In the latest Concord Review, Victoria Claire Walton of Summit Country Day School in Cincinnati, writes about Operation Valkyrie, the failed plot by Claus von Stauffenberg to kill Adolf Hitler.
There’s a simple formula for learning, writes Robert Holland of the Heartland Institute. Read, write, think.
Will Fitzhugh’s Concord Review — here’s the latest issue — has published history research papers by high school students from 45 states and 40 countries over the past three decades. Most students never get the opportunity to research history, writes Fitzhugh, a retired history teacher.
When teaching our students to write, not only are standards set very low in most high schools, limiting students to the five-paragraph essay, responses to a document-based question, or the personal (or college) essay about matters which are often no one else’s business, but we often so load up students with formulae and guidelines that the importance of writing when the author has something to say gets lost in the maze of processes.
Holland likes Fitzhugh’s Page Per Year Plan. Students would write a one-page paper — on something other than themselves — in first grade, a two-page paper in second grade and so on. (My daughter wrote an excellent report — six pages, I think — on the monarch butterfly in third grade.) By senior year, all students would be expected to write a 12-page history research paper.
Students would get that “first taste of being a scholar which will serve them so well in higher education and beyond,” Fitzhugh writes.
The number of history majors is way down. What’s on the rise? Exercise science.