Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past

Critical Perspectives On The Past

By: Sam Wineburg

Narrated by: Kevin Pierce

Since ancient times, the pundits have lamented young people's lack of historical knowledge and warned that ignorance of the past surely condemns humanity to repeating its mistakes. In the contemporary United States, this dire outlook drives a contentious debate about what key events, nations, and people are essential for history students. Sam Wineburg says that we are asking the wrong questions.

This audiobook demolishes the conventional notion that there is one true history and one best way to teach it. Although most of us think of history - and learn it - as a conglomeration of facts, dates, and key figures, for professional historians it is a way of knowing, a method for developing an understanding about the relationships of people and events in the past. A cognitive psychologist, Wineburg has been engaged in studying what is intrinsic to historical thinking, how it might be taught, and why most students still adhere to the 'one damned thing after another' concept of history.

Whether he is comparing how students and historians interpret documentary evidence or analyzing children's drawings, Wineburg's essays offer 'rough maps of how ordinary people think about the past and use it to understand the present.' Arguing that we all absorb lessons about history in many settings - in kitchen table conversations, at the movies, or on the world-wide web, for instance - these essays acknowledge the role of collective memory in filtering what we learn in school and shaping our historical thinking.

©2001 Temple University (P)2014 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Historians, especially academic historians, who normally avoid the literature on history education for its banality, thin research base, or ideological cant will overlook this book at their peril. Sam Wineburg brings both a burning concern for the state of history instruction and a wide knowledge of history to his research agenda." (The Journal of American History)

"This is a wide-ranging and at times inspirational work." (History of Education)

A must read for social studies teachers!

My only qualm with the book is that it doesn’t offer much in the way of solutions to the looming problems it presents. Other than that though, I found it very informative and it got my wheels turning in regard to how adolescents and teens learn about history, and how people try to teach it to them.

Amazing!

This is THE book to read (or to listen to) if you are a Social Studies Teacher. Quintessential. Timeless. The best “teacher book” I have ever read!

The wonderful parts of this book make it worth it

It sands out -- but the wonderful parts make the dull parts more than worth wading though (thanks Audible for having higher speed playback!)

Worst waste of time

Painfully boring to listen to and not what I expected. It does not give tips on how to teach.