacher think aloud while reading a historical document first. A teacher should work through the text, evaluating the author’s reliability, and raising broader questions about the event in question. Eventually, students will be ready to try it on their own and in small groups. [4]  Build a document-based lesson.   Reading Like a Historian  lesson plans generally include four elements:

• Introduce students to background information so they are familiar with the period, events, and issues under investigation.
• Provide a central historical question that focuses students’ attention. This transforms the act of reading into a process of creative inquiry. The best questions are open to multiple interpretations, and direct students to the historical record rather than their philosophical or moral beliefs. Most importantly, students must be able to answer this question from evidence in the document.
• Have students read multiple documents that offer different perspectives or interpretations of the central historical question. These documents should represent different genres. For example, a diary entry from a participant of an event might be examined alongside a contemporary news account.
• Have the students respond to the central historical question in writing, a classroom discussion, or both. Make sure they formulate a historical claim or argument and support it with evidence from the text.

[5]  Engage in whole-class discussion.  Text-based discussions allow students to develop a deeper understanding of the subject and internalize higher-level thinking and reasoning.  In effective text-based discussions, students articulate their shifting claims, reexamine the available evidence, and interrogate their classmates’ reasoning. 

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Historical Thinking Skills

What skills should you have when you leave a history class.

Chronological Thinking Historical Comprehension Historical Analysis and Interpretation Historical Research Skills Historical Issues:  Analysis and Decision-Making

1.  Chronological Thinking

Chronological thinking is at the heart of historical reasoning.  Students should be able to distinguish between past, present, and future time.  Students should be able to identify how events take place over time.  Students should be able to use chronology in writing their own histories.  Students should be able to interpret data presented in time lines.  Students should be able to analyze patterns of historical duration or continuity as well as to recognize historical change.  Finally, students should begin to understand how the periodization of history is culturally constructed.  Europeans tend to see historical change and periodization as a gradual move toward modernity and divide history into the history of the Ancient World, the Medieval (or Middle) period, the Early Modern Period (we're no longer middle but we haven't gotten into modernity yet), the Modern Period, and the Contemporary Period (generally history in the post-World War II period).  Moreover, our current system of dating events depends upon a Christian conception of time even though historians now believe Jesus was alive at the time A.D. begins.  B.C.  means "before Christ."  AD means "Anno Domini," or after the birth of our lord.  Historians now are more likely to name these two patterns of dating B.C.E. ("before the common era") and C.E. ("after the common era") to secularize periodization.  Other civilizations, including the Nahuas, understood history quite differently and understood time in a more cyclical way.  Their history and sense of time, too, was culturally constructed.  Their notion of time contributed to the Mexica understanding of their history.  The Toltecs, who dominated ancient Mexico from the city of Tula long before the Mexicas took power, worshipped Quetzalcoatl, an ancient god of the sky and wind.  According to oral traditions, an ancient Toltec ruler, Topiltzin, became merged with the god.  After a battle, Toplitzin/Quetzalcoatl left or was forced out of Tula.  The Mexicas subsequently embraced Topiltzin/Quetzalcoatl to persuade others that they were the legitimate successors of the Toltecs, and they constructed a temple to the god in Tenochtitlan.  Legend taught that Quetzalcoatl would return to reclaim his title.  Adding to the legend, Quetzalcoatl was born in the year Ce Acatl one-Reed and left in the year one-Reed.  This corresponded to fifty-two years, which would be one cycle in the Mexica calendar.  According to sources, Cortés appeared in what would have been one-Reed in the Mexica calendar, hence the reason why Moctezuma might have assumed that Cortés was Topiltzin/Quetzalcoatl.  This makes a good story, but there is no way to know if this story was constructed before or after the conquest.  What is important to understand is how much our history and construction of time contribute to our understanding of ourselves and how this understanding shapes our actions in the present world.   Other great civilizations had their own periodization, and even European historians argue with each other about how history should be divided up chronologically.  As you do the assigned reading in the textbook, you should think about how its authors have organized historical eras.  Can you think of different ways they might have ordered events?   Many of your study questions are designed to stimulate chronological thinking and an understanding of how things changed over time.

2.  Historical Comprehension

Historical comprehension involves reading creatively, so that you can imagine yourself in the roles of the men and women you study.  It is difficult to believe today that Europeans were willing to take almost any action necessary in order to obtain cheaper pepper in 1492.  To understand their motivations, you need to understand the historical context within which events like the "Age of Exploration" unfolded.  While this may seem simple enough, the process of avoiding "present-day" thinking and understanding the context of an event involves many higher order thinking skills.  In reading any historical passage, you should be able to identify who was involved in the action, what happened, where it happened, and what events led to the action, and what consequences or outcomes followed the action.  A simple way of thinking about this process is to envision yourself engaging in an "into, through, and beyond" approach to history.  You want to understand the factors that got you into an event, how the event transpired (the through), and what happened as a consequence of the event.  In the Columbus example, there were multiple factors inducing him to sail across the ocean blue (but, yes, obtaining cheaper pepper was one of them).  This would be the "into" part or the "context" of his action.  The action involved several trips back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean and some deadly and not so deadly cultural encounters.  This would be the "through" part of understanding the action.  The "beyond" or consequences of his action involved the transformation of the Americas, dramatic demographic or population transformations (high mortality rates and large migrations, some of it forced), the ruin of Africa, and the emerging hegemony of Europeans over global markets.  This, in turn, would have long term impacts on the Ottoman Empire, India, China, and Southeast Asia as well.

Other historical comprehension skills involve being able to identify central questions in historical writing and to come to some conclusions about the purpose, perspective, or point of view from which they have been constructed.  The project on the Conquest of Mexico is designed to develop this skill.  Cortés saw a need to make himself the sole conqueror of the Mexicas, so there is little mention of any assistance in his letters.  He crafted himself into the lone hero.  Bernal Díaz del Castillo wanted to impress the Spaniards with the conqueror's accomplishments.  He emphasized the difficulty of the conquest and how clever Cortés was in forging alliances with indigenous populations hostile to the Mexicas.  He also recognized the role of Doña Marina, the Indian woman given to Cortés, who became his mistress and translator.  He did not believe that Mexico could have been conquered without her, and, in general, viewed the conquest as a group effort.  Nahuatl sources describing the Mexica version of the conquest also make Doña Marina much more central to the story than Cortés did.  But they had an intention for making their argument, too:  it was useful to tell the story of their great defeat as a heroic struggle that was lost only because of the treason of one of their own, a woman.  When reading these various accounts of the conquest, you need to understand where these various perspectives have shaped interpretations of the same event.  Historical comprehension also involves understanding the humanity (or sometimes lack of it) of main characters:  what were their probable motives, hopes, fears, strengths, and weaknesses.

Finally, historical comprehension involves using data presented in many different forms:  maps, visual and numerical data, and visual, literary, and musical sources including:  (a) photographs, paintings, cartoons, and architectural drawings; (b) novels, poetry, and plays; and (c) folk, popular and classical music.  Understanding geographical information will explain a lot about how the ancient world developed.  This understanding will also help to contextualize history and the significance of many developments, like the railroads and steamships, which made it possible for Europeans to penetrate African and Chinese interiors in the nineteenth century.   The fact that only around 300,000 slaves were brought to the United States in the eighteenth century, whereas more than 6,000,000 slaves were brought to Brazil in the same period leads one to compare the operation and effects of slavery in the two areas that could explain the difference.

3.  Historical Analysis and Interpretation

Our society and educational system has taught you (and much of the world's population) that there is only one right answer or one right historical interpretation.  This idea is reinforced by the use of textbooks, which tend to present history as a "succession of facts marching to a settled outcome."   It is difficult to learn history without such books, but they, nonetheless, give a misleading sense of what history is and almost prevent the acquisition of historical thinking skills.  For this reason, I have tried to develop projects that incorporate historical thinking skills.  In fact, history is never as self-evident as it is presented in textbooks.  If you compared world history textbooks, you would find that authors disagree a lot on how to present material.  Historians also disagree a lot on how facts are to be interpreted so that while "common knowledge" suggests that history is about what happened in the past, history actually consists of a dialog among writers, scholars, and the general public not only about what happened, but about how and why it happened and what its effects were.  Thus, history is not just about remembering answers, it involves following and evaluating arguments and arriving at usable conclusions based on what evidence you have.  The facts, themselves, are not usually what historians argue about.  We know that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  The controversy and debate is around what factors led the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor or whether or not President Roosevelt knew about it in advance.  In answering the first question, one can look at both "short-term" and "long-term" causes.  The "short-term" causes were the immediate factors behind the attack, Japanese isolation, their fear of running out of oil, their frustrations with American demands that they pull their troops out of China.  "Long-term" causes might consider the Japanese desire to construct an "Asia for the Asians," which essentially meant an Asia for the Japanese.  The Japanese wanted to be recognized as a great imperial power like the United States and the European colonial powers, and were constantly frustrated by the way in which the U.S. and Europe failed to acknowledge what they believed to be their "manifest destiny" (that is, to control China and Southeast Asia).  Even when one examines, "long-term" causes, one should remember that there was nothing inevitable about the bombing of Pearl Harbor (or any other historical event).  History might have turned out much differently if the US had not moved some of its aircraft carriers (unbeknownst to the Japanese) before the bombing, which allowed them to survive the attack and continue to threaten the Japanese navy.

In short, to be able to engage in historical analysis and interpretation, you should be able to identify the author or source of a piece of evidence and assess its credibility.  You should be able to compare and contrast different sets of ideas, values, personalities, behaviors, and institutions.  You should be able to differentiate between historical facts and historical interpretations.  You should be able to understand that multiple perspectives of the past are possible, even though history is often written from the point of view of winners.  You should be able to analyze "cause-and-effect relationships," understanding that many events probably have multiple causes.  In analyzing "cause-and-effect relationships," you should try to differentiate what happened because of individual action, cultural factors, or pure chance.  You should understand that all historical interpretations are tentative and that they might be revised with the discovery of new evidence or by thinking about the problem in a new way.  You should be able to evaluate major debates among historians and come to your own conclusions about them.  Finally, you should be able to think about how events in the past may be shaping our present.

4.  Historical Research Skills

The best way to learn about what history is, is to do or write history yourself.    You should be able to formulate historical questions, obtain historical data, evaluate the data, contextualize the data, and present your history in a meaningful form.  The textbook is a "secondary" source .  It is a book that is based on primary source materials or other historical accounts that was written well after the event took place.  If you read the section in the textbook on the conquest of Mexico, you will be reading an interpretation of that event.  The authors believe that certain facts were important in allowing the Spaniards to conquer the Mexicas.  They ignore other facts that they do not believe are important.  "The Conquest of Mexico" page contains " primary" sources or accounts written by Cortés, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, and, in principle, the Mexicas and other Nahuas.  Only Cortés's letters were written at the time.  Díaz del Castillo's account was written many years later from his memory.  The Mexica sources were written down under Spanish supervision many years after the event.  In evaluating the "primary" sources, you should think about who produced the account? when? how? and why?  You should think about what is the evidence of its authenticity, authority, and credibility?  What does it tell you about the point of view, background, or interests of its author or creator?  What else is necessary to construct a useful story, explanation, or interpretation based on the sources.  How might you revise what is written in the textbook from what you now know (or do you think the textbook interpretation is just fine)?  One thing that is especially clear in the case of the "Conquest of Mexico" is how little can be said for sure about any of it.  It is one of the most significant turning points in world history, but all of the main characters had a point of view that shaped their visions of events.  This is the stuff historians have to work with, materials that are often full of gaps, contradictory, and messy.  Yet for over a thousand years, men and women have struggled with this kind of evidence in imaginative ways to fill in the gaps and craft interpretations that help us to explain our own past.

5.  Historical Issues--Analysis and Decision-Making

History has been integrally related to political and economic decision-making for centuries.  Our sense of our past in some ways shapes our sense of identity today.  This is why it is so easy to argue about what history is the "right" history.  Many individuals believe that we should not teach American students about some of the controversial problems in our country's past (slavery, destroying the lives of Native Americans, the treatment of late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigrants from Japan, China, and Mexico, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the use of atomic weapons, and so forth).  Other individuals find greater inclusivity in history to be liberating.  What is important is to be able to identify issues and problems in the past and to analyze the interests, values, perspectives, and points of view of all of those involved.  One should examine the events of the past and think about what led up to them.  What might have been done differently to resolve problems?  What alternative actions might have been taken?  What can we learn about how people made decisions to do the things they did?  To answer these questions, you should be able to evaluate the implementation of a decision by analyzing the interests it served, by estimating the position, power, and priorities of each actor involved; by assessing the ethical dimensions of the decision; and by evaluating its costs and benefits from a variety of perspectives.

Critical Thinking Questions

Could the differences between the North and South have been worked out in late 1860 and 1861? Could war have been avoided? Provide evidence to support your answer.

Why did the North prevail in the Civil War? What might have turned the tide of the war against the North?

If you were in charge of the Confederate war effort, what strategy or strategies would you have pursued? Conversely, if you had to devise the Union strategy, what would you propose? How does your answer depend on your knowledge of how the war actually played out?

What do you believe to be the enduring qualities of the Gettysburg Address? Why has this two-minute speech so endured?

What role did women and African Americans play in the war?

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The Historical Thinking Project was designed to foster a new approach to history education — with the potential to shift how teachers teach and how students learn, in line with recent international research on history learning. It revolves around the proposition that historical thinking — like scientific thinking in science instruction and mathematical thinking in math instruction — is central to history instruction and that students should become more competent as historical thinkers as they progress through their schooling.

The project developed a framework of six historical thinking concepts to provide a way of communicating complex ideas to a broad and varied audience of potential users.

Active from 2006 to 2014, the Historical Thinking Project provided social studies departments, local boards, provincial ministries of education, publishers and public history agencies with models of more meaningful history teaching, assessment, and learning for their students and audiences. As the 2014 Annual Report demonstrates, they met a very receptive audience.

From April 2014 onward, it will operate on "pilot light" mode, in the event that new teams of educators are ready to start cooking .

Summer Institute 2016

The Summer Institute is designed for teachers, graduate students, curriculum developers, professional development leaders and museum educators who want to enhance their expertise at designing and teaching history courses and programs with explicit attention to historical thinking.

Vancouver, BC 11-16 July 2016 More information here.

© Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness

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Working with us, sessions and programs, ongoing support, lessons, units and courses, source materials, professional resources, sharing existing materials, commissioned resources, collaborative research.

Online resources to support elementary and secondary students in using historical thinking and inquiry

Teaching historical thinking.

The study of history comes alive and is more engaging and meaningful for students when they learn how to think like an historian.

Introducing the core concepts of historical thinking

Building on the work of Professor Peter Seixas of the University of British Columbia, TC² has developed engaging videos with accompanying lesson plans to introduce students to six historical thinking concepts that enable them to go beyond merely learning historical information to thinking deeply about history.

Historical significance

This video introduces students to the factors that determine what and who from the past should be remembered, researched, taught and learned (7:14 minutes)

Evidence and interpretation

This video introduces the validation, interpretation and use of primary and secondary sources of historical information in the construction of historical accounts and arguments (6:55 minutes)

Continuity and change

This video explains how lives and conditions are alike over periods of time and how they changed for people and societies that came before and after (6:19 minutes)

Cause and consequence

This video considers who or what influenced history and what were the repercussions of these changes (6:20 minutes)

Historical perspective

This video discusses the viewing of the past through the social, intellectual, emotional and ethical lenses of the time (5:53 minutes)

Ethical judgment

This video explores assessing the past and the implications of past actions in light of past and present norms about the appropriate treatment of others (6:53 minutes)

Resources to support historical thinking

Snapshots in Time: Significant Events in Canadian History Set 1

The Snapshots in Time Significant Events in Canadian History series consists of three sets of cards focusing on 150 significant events in the history of what became known as Canada from its pre-history to present day. This first set of 50 cards can be used as a game, learning tool, learning resource or assessment strategy to help your students investigate well-known historical events that are commonly included in grades 4-12 curricula across Canada. Each card focuses on a significant historical event in Canadian history and includes a title, a description of the event and an iconic image that provides clues about the event and when it occurred.

This set of cards was partially funded by the University of Alberta’s Endowment Fund for the Future: Support for the Advancement of Scholarship program.

This resource is also available in French as Clichés d'histoire . (Funded by le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada .)

Thinking historically with source documents

This six-page reference guide identifies freely available video, print and online resources that explain historical thinking, suggest how to teach it and offer sources of historical documents and images on topics in Canadian history. Also indicated at the end of this guide are exemplary resources available for purchase.

Teaching Historical Thinking (Revised and expanded edition)

This print resource elaborates on the six interrelated concepts central to students' ability to think about history. It offers specific suggestions for introducing the concepts to students and for applying them throughout the history curriculum.

Click for online resources that support use of the print publication

Exemplars in Historical Thinking: 20th Century Canada

This print resource contains teaching instructions, reproducible activity sheets and assessment support addressing a range of events and people in 20th century Canada. The nine critical challenges build upon the six concepts of historical thinking.

Doing historical inquiry

Students bring history to life and direct their own learning by doing history, particularly through rich, hands-on project-based inquiry. With the following resources, educators can support students to research their own inquiry, take intellectual risks and learn curricular content by constructing meaning rather than simply absorbing facts.

Inquiring into local and Indigenous histories

Tools for Thought lessons

Developed for grades 1-12 and available in French and English, these lessons are designed to nurture the student competencies required for historical thinking and inquiry. Each lesson introduces a thinking tool and a related historical thinking concept that can then be used to support curriculum-related learning activities and inquiry projects.

Using heritage fairs to support historical inquiry

Heritage fairs provide an excellent opportunity for project-based historical learning. Students research their own inquiry questions and use the media of their choice to present the results at a public exhibition.

Seven steps to a powerful Heritage Fair project

This online guide, developed by the BC Heritage Fairs Society in partnership with TC², helps teachers support students with their heritage fair projects. It offers suggestions for how to help students choose and refine a topic of personal and historical significance, dig deeply and critically into that topic, connect their findings with broader themes, social issues and “big ideas” in the curriculum and creatively share their conclusions in a public forum.

Enriching projects with historical thinking concepts

This Tips for Teachers document outlines the value of embedding historical thinking concepts in projects, and how specific concepts help guide more rigorous historical inquiry. Sample questions from actual heritage fair projects are provided to illustrate how each of the six historical thinking concepts can be embedded.

Tools to support historical inquiry

The following lesson plans from the Tools for Thought collection develop the techniques of effective historical research and inquiry. These resources, useful at both the elementary and secondary levels, include teacher notes, detailed instructions and relevant activity sheets.

The online and video resources that are part of Thinking about History are published with the support of the following groups:

The Critical Thinking Consortium

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Building Critical Thinkers by Combining STEM With History

By asking students to explore the history of scientific discoveries, we get them to view their world with more wonder—and more skepticism—and condition their minds to think about causes and effects.

For many science teachers, the night before a lesson is often filled with anxiety as they look for ways to make the next day’s class more engaging. But the tools that teachers have access to are not all the same.

Some teachers have maker spaces fitted with 3D printers; some do not. Some teachers have a strong science background, while others do not. Some schools have supply rooms stocked with Erlenmeyer flasks and high-powered microscopes, but many more do not. All students need to become critical thinkers, which great STEM instruction can foster. But the development of critical thinking does not hinge solely on a fancy maker space, a prestigious science degree, or an abundance of resources.

One innovative way to foster critical thinking in STEM is to add a bit of history. STEM was born from the desire to emulate how life actually operates by merging four core disciplines: science, technology, engineering, and math. In the real world, these disciplines often work together seamlessly, and with little fanfare.

But if we want to prepare children to be future scientists, we need to inform them about the past. By doing so, we demystify scientific advancements by revealing their messy historical reality; we show students how science is actually conducted; and we have the opportunity to spotlight scientists who have been written out of history—and thus invite more students into the world of science.

The Power of Science Stories

One of the best ways to share science from a historical point of view is to tell great science stories. Stories are sticky: The research shows that humans are hardwired for them, and that scaffolding information—by bundling scientific discoveries with a compelling narrative, for example—helps the brain incorporate new concepts. In this way, stories act like conveyor belts, making lessons more exciting and carrying crucial information along with them.

But good stories can serve another purpose, too. By seeing how an invention of the past impacts life in the present, students learn to think holistically. For example, if they are shown how clocks accelerated life, or how computers changed how humans think, then they can see how technology shapes culture or even changes our sense of time. In this way, STEM expands beyond its typical limits and becomes interconnected in students’ minds—not just to other technologies, but to all disciplines and fields of inquiry.

Uncovering the Unintended Consequences of Inventions

For over a decade, I looked for a book to provide both the historical and societal context of inventions—to tell the stories of science—but didn’t have much luck. I felt so strongly about this missing approach to nurture critical thinkers that I decided to write The Alchemy of Us , which is a book about inventions and how they changed life and society. In it, the lives of a diverse cast of little-known inventors—from pastor Hannibal Goodwin to housewife Bessie Littleton—are unfolded, and the many ways in which those everyday inventions changed life are highlighted.

Sometimes the outcomes of these inventions were intended, and in many more cases they were not. For example, students will see that the telegraph used electricity to shuttle messages over long distances quickly. But they will also come to realize that the telegraph had a shortcoming: It could not handle many messages at a time. Customers at the telegraph office were encouraged to keep their messages brief. Soon, newspapers used telegraphs in their newsrooms, and editors told reporters to write succinctly. The use of short declarative sentences was a newspaper style that was embraced by one reporter who went on to write many famous books—his name was Ernest Hemingway.

Here, then, is a case of how a technology, the telegraph, altered language and led to one of the world’s most celebrated literary styles—and this lesson of cascading and unpredictable outcomes can be extended to how Twitter and text messages are altering language now. When history is included in STEM, students learn science, but they also learn about the much broader impact of science.

Shaping the Future by Using the Past: An Exercise

One way that we can build critical thinking skills is to put technology under the microscope. Have students think about inventions, like their cell phones or Instagram or the internet, and consider how they make an impact on life more broadly. Students can create lists of all the changes—ask them to think about not only changes to the material world, but changes to less tangible ideas and concepts, like human psychology and belief systems—and break students into small groups to discuss and share out their findings. Alternatively, you can pose a counterfactual: Ask students to create a timeline of the invention’s history, along with a second timeline as if that invention never happened. What happens if the cell phone was never invented?

Obviously, there are no right or wrong answers, but the tasks require your students to observe the world with more wonder—and more skepticism—and condition their minds to think about causes and effects.

To take a deeper look: Let’s say you asked your students to examine the effect of the internet on modern life. The internet has certainly changed life significantly. For starters, we can listen to music, watch videos, access information, and contact each other easily. Have your students discuss life before and after the internet in groups and then create a drawing or write a short essay. They could answer questions like these: How did people get their news? How did they hear from each other? How did people listen to music? Where was information about different topics stored before the internet? The next step might be to look at the pros and cons of the internet, specifically social media. Does being more connected help or hurt us? Does the internet bring us together or divide us? Does the internet make it easier or harder to find the truth?

Once students are warmed up to thinking about technology in this way, you might have them try on the role of futurists. Ask them to consider thought-provoking questions like: If social media is based on “likes” and “follows,” what kind of society will we be in the future? Will we listen to popular celebrities with millions of followers, or will we listen to experts with fewer followers? Will it be easier to spread false information? Students can then draw a picture, write an essay, or create a video reflecting on the societal impact of the internet and what life could be like in the future with or without their proposed solutions.

Engaging Future Citizens

While STEM skills are themselves increasingly important in our technologically rich world, STEM is also a pathway to engage students as critical thinkers, and even as future citizens. By placing science in the broader context of history and culture, we can remind students of how scientific inventions play a role in our evolving cultural and even moral belief systems. And by giving students the space to critique inventions, we give them the skills to shape the future.

To get kids asking hard questions, however, the key first step is to give them good science stories. Once students are more engaged with how STEM is part of a larger fabric, they will have the skills to see the world more clearly and the lens they need to start posing tough questions. This approach aligns with the wisdom of William Shakespeare, who said centuries ago, “What’s past is prologue.” He was absolutely right, because if we’re attentive observers, the old stories provide us with a good map to what lies ahead.

Ainissa Ramirez is a materials scientist and the author of “ The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another (MIT Press).

Home Lessons Ancient History Historical Skills How Historians Understand History

How Historians Understand History

Embark on a journey through time with “How Historians Understand History,” a lesson plan meticulously crafted to spark students’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the historical inquiry process while significantly reducing teacher lesson preparation time. This plan leverages the 5Ws and H—Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How—as a framework for students to explore and analyse history, turning them into young historians adept at questioning and understanding the past.

The lesson begins with an introduction to Rudyard Kipling’s poem, which vividly highlights the importance of the 5Ws and H in the quest for knowledge. This serves as a springboard for students to dive into historical cases, applying these questions to unravel the stories and complexities behind historical figures, events, and periods. They learn to navigate history not as a static collection of dates and facts but as a dynamic narrative shaped by perspectives and context.

By engaging in thought-provoking activities, students learn to dissect historical narratives, understand different viewpoints, and appreciate the depth of historical events. They’ll craft timelines, analyse primary and secondary sources, and engage in discussions and debates that deepen their historical knowledge and enhance their critical thinking, empathy, and communication skills. Each activity is designed to make learning interactive and impactful, encouraging students to connect with history on a personal level.

Teachers find a trusted ally in this lesson plan, with its structured approach and ready-to-use resources reducing the time and effort needed for lesson preparation. The activities are designed for flexibility and adaptability, allowing educators to tailor the experience to their classroom’s needs while ensuring that learning objectives are met effectively.

In conclusion, “How Historians Understand History” is more than a lesson plan; it’s a transformative educational tool. It invites students to engage with the past actively, develop critical thinking skills, and cultivate a nuanced understanding of how history shapes our world. As they embark on this journey, they learn about history and how to think like historians. This lesson plan is your gateway to creating a classroom buzzing with inquiry, dialogue, and discovery.

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Supplement to Critical Thinking

This supplement elaborates on the history of the articulation, promotion and adoption of critical thinking as an educational goal.

John Dewey (1910: 74, 82) introduced the term ‘critical thinking’ as the name of an educational goal, which he identified with a scientific attitude of mind. More commonly, he called the goal ‘reflective thought’, ‘reflective thinking’, ‘reflection’, or just ‘thought’ or ‘thinking’. He describes his book as written for two purposes. The first was to help people to appreciate the kinship of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry to the scientific attitude. The second was to help people to consider how recognizing this kinship in educational practice “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (iii). He notes that the ideas in the book obtained concreteness in the Laboratory School in Chicago.

Dewey’s ideas were put into practice by some of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study in the 1930s sponsored by the Progressive Education Association in the United States. For this study, 300 colleges agreed to consider for admission graduates of 30 selected secondary schools or school systems from around the country who experimented with the content and methods of teaching, even if the graduates had not completed the then-prescribed secondary school curriculum. One purpose of the study was to discover through exploration and experimentation how secondary schools in the United States could serve youth more effectively (Aikin 1942). Each experimental school was free to change the curriculum as it saw fit, but the schools agreed that teaching methods and the life of the school should conform to the idea (previously advocated by Dewey) that people develop through doing things that are meaningful to them, and that the main purpose of the secondary school was to lead young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18). In particular, school officials believed that young people in a democracy should develop the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems (Aikin 1942: 81). Students’ work in the classroom thus consisted more often of a problem to be solved than a lesson to be learned. Especially in mathematics and science, the schools made a point of giving students experience in clear, logical thinking as they solved problems. The report of one experimental school, the University School of Ohio State University, articulated this goal of improving students’ thinking:

Critical or reflective thinking originates with the sensing of a problem. It is a quality of thought operating in an effort to solve the problem and to reach a tentative conclusion which is supported by all available data. It is really a process of problem solving requiring the use of creative insight, intellectual honesty, and sound judgment. It is the basis of the method of scientific inquiry. The success of democracy depends to a large extent on the disposition and ability of citizens to think critically and reflectively about the problems which must of necessity confront them, and to improve the quality of their thinking is one of the major goals of education. (Commission on the Relation of School and College of the Progressive Education Association 1943: 745–746)

The Eight-Year Study had an evaluation staff, which developed, in consultation with the schools, tests to measure aspects of student progress that fell outside the focus of the traditional curriculum. The evaluation staff classified many of the schools’ stated objectives under the generic heading “clear thinking” or “critical thinking” (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942: 35–36). To develop tests of achievement of this broad goal, they distinguished five overlapping aspects of it: ability to interpret data, abilities associated with an understanding of the nature of proof, and the abilities to apply principles of science, of social studies and of logical reasoning. The Eight-Year Study also had a college staff, directed by a committee of college administrators, whose task was to determine how well the experimental schools had prepared their graduates for college. The college staff compared the performance of 1,475 college students from the experimental schools with an equal number of graduates from conventional schools, matched in pairs by sex, age, race, scholastic aptitude scores, home and community background, interests, and probable future. They concluded that, on 18 measures of student success, the graduates of the experimental schools did a somewhat better job than the comparison group. The graduates from the six most traditional of the experimental schools showed no large or consistent differences. The graduates from the six most experimental schools, on the other hand, had much greater differences in their favour. The graduates of the two most experimental schools, the college staff reported:

… surpassed their comparison groups by wide margins in academic achievement, intellectual curiosity, scientific approach to problems, and interest in contemporary affairs. The differences in their favor were even greater in general resourcefulness, in enjoyment of reading, [in] participation in the arts, in winning non-academic honors, and in all aspects of college life except possibly participation in sports and social activities. (Aikin 1942: 114)

One of these schools was a private school with students from privileged families and the other the experimental section of a public school with students from non-privileged families. The college staff reported that the graduates of the two schools were indistinguishable from each other in terms of college success.

In 1933 Dewey issued an extensively rewritten edition of his How We Think (Dewey 1910), with the sub-title “A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process”. Although the restatement retains the basic structure and content of the original book, Dewey made a number of changes. He rewrote and simplified his logical analysis of the process of reflection, made his ideas clearer and more definite, replaced the terms ‘induction’ and ‘deduction’ by the phrases ‘control of data and evidence’ and ‘control of reasoning and concepts’, added more illustrations, rearranged chapters, and revised the parts on teaching to reflect changes in schools since 1910. In particular, he objected to one-sided practices of some “experimental” and “progressive” schools that allowed children freedom but gave them no guidance, citing as objectionable practices novelty and variety for their own sake, experiences and activities with real materials but of no educational significance, treating random and disconnected activity as if it were an experiment, failure to summarize net accomplishment at the end of an inquiry, non-educative projects, and treatment of the teacher as a negligible factor rather than as “the intellectual leader of a social group” (Dewey 1933: 273). Without explaining his reasons, Dewey eliminated the previous edition’s uses of the words ‘critical’ and ‘uncritical’, thus settling firmly on ‘reflection’ or ‘reflective thinking’ as the preferred term for his subject-matter. In the revised edition, the word ‘critical’ occurs only once, where Dewey writes that “a person may not be sufficiently critical about the ideas that occur to him” (1933: 16, italics in original); being critical is thus a component of reflection, not the whole of it. In contrast, the Eight-Year Study by the Progressive Education Association treated ‘critical thinking’ and ‘reflective thinking’ as synonyms.

In the same period, Dewey collaborated on a history of the Laboratory School in Chicago with two former teachers from the school (Mayhew & Edwards 1936). The history describes the school’s curriculum and organization, activities aimed at developing skills, parents’ involvement, and the habits of mind that the children acquired. A concluding chapter evaluates the school’s achievements, counting as a success its staging of the curriculum to correspond to the natural development of the growing child. In two appendices, the authors describe the evolution of Dewey’s principles of education and Dewey himself describes the theory of the Chicago experiment (Dewey 1936).

Glaser (1941) reports in his doctoral dissertation the method and results of an experiment in the development of critical thinking conducted in the fall of 1938. He defines critical thinking as Dewey defined reflective thinking:

Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Glaser 1941: 6; cf. Dewey 1910: 6; Dewey 1933: 9)

In the experiment, eight lesson units directed at improving critical thinking abilities were taught to four grade 12 high school classes, with pre-test and post-test of the students using the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Test and the Watson-Glaser Tests of Critical Thinking (developed in collaboration with Glaser’s dissertation sponsor, Goodwin Watson). The average gain in scores on these tests was greater to a statistically significant degree among the students who received the lessons in critical thinking than among the students in a control group of four grade 12 high school classes taking the usual curriculum in English. Glaser concludes:

The aspect of critical thinking which appears most susceptible to general improvement is the attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experience. An attitude of wanting evidence for beliefs is more subject to general transfer. Development of skill in applying the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, however, appears to be specifically related to, and in fact limited by, the acquisition of pertinent knowledge and facts concerning the problem or subject matter toward which the thinking is to be directed. (Glaser 1941: 175)

Retest scores and observable behaviour indicated that students in the intervention group retained their growth in ability to think critically for at least six months after the special instruction.

In 1948 a group of U.S. college examiners decided to develop taxonomies of educational objectives with a common vocabulary that they could use for communicating with each other about test items. The first of these taxonomies, for the cognitive domain, appeared in 1956 (Bloom et al. 1956), and included critical thinking objectives. It has become known as Bloom’s taxonomy. A second taxonomy, for the affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia 1964), and a third taxonomy, for the psychomotor domain (Simpson 1966–67), appeared later. Each of the taxonomies is hierarchical, with achievement of a higher educational objective alleged to require achievement of corresponding lower educational objectives.

Bloom’s taxonomy has six major categories. From lowest to highest, they are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Within each category, there are sub-categories, also arranged hierarchically from the educationally prior to the educationally posterior. The lowest category, though called ‘knowledge’, is confined to objectives of remembering information and being able to recall or recognize it, without much transformation beyond organizing it (Bloom et al. 1956: 28–29). The five higher categories are collectively termed “intellectual abilities and skills” (Bloom et al. 1956: 204). The term is simply another name for critical thinking abilities and skills:

Although information or knowledge is recognized as an important outcome of education, very few teachers would be satisfied to regard this as the primary or the sole outcome of instruction. What is needed is some evidence that the students can do something with their knowledge, that is, that they can apply the information to new situations and problems. It is also expected that students will acquire generalized techniques for dealing with new problems and new materials. Thus, it is expected that when the student encounters a new problem or situation, he will select an appropriate technique for attacking it and will bring to bear the necessary information, both facts and principles. This has been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others. In the taxonomy, we have used the term “intellectual abilities and skills”. (Bloom et al. 1956: 38)

Comprehension and application objectives, as their names imply, involve understanding and applying information. Critical thinking abilities and skills show up in the three highest categories of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The condensed version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956: 201–207) gives the following examples of objectives at these levels:

• analysis objectives : ability to recognize unstated assumptions, ability to check the consistency of hypotheses with given information and assumptions, ability to recognize the general techniques used in advertising, propaganda and other persuasive materials
• synthesis objectives : organizing ideas and statements in writing, ability to propose ways of testing a hypothesis, ability to formulate and modify hypotheses
• evaluation objectives : ability to indicate logical fallacies, comparison of major theories about particular cultures

The analysis, synthesis and evaluation objectives in Bloom’s taxonomy collectively came to be called the “higher-order thinking skills” (Tankersley 2005: chap. 5). Although the analysis-synthesis-evaluation sequence mimics phases in Dewey’s (1933) logical analysis of the reflective thinking process, it has not generally been adopted as a model of a critical thinking process. While commending the inspirational value of its ratio of five categories of thinking objectives to one category of recall objectives, Ennis (1981b) points out that the categories lack criteria applicable across topics and domains. For example, analysis in chemistry is so different from analysis in literature that there is not much point in teaching analysis as a general type of thinking. Further, the postulated hierarchy seems questionable at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. For example, ability to indicate logical fallacies hardly seems more complex than the ability to organize statements and ideas in writing.

A revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) distinguishes the intended cognitive process in an educational objective (such as being able to recall, to compare or to check) from the objective’s informational content (“knowledge”), which may be factual, conceptual, procedural, or metacognitive. The result is a so-called “Taxonomy Table” with four rows for the kinds of informational content and six columns for the six main types of cognitive process. The authors name the types of cognitive process by verbs, to indicate their status as mental activities. They change the name of the ‘comprehension’ category to ‘understand’ and of the ‘synthesis’ category to ’create’, and switch the order of synthesis and evaluation. The result is a list of six main types of cognitive process aimed at by teachers: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The authors retain the idea of a hierarchy of increasing complexity, but acknowledge some overlap, for example between understanding and applying. And they retain the idea that critical thinking and problem solving cut across the more complex cognitive processes. The terms ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’, they write:

are widely used and tend to become touchstones of curriculum emphasis. Both generally include a variety of activities that might be classified in disparate cells of the Taxonomy Table. That is, in any given instance, objectives that involve problem solving and critical thinking most likely call for cognitive processes in several categories on the process dimension. For example, to think critically about an issue probably involves some Conceptual knowledge to Analyze the issue. Then, one can Evaluate different perspectives in terms of the criteria and, perhaps, Create a novel, yet defensible perspective on this issue. (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270; italics in original)

In the revised taxonomy, only a few sub-categories, such as inferring, have enough commonality to be treated as a distinct critical thinking ability that could be taught and assessed as a general ability.

A landmark contribution to philosophical scholarship on the concept of critical thinking was a 1962 article in the Harvard Educational Review by Robert H. Ennis, with the title “A concept of critical thinking: A proposed basis for research in the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability” (Ennis 1962). Ennis took as his starting-point a conception of critical thinking put forward by B. Othanel Smith:

We shall consider thinking in terms of the operations involved in the examination of statements which we, or others, may believe. A speaker declares, for example, that “Freedom means that the decisions in America’s productive effort are made not in the minds of a bureaucracy but in the free market”. Now if we set about to find out what this statement means and to determine whether to accept or reject it, we would be engaged in thinking which, for lack of a better term, we shall call critical thinking. If one wishes to say that this is only a form of problem-solving in which the purpose is to decide whether or not what is said is dependable, we shall not object. But for our purposes we choose to call it critical thinking. (Smith 1953: 130)

Adding a normative component to this conception, Ennis defined critical thinking as “the correct assessing of statements” (Ennis 1962: 83). On the basis of this definition, he distinguished 12 “aspects” of critical thinking corresponding to types or aspects of statements, such as judging whether an observation statement is reliable and grasping the meaning of a statement. He noted that he did not include judging value statements. Cutting across the 12 aspects, he distinguished three dimensions of critical thinking: logical (judging relationships between meanings of words and statements), criterial (knowledge of the criteria for judging statements), and pragmatic (the impression of the background purpose). For each aspect, Ennis described the applicable dimensions, including criteria. He proposed the resulting construct as a basis for developing specifications for critical thinking tests and for research on instructional methods and levels.

In the 1970s and 1980s there was an upsurge of attention to the development of thinking skills. The annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform has attracted since its start in 1980 tens of thousands of educators from all levels. In 1983 the College Entrance Examination Board proclaimed reasoning as one of six basic academic competencies needed by college students (College Board 1983). Departments of education in the United States and around the world began to include thinking objectives in their curriculum guidelines for school subjects. For example, Ontario’s social sciences and humanities curriculum guideline for secondary schools requires “the use of critical and creative thinking skills and/or processes” as a goal of instruction and assessment in each subject and course (Ontario Ministry of Education 2013: 30). The document describes critical thinking as follows:

Critical thinking is the process of thinking about ideas or situations in order to understand them fully, identify their implications, make a judgement, and/or guide decision making. Critical thinking includes skills such as questioning, predicting, analysing, synthesizing, examining opinions, identifying values and issues, detecting bias, and distinguishing between alternatives. Students who are taught these skills become critical thinkers who can move beyond superficial conclusions to a deeper understanding of the issues they are examining. They are able to engage in an inquiry process in which they explore complex and multifaceted issues, and questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers (Ontario Ministry of Education 2013: 46).

Sweden makes schools responsible for ensuring that each pupil who completes compulsory school “can make use of critical thinking and independently formulate standpoints based on knowledge and ethical considerations” (Skolverket 2011: 15). Subject syllabi incorporate this requirement, and items testing critical thinking skills appear on national tests in history, Swedish, mathematics and physics that are a required step toward university admission. For example, the physics syllabus emphasizes the importance of “critical examination of information and arguments which students meet in sources and social discussions related to physics” (Skolverket 2011: 124). Correspondingly, the 2013 national test on physics included a question asking students to provide arguments for a recommendation to the Swedish minister of energy on what energy sources to use for electricity production. Other jurisdictions similarly embed critical thinking objectives in curriculum guidelines.

At the college level, a new wave of introductory logic textbooks, pioneered by Kahane (1971), applied the tools of logic to contemporary social and political issues. In their wake, colleges and universities in North America transformed their introductory logic course into a general education service course with a title like ‘critical thinking’ or ‘reasoning’. In 1980, the trustees of California’s state university and colleges approved as a general education requirement a course in critical thinking, described as follows:

Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful conclusion of instruction in critical thinking should be the ability to distinguish fact from judgment, belief from knowledge, and skills in elementary inductive and deductive processes, including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought. (Dumke 1980)

Since December 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions at the three annual divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association. In December 1987, the Committee on Pre-College Philosophy of the American Philosophical Association invited Peter Facione to make a systematic inquiry into the current state of critical thinking and critical thinking assessment. Facione assembled a group of 46 other academic philosophers and psychologists to participate in a multi-round Delphi process, whose product was entitled Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction (Facione 1990a). The statement listed abilities and dispositions that should be the goals of a lower-level undergraduate course in critical thinking.

Contemporary political and business leaders express support for critical thinking as an educational goal. In his 2014 State of the Union address (Obama 2014), U.S. President Barack Obama listed critical thinking as one of six skills for the new economy targeted with his Race to the Top program. An article in the business magazine Forbes reported that the number one job skill, found in nine out of 10 of the most in-demand jobs, was critical thinking, defined as “using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems” (Casserly 2012). In response to such claims, the European Commission has funded “Critical Thinking across the European Higher Education Curricula”, a nine-country research project to develop guidelines for quality in critical thinking instruction in European institutions of higher education, on the basis of the researchers’ findings of the critical thinking skills and dispositions that employers expect of recent graduates (Dominguez 2018a; 2018b). The Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the Organization for Economic Development (OECD) in early 2018 issued a call for institutions of higher education to participate in a two-year study, with control groups, of interventions in undergraduate or teacher education designed to improve creative and critical thinking (OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation 2018).

Copyright © 2018 by David Hitchcock < hitchckd @ mcmaster . ca >

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Fun Ways to Teach Historical Thinking Skills

6 activities & strategies that engage & build skills .

History class must be more than just studying events and figures from the past and memorizing dates- and thank gosh for that! Really exploring history and engaging students in history classes means that they genuinely explore the past and investigate, wrestle, and face the lessons of history in meaningful ways. This demands that students develop historical thinking skills.

Luckily, it can be incredibly engaging to do so. However, it can also be daunting to develop those higher order thinking skills! This can be especially challenging if you teach in an inclusion class with mixed ability learners who really struggle with critical thinking skills. These are some fun activities I have used to teach historical thinking skills and build them during the year.  I hope they help!

SKILL: Historical Interpretation & Synthesis

Historical Interpretation means that students can combine various sources and evidence to develop insight into the past and make original connections to it. It can be one of the most challenging to teach, but also the most fun!

ACTIVITY 1: Scavenger Hunt

This can be done at the end of pretty much any unit. I recently did it for a Progressive Era unit. Students did a “Progressive Era Legacy Scavenger Hunt” around campus and had to take 3 pictures of things that could be seen as having a clear connection to the progressive era.  Students made a quick powerpoint presentation and had to explain the connection. Some connections were quite a stretch- like the school garden being a legacy of Roosevelt’s conservation, but it helped them look at the present with a critical eye towards the past and its impact and develop some synthesis skills! 

SKILL: Comparison

Comparison is a skill that students develop in most of their classes but is essential for understanding history, recognizing trends, and analyzing figures, periods, and events. But to make it more meaningful to history- make sure to pull the story and personalities out of the comparison!

ACTIVITY 2: Dinner Party 

This is a fun one that seems light and easy to pull students in but will get them to really think critically about differences between historical figures and their ideas.  With a simple image of a table with four to six seats on each side of the table, have students create seating arrangements based on which people would work and get along best together and who would likely get into fierce arguments and should sit far apart. After studying any unit with multiple figures like the Renaissance, Antebellum Era, the Civil Rights Movement, or Ancient Civilizations, give students a list of people they have studied and have them make their arrangements and justify their choices.  This goes so much beyond a venn-diagram while still being a relatively simple activity to create and complete that is still fun and rigorous!

SKILL: Chronological Reasoning &  Change Over Time

History is fundamentally the story and study of change and continuity over time. While memorizing dates is not essential, understanding how events build and develop over time is a fundamental historical thinking skill.

ACTIVITY 3: Spicy Timelines

Timelines can be used all the imte in history class, but keep them interesting and spicey by mixing it up!

1) Bell Ringer Timelines:

Quick and easy- post a series of events from the unit or last class and have students make a ‘quick & dirty’ timeline. 

2) Presidential Timelines:

This could also build some ‘periodization’ skills as students not only sort events in order but organize them in order but also by President. You can give students a bank of important events and have them organize and sort them or for more advanced learners, have them work from scratch.

3) Illustrated Timelines:

As easy and fun as it sounds- students draw images for the events of the timeline to foster some creativity and deeper connections.

4) POV Timelines:

This one builds another historical thinking skill- understanding point-of-view and some historical empathy as well.  I did this last year for the “ Road to Pearl Harbor ” and for each event, they not only summarize it, but then there are two boxes to explain how the Japanese and Americans viewed this even differently. Two birds, one stone, and some engaging history!

BONUS : When kids really need a break and some fun- grab big chalk and do these outside on sidewalks or on the parking lot.

If you have any other awesome timeline ideas, I would love to hear them. I’m always looking to add more spicy to my timeline activities!  😉

SKILL: CAUSATION

Cause and effect are fundamental skills in the study of history and even in high school, its surprising how much students struggle with it. It took me years to realize that students actually need a lot of support in developing this skills! Here's an easy way to build this into your class any day of the year.

ACTIVITY 4 : Simple Sentence Starter

This can be used for any topic and its simple but can be powerful as well.  Simply project or write this sentence frame and watch as students come up with many different effects and answers.

“If _______ never happened, than _______.” The simplicity is what makes this interesting.  For the Columbian Exchange, World War II, Neolithic Revolution, or Revolutionary War, students first have to consider what did change and then have to brainstorm how things would be different without that event. I sometimes then have students share with their neighbors or in small or groups, or even more fun- have everyone stand up and they can only sit down after reading there’s. All students can share and be successful! 

Activity 5: Scaffolded Cause and Effect Chart 

For a given event, print out 3-4 causes and effects each one on a full size paper (its more fun that way!) and scramble them. Give them to students in groups and first have them sort them into cause and effects. (Starts simple!) Next, have students put them in order of greatest significance- what was the main cause and most important effect? (Building complexity). Lastly, have students justify their answers- “X was the most important cause because ____”.  This helps diverse learners build skills one step at time without being overwhelmed and while being mostly hands on it also gets students writing and thinking critically.

SKILL: SOURCING DOCUMENTS

The shift to prioritizing primary sources has been vital in enriching our social studies classes.  It really gets students wrestling with the past on its own terms! And learning how to source documents and think critically about the document itself- the elements behind the document is essential. One of the most popular ways to do this is using SOAPS- which is excellent but make sure to introduce SOAPS with a little spice!

ACTIVITY 6: Spicy SOAPS

To ensure students enjoy doing SOAPS and learn the skills involved, give students rich and accessible sources to start with.

This could be an advertisement for a Coke from the 1920s, cave paintings, a medieval knight’s armor, a receipt from a silk road merchant, or a Picasso painting, just don’t give them a long-winded convoluted text from another century! Analyzing the the Lascaux cave paintings, or a magazine ad for a coke, students will enjoy considering the S ubject, O ccasion (understanding context!), A udience and who would be influenced by it, P urpose, and identifying what we know about the S peaker (or artist).  If student’s first experience with an analysis strategy like SOAPS is positive, they are much more likely to enjoy it when they are given a really challenging document next time.  SOAPS could be used weekly as its a vital skill and essential to multiple historical thinking skills.

Grab my SOAPS or SCOAPS Sheets here for free!

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How I use a timeline in class: In both history and math I start the school year having students create a timeline of their life (birthday through first day of this school year). 10 personal events on bottom and 10 world events on top. Showing an example of my timeline gives me an opportunity to share myself. I then get to know a bit about my students. In math I emphasize relative placement of events (9/11 is closer to 2002 than 2001) and in history it’s a good way to help students realize they are living in historical times now.

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Critical thinking

Critical thinking about history.

In this article the mistakes we make in our thinking about history: Hindsight bias Postdiction Historians fallacy Presentism Chronological snobbery Golden age fallacy Let’s begin: Hindsight bias (aka “knew-it-all-along phenomenon”) “After the event, even a fool is wise” – Homer Did you know that the Coronavirus would happen? What about the 2008 Global Financial Crisis? […]

In this article the mistakes we make in our thinking about history:

• Hindsight bias
• Postdiction

Historians fallacy

• Chronological snobbery
• Golden age fallacy

Let’s begin:

Hindsight bias (aka “knew-it-all-along phenomenon”)

“After the event, even a fool is wise” – Homer

Did you know that the Coronavirus would happen?

What about the 2008 Global Financial Crisis?

How about Donald Trump being elected 2016 US President?

Was it obvious?

Predictable?

Yeah right.

The hindsight bias, also known as the “knew-it-all-along phenomenon”, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events (especially unexpected events) as having being far more predictable than they really were.

Hindsight bias causes people to look back at sporting upsets, stock market crashes, shock election results etc. and to claim that they “knew it” and “predicted it” and “told you so” , when most of the time they didn’t.

And even if someone did get one or two predictions right, what about the hundreds of predictions they’ve gotten wrong?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, we can and should learn from our past experiences and mistakes.

The hindsight bias however, causes distortions in our memories about what we actually believed and knew before an event occured. It can cause us to misremember past events as being far more predictable than they really were ahead of time, to see patterns that don’t exist, and to imagine our powers of foresight to be greater than they really are, all of which leads us to become overconfident and delusional.

Don’t lie to yourself and act like the future is more predictable than it really is. Of course everything is obvious after the fact when you already know what happens, but most future events aren’t as obvious and predictable as they seem when you’re living through them.

“It is easy to be wise after the event.” – Arthur Conan Doyle 

If the future was easy to predict than the millions of know-it-all’s who love to claim that they “knew it” and “predicted it” and “told you so” after the fact, would be bankrupting the bookmakers, casinos and lotteries. They’d be buying low and selling high, getting in at the very bottom and getting out at the very top, and picking every political and sporting upset, but that just isn’t the case.

Postdiction (aka “retroactive clairvoyance”)

Postdiction/retroactive clairvoyance is the opposite of prediction.

• Prediction is claiming a specific event in the future
• Postdiction is taking vague and ambiguous predictions or statements from the past (e.g. from Nostradamus) and interpreting them via mental gymnastics to have predicted events that have already happened

Before you fall for postdiction or believe any prediction, ask yourself:

Is the prediction specific?

A true prediction would be specific and name names/dates/places/events etc. just like the kind of prediction you would make if you went back into the past.

If Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, Baba Vanga etc. could really predict or see the future they would say something like this:

“On September 11, 2001, four planes will be hijacked and flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon causing the death of thousands”

Instead of some vague ambiguous crap like this:

“The American brethren will fall after being attacked by the steel birds” – Baba Vanga

If a prediction or prophecy is so vague and ambiguous that it simply refers to a “disaster” or “tragedy” but doesn’t provide names/dates/places/events etc. and can’t tell you what/where/when/how etc. than it can’t be used to predict anything, and is therefore worthless.

Is the prediction falsifiable?

Does the prediction make a claim that is impossible to falsify?

A true prediction is specific and falsifiable:

“On December 21, 2012 the world will end”

Now that we have a specific date, we can test it. This is a real prediction instead of some unfalsifiable cryptic crap about “an unexpected event, tragedy in the skies” etc.

Is it a catch-all prediction?

When Croesus asked the Oracle of Delphi whether or not he should attack the Persians, she said, “ If you attack you will destroy a mighty empire” . So he attacked the Persians and got his own empire destroyed.

A real prediction with actual foresight would have said, “If you attack the Persians you will lose, and your empire will be destroyed” . Instead of something so misleading that it could (and was) be so easily misconstrued.

Is it statistically likely?

Is it a prediction for “conflict” or “terrorism” to occur in the middle-east, or volatility in the stock market?

Is it a shotgun prediction?

A shotgun prediction is many predictions given at once to cover a range of events, and then claim credit even if only one of them happens. For example, a psychic might claim that Friday 13th is “unlucky” and then cite a dozen or so things that might occur on it, and then claim credit if even one of them does (nevermind all of the false predictions that didn’t occur)

Was it written or produced after the fact?

When “psychic” Tamara Rand predicted that Ronald Reagan was in danger of being shot by someone with the initials “J.H.” back in January 1981, two months before the fact, everyone was amazed.

However, it turned out that the interview which provided “proof” of this prediction was actually shot the day after the assassination attempt on March 31st 1981.

Similarly, many predictions written after the fact have been accredited to Nostradamus.

What is the track record of the predictor?

Every year we see clickbait articles “Nostradamus 2019 predictions” as if a) Nostradamus had made specific predictions for each year and b) he had this amazing track record, when the fact is there isn’t any evidence that Nostradamus has ever predicted anything before it occurred – ever.

However by taking his vague and ambiguous statements and projecting their own interpretations onto them, his supporters can claim that he’s predicted everything from the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, to the death of JFK and 9/11. They try to make it seem like he predicted everything when in reality he has predicted nothing.

Count the misses, not just the hits

Before you believe in the predictive power of any clairvoyant or psychic, remember to count the misses just as much as the hits.

Superstitious believers tend to have very selective memories, only remembering the few times their favorite clairvoyant or psychic seemed to have guessed right, whilst simultaneously ignoring the thousands of things they got wrong.

“The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.” – Francis Bacon

For a more detailed breakdown: 25 hilariously wrong future predictions

Have the goalposts been moved?

When Harold Camping predicted that the rapture would occur on May 21, 2011, and it didn’t happen, and that the end of the world would occur on October 21, 2011, and that didn’t happen, he then claimed that it was a “spiritual” judgment day.

Similarly, in the 1950’s, a small UFO religion in Chicago called the Seekers claimed that a great flood would destroy the world on December 21, 1954 and that they the true believers, would be taken away by a flying saucer. When that didn’t happen, the leader then claimed that the God of Earth has decided to spare the planet from destruction because, “The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.”

The next four fallacies are fallacies of perspective:

The historians fallacy is when we make the mistake of assuming that decision makers in the past viewed things from the same perspective as we do in the present, and had access to the same information as we do now.

This isn’t fair because people can only work with the information they have at the time, and there are lots of things that are only obvious in retrospect.

American historian David Hackett Fischer, who coined the phrase “Historian’s fallacy,” cited the claim that the United States should have anticipated Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor because of the many warning signs that an attack was in the cards. However, those signs seem obvious only in hindsight, at the time many signs suggested attacks on positions other than Pearl Harbor.

Historians fallacy examples

“They should have had more lifeboats on the Titanic!”

“They should have immediately evacuated everyone from the South Tower of the World Trade Centre on 9/11 as soon as the North Tower was hit!”

“How stupid are those twelve idiot book publishers that rejected Harry Potter!”

“What an idiot George Bell the CEO of Excite was for rejecting an offer to buy Google in 1999 from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for $1 million! Even when he said no, they re-offered it to him for $750,000, and he still rejected the offer!” (Google’s parent company Alphabet is currently valued at $765 billion)

Idiots right?

Not necessarily.

It’s easy to look back with a smug know-it-all attitude when you have more information, and know exactly how everything will turn out, but people living in the past didn’t know how these things were going to turn out, just like you didn’t know that buying Bitcoin at eight cents in 2010 would make you a fortune today.

Presentism is judging the beliefs and behaviors of people in the past, based on the moral and ethical standards of today.

This is unfair however. You can’t judge the “sins” of the past racism, sexism, homophobia etc. with an attitude of “they should have known better” .

Today we know better than to be assholes and bitches, to say and do things to hurt people, but we do.

If it wasn’t okay for people in the past to discriminate based on gender, race, skin color or sexual orientation, why is it okay for people in the present to discriminate based on height, looks, body type, personality or status?

The fact is that most people are followers. If everyone you know is racist, sexist, homophobic, and you’re taught and raised to think that way, and society is that way, you probably will be too.

These same virtual signalling self-righteous SJW’s that are so “woke” and quick to accuse people of being a sexist, racist, Nazi etc. would likely be Nazi’s that loved Hitler if they lived in 1940’s Germany.

How do I “know” this? Because most people aren’t independent critical thinkers that go against the crowd. They’re brainwashed indoctrinated followers. Most people’s attitudes, beliefs and behavior are just a product of the time and place they’ve living in.

Instead of condescendingly judging people in the past, we should seek to understand them, in the contexts of their own times and places.

Chronological Snobbery

Similar to presentism we need to beware of chronological snobbery.

Chronological snobbery is the attitude or belief that the thoughts, beliefs, behavior etc. of an earlier time is inherently inferior to that of the present, simply by virtue that since civilization has advanced in certain areas, therefore people of earlier time periods were less intelligent (never mind that they invented computers, the internet, cars, planes, space shuttles, light bulbs, language, medicine, mathematics, science etc.)

C.S. Lewis coined the term and said this about chronological snobbery:

“The uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.

You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood.

From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also “a period,” and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.”

We can learn a lot from the past and from those who came before us. I’m often amazed when I hear delusional know-it-alls condescendingly talking about people like Aristotle and Sigmund Freud as if they were know-nothing idiots.

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” ―  Aldous Huxley

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” ―  Edmund Burke

“The man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes.” ―  Adolf Hitler

Do you think the average person today is smarter than Socrates? Aristotle? Isaac Newton? Leonardo Da Vinci? Albert Einstein? I know I’m cherry picking some of the smartest people in history, but we need to get out of this stupid fallacy of assuming that people in the present are automatically smarter by default than people were in the past, and that our ways are better than their ways. It’s just not true. We might have more information available to us than ever before thanks to the internet, but most people are just as intellectually lazy, gullible and stupid as they’ve ever been.

Golden age fallacy (aka “good old days fallacy”)

Ah, the good old days.

Wasn’t the past so much better than the present?

Actually, no.

It’s common to romanticize the past and to look back with rose-tinted glasses and a selective memory at the “good old days” (this is known as rosy retrospection ) but was the past really better than today?

In some respects sure, I grew up in the 80’s, and I still love 80’s music way more than today’s music, but there is no way that the 80’s were better than today.

Would you like to return to a world without the internet?

I believe we are living in the greatest time in all of human history by far:

• Longest life expectancy in history
• Healthcare/medicine has never been better
• Science and technology has never been better
• Entertainment, sports, video games have never been better
• Everything is faster, easier and more convenient than ever before
• We have more information and options than ever before
• Food has never been more abundant
• Shopping has never been better
• Networking has never been easier
• Lowest crime rate in history
• Most peaceful time in history
• Less racism, sexism, homophobia etc.
• It’s never been easier to get rich or to start a business
• It’s never been easier to travel and see the world
• Free education and entertainment (Google, YouTube, Reddit, Wikipedia, the internet etc.)

Even if you prefer the music, movies, TV etc. from a bygone era such as the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s etc. it’s not like these things have disappeared and gone away.

Living today you get the best of both worlds: You can still read/watch/listen to all of your old favorite books, movies and music from the past, plus you get to enjoy today’s modern technologies: Internet, Google, YouTube, email, blogs, podcasts, iPhones, social media etc.

You can also learn from some of the wisest people who have ever lived e.g. Aristotle, Buddha, Einstein etc. without needing to live in a world with bad food, bad hygiene, no electricity, no computers, no internet, no phones, no TV etc.

You can read more about this here: Why we are living in the greatest time ever

“If anyone thinks they’d rather be in a different part of history, they’re probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.” – Elon Musk

Thinking critically about history

Final thoughts: No account of history is unbiased and objective, and no one is going to paint their people in a bad light as evil mass murderers and rapists (even if they were)

Here are some quick questions to ask yourself the next time you’re reading a history book or watching a documentary about history:

Critical thinking questions

• Who is the author(s)? What is their background?
• What reviews exist? Are they from academic journals or popular publications?
• When was the book published? (Generally, the more recent, the better, because you want the latest most up-to-date information)
• From whose perspective is this written? (You’re likely to get vastly different accounts of World War II depending on where in the world you live)
• Does this seem like a balanced account, or does it have a positive or negative spin to it?

“By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.” ―  Dan Brown

• Who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys”?
• What evidence exists to support these “facts”?
• How often does the book cite its information? (footnotes, endnotes etc.)
• What/how many primary sources does it use?

I don’t totally agree with the following quote:

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” ―  Napoleon Bonaparte

But you’re definitely not getting all the facts from history books…

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” ―  Winston S. Churchill

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?” ―  Dan Brown

How to call Bullshit

25 hilariously wrong future predictions

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Ancient and medieval civilizations.

Grades: 6-12+

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The captivating lessons and activities in this 368-page book can be used as a standards-based, stand-alone textbook, a resource of supplemental activities to enrich another textbook, or as a review course for older students. What makes World History Detective® different from other world history books is the integration of critical thinking into the content lessons. The questions in this book require deeper analysis and frequently ask for supporting evidence from the lesson. This in-depth analysis produces greater understanding, which results in better grades and higher test scores. Over time, students who practice critical thinking learn to apply it throughout their education and life. This book also develops reading comprehension and writing skills. Students begin by analyzing a lesson. Next, they apply critical thinking skills to answer multiple choice and short essay questions. Finally, students support their answers by identifying evidence learned from the lesson. World History Detective® includes geographical maps, timelines, and concept maps.  It develops critical thinking skills in lessons that teach the roles that technology, power, institutions, ideas, and trade played in shaping history. Word History Detective® studies ancient, medieval, and Early American civilizations.  These are the lessons that are covered:

Teaching Support Teacher and student introductions, list of historical topics, a lesson on identifying evidence, answers, and grade level standards. Critical Thinking Skills Identify evidence • Evaluate evidence • Draw inferences and conclusions.

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AI is leading to the 'revenge of the liberal arts,' says a Goldman tech exec with a history degree

• Goldman's George Lee said AI will empower non-technical workers, including those in risk management.
• The history major turned tech banker said AI enhances skills like critical thinking, creativity, and logic.
• Banks are increasingly using AI for fraud and credit risk amid rising regulatory demands.

A longtime tech banker with a history degree says AI could be a boon for non-technical workers.

George Lee, the co-head of applied innovation at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday that he thinks AI will lead to the "revenge of the liberal arts" in the workforce.

"Some of the skills that are really salient to cooperate with this new of intelligence in the world are critical thinking, understanding logic and rhetoric, the ability to be creative," Lee said. "AI will allow non-technical people to accomplish a lot more — and, by the way, begin to perform what were formerly believed to be technical tasks."

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Lee, who studied history at Middlebury College and got an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, sits on liberal arts-focused Middlebury's board of trustees. He joined Goldman in 1994 after his MBA and was previously the firm's co-chief information officer.

Lee told Bloomberg that AI could help people who are focused on operations and risk management.

As regulatory requirements have intensified globally and threats like cybersecurity take center stage, banks' risk management teams have swelled. In an annual bank risk management survey by EY and the International Institute of Finance released in February, a majority of banks said they're already using AI to monitor fraud and credit risk.

AI is increasingly seen as a threat to knowledge workers, including investment bankers. Junior investment-banking analyst classes — a highly-paid, high-stress job — could be cut by as much as two-thirds , while those who make it into the banks could be paid less for jobs assisted with AI.

As Business Insider has previously reported, banks from  Goldman Sachs  to  Deutsche Bank  have been exploring ways to streamline tedious tasks often   assigned to junior investment bankers, like updating charts for pitch books or company valuation comparison tables.

A Goldman spokesperson previously told BI the bank has no plans to scale back its incoming class.

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