As much as NASA’s Webb telescope images inspire awe and wonder, it’s the reality of the image above that faces every history teacher, regardless of their place on the K-16 continuum. Like the irresistible gravitational pull of a black hole, this challenge cannot be avoided. No teacher can escape the laws of this history universe.
The history you teach
If you’re a history teacher, you know that your school’s calendar is one of the greatest impediments to your teaching. Even before you start subtracting classes for assemblies, field trips, standardized testing, and dozens of other cuts to your schedule, your instructional time is limited. There is only so much history you can fit into your schedule. The history that you teach is the smallest element in your history universe.
The history you know
If you’re a history teacher, you’ve learned history through undergraduate and perhaps graduate level courses. You’ve read books, watched movies, listened to podcasts, traveled to museums and historic sites and conferences. You’ve built and continue to build your knowledge of the past. The more you read, the more you learn, the more you realize how little you actually teach. The history you know and don’t teach dwarfs the history you actually teach, it’s almost the largest element in your history universe.
The history you don’t know
If you’re a history teacher, you know that every time you read a new book, take a course or pursue professional development, you’re reminded that your knowledge is limited. If you keep learning, you’ll eventually find out that much of what you’ve taught is incomplete, inaccurate and in some cases, just wrong. There are other histories, historians, explanations and evidence to consider and more are being discovered each day. The past is infinite, the history you don’t know dominates the history universe.
Despite our intentions and greatest efforts, we can’t avoid this. The history we teach is puny compared to the history we know, but the history we don’t know looms over everything.