Chapter 12, Summary and Analysis

"What is the Result of Teaching History Like This?" shows how high school students go through the classroom routine but gain no insights or power of discernment. They expend energy distracting teachers, who often go along. Their oft-proven ignorance of basic facts proves they actively resist learning history. They graduate lacking tools for the understanding, accepting, or rebutting of politician and media voices' historical references.

Nothing "sticks" because all emotion is removed from the presentation of history. Textbooks are pious rather than passionate, which implies history is not worthy of passion or serious study. History comes across not as drama but as boring dead facts. Teachers can make history stick by touching students' lives, but textbooks disconnect them from family and community by focusing on the remote past. Children, even more than adults, need to see how isolated facts interrelate in...