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Critical Perspectives on the Past
Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past
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. This book demolishes the conventional notion that there is one true history and one best way to teach it.
280 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
September 3, 2010
Basic critism of our educational system. However, the author offers no suggestion to an alternative method.
August 30, 2021
Lol should I add all my grad school books? But fr this slapped idk if it would be of interest to anyone who’s not into history pedagogy tho. I have to write a paper about it wish this could be it
July 17, 2008
Wineberg is lively. But you can tell he has never had to teach using state mandated standards. Anyone can make Rosa Parks or the Civil War interesting...we have primary sources that our kids can access, including photographs. It's exponentially more difficult to make the nullification crisis palatable to my 13 year olds.
December 23, 2012
One of the critiques I have read about this book is that it does not provide a "how to" of historical thinking. I'm not sure why this is a critique of the book, because Wineburg doesn't put forth that he will be trying to give teachers tools on how to teach historical thinking. This book is an exploration of what historical thinking is. Other scholars have engaged this material to develop tools for historical thinking pedagogy.
If you really want to learn how to teach historical thinking, go to the next NCSS conference.
If you really want to learn how to teach historical thinking, go to the next NCSS conference.
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December 7, 2020I've read this 2 times now. Both for different purposes and this time around I found a lot of things I wanted to argue about with the author.
So one of my criticism is that it isn't really written for Dutch teachers (which is a dumb point to make, i know). One of the most things I noticed comparing this book to books my fellow countrymen have written, is that we seem to get to the point a lot faster. So while reading this I got fed up many times because of the, at times, lyrical writing. The many examples felt pointless at times.
What I did enjoy is the fact that this book talks about teaching history not from a historian viewpoint. This book could have easily become just another book about something the author know nothing about but still is a bit condescending to teachers because they don't know how to teach history the 'right' way. This book doesn't do that at all. It shows through research how different people look at history and how they dig into it. What students to do in real life and what we hope they would do. At not time I felt the author was talking down to teachers but more like they were sharing their thoughts based on their research.
So while I didn't agree with many things, this book engaged me every time I was studying it. It gave me many good points to take with me into my own research. It even made me think I would want to recreate one of the authors researches to see what the outcome would be in my country. Although that will never happen because what studying this book reinforced to me is: I hate doing research in an academic setting.
So one of my criticism is that it isn't really written for Dutch teachers (which is a dumb point to make, i know). One of the most things I noticed comparing this book to books my fellow countrymen have written, is that we seem to get to the point a lot faster. So while reading this I got fed up many times because of the, at times, lyrical writing. The many examples felt pointless at times.
What I did enjoy is the fact that this book talks about teaching history not from a historian viewpoint. This book could have easily become just another book about something the author know nothing about but still is a bit condescending to teachers because they don't know how to teach history the 'right' way. This book doesn't do that at all. It shows through research how different people look at history and how they dig into it. What students to do in real life and what we hope they would do. At not time I felt the author was talking down to teachers but more like they were sharing their thoughts based on their research.
So while I didn't agree with many things, this book engaged me every time I was studying it. It gave me many good points to take with me into my own research. It even made me think I would want to recreate one of the authors researches to see what the outcome would be in my country. Although that will never happen because what studying this book reinforced to me is: I hate doing research in an academic setting.
February 24, 2023
There was a lot of good perspective in this book, but I don't remember the author actually describing how to teach historical thinking. I am a history teacher so I found that to be disappointing and the title to be misleading. I believe the closest he gets to teaching how to teach historical teaching is to encourage the use of primary sources from multiple perspectives. That is excellent advice, but not all parts of U.S. history has primary sources from multiple perspectives, at least not readily available to ordinary teachers.
That being said, there was some great information in the book. Sam Wineburg does a good job describing many of the ridiculous fights over what is taught about U.S. history in government and by pundits over the years. He also provides a number of good examples of using primary sources from multiple perspectives to learn about a specific event.
To be fair, after this book was published, Sam Wineburg (as head of the Stanford History Education Group) and his team have created many lesson plans using his method. He made them available to teachers free of charge. They have been very helpful to me and many other teachers I'm sure.
That being said, there was some great information in the book. Sam Wineburg does a good job describing many of the ridiculous fights over what is taught about U.S. history in government and by pundits over the years. He also provides a number of good examples of using primary sources from multiple perspectives to learn about a specific event.
To be fair, after this book was published, Sam Wineburg (as head of the Stanford History Education Group) and his team have created many lesson plans using his method. He made them available to teachers free of charge. They have been very helpful to me and many other teachers I'm sure.
October 31, 2014
Read for class: Actually a fairly decent book. It's the collected papers of a cognitive scientist who specializes in how we learn and teach history. He offers a variety of studies that look at generational differences in how history is understood, and taught. He investigates what does it mean to think historically (rather than suffering from present-ism, or ascribing to others motives and priorities that have more to do with modern sensibilities than seeing the person as a product of their time and judging them by that historical standard). Etc... While it does not tell you how to teach history well, it offers examples of case studies of teachers who do and an idea of what their classrooms are like. It looks at the role of the media in shaping kids ideas of the past, etc.
September 25, 2018
My partner assigns this book in her "Teaching Historical Thinking," which is how I found out about it. I became hooked within the first few pages because of its relevance to thoughts I have had concerning the book *Presence of the Past* (the study upon which it is based is mentioned in the final chapter of this book).
I do have some criticisms. I feel like he is a little unclear about what historical thinking is and why it is unnatural. At times, it seems as though he and I agree that the sussing out of motives, critical thinking concerning other human agents, and emotional empathy are the core threads of historical thinking, merely being applied elsewhere. But he seems to judge historical thinking as unnatural despite this simply because it they are learned processes. I mean, walking is a learned process, but it is also perfectly natural.
I also take issue with his saying that "Presentism" (as he calls it) is our natural mode of thought, where we assume that the past is like the present without justification, that people think in the same ways, etc. While he early on acknowledges that sometimes people exoticise the past instead, assuming dissimilarity with a similar lack of justification, he seems to then ignore that fact for the rest of the book. The whole reason that an Edward Said can write a book like *Orientalism* is because people engage in such "Exoticism" instead. I would suggest that Presentism isn't our natural state, but Reductionism is instead, the assumption that the past is simply alike or simply different, rather than a complex mix of both. We reduce another society to our own or reduce it to otherness rather than take the time necessary for real understanding.
Why are we reductionist? Well, I certainly don't think it is our natural state. We are reductionist because we are lazy, we are lazy because we are impatient, we are impatient because we don't have free time. And oh look, I'm talking about socioeconomic causes again...
Anyway, I'll also mention that his reading of Collingwood (and historicism) early on is completely incorrect. Collingwood does not believe that a person's thought is trans-historical because human beings are always the same. Quite the opposite. It is because people change how they think that makes history a difficult endeavor, a field of its own, worthy of respect. The only way in which human thought is trans-historical is because the logical structure of the thought can, in principle (and only in principle), be reconstructed. This does not mean that past societies used the same logical procedures we do. He explicitly denies this in other places. Simply that a logical structure isn't ontologically dependent on the brain of the first person to think in that structure.
Similarly, historicism doesn't propose that the past and the present are alike. It proposes exactly the opposite. It proposes that an historical fact cannot be understood outside of context. There is another, causal historicism to which I do not refer, but it also doesn't make the mistake Wineburg accuses it of.
All that being said, the material I complain about above doesn't prevent the extraction of value from this book at all. The material of each chapter is fascinating and provocative. Anyone interested in public history, historical consciousness, or pedagogy should read this book.
P.S. I do think that it is entertaining that he casually attributes (at one point) all the advances in all the fields of academia to the cognitive revolution in psychology. That seems like a rather extreme claim.
I do have some criticisms. I feel like he is a little unclear about what historical thinking is and why it is unnatural. At times, it seems as though he and I agree that the sussing out of motives, critical thinking concerning other human agents, and emotional empathy are the core threads of historical thinking, merely being applied elsewhere. But he seems to judge historical thinking as unnatural despite this simply because it they are learned processes. I mean, walking is a learned process, but it is also perfectly natural.
I also take issue with his saying that "Presentism" (as he calls it) is our natural mode of thought, where we assume that the past is like the present without justification, that people think in the same ways, etc. While he early on acknowledges that sometimes people exoticise the past instead, assuming dissimilarity with a similar lack of justification, he seems to then ignore that fact for the rest of the book. The whole reason that an Edward Said can write a book like *Orientalism* is because people engage in such "Exoticism" instead. I would suggest that Presentism isn't our natural state, but Reductionism is instead, the assumption that the past is simply alike or simply different, rather than a complex mix of both. We reduce another society to our own or reduce it to otherness rather than take the time necessary for real understanding.
Why are we reductionist? Well, I certainly don't think it is our natural state. We are reductionist because we are lazy, we are lazy because we are impatient, we are impatient because we don't have free time. And oh look, I'm talking about socioeconomic causes again...
Anyway, I'll also mention that his reading of Collingwood (and historicism) early on is completely incorrect. Collingwood does not believe that a person's thought is trans-historical because human beings are always the same. Quite the opposite. It is because people change how they think that makes history a difficult endeavor, a field of its own, worthy of respect. The only way in which human thought is trans-historical is because the logical structure of the thought can, in principle (and only in principle), be reconstructed. This does not mean that past societies used the same logical procedures we do. He explicitly denies this in other places. Simply that a logical structure isn't ontologically dependent on the brain of the first person to think in that structure.
Similarly, historicism doesn't propose that the past and the present are alike. It proposes exactly the opposite. It proposes that an historical fact cannot be understood outside of context. There is another, causal historicism to which I do not refer, but it also doesn't make the mistake Wineburg accuses it of.
All that being said, the material I complain about above doesn't prevent the extraction of value from this book at all. The material of each chapter is fascinating and provocative. Anyone interested in public history, historical consciousness, or pedagogy should read this book.
P.S. I do think that it is entertaining that he casually attributes (at one point) all the advances in all the fields of academia to the cognitive revolution in psychology. That seems like a rather extreme claim.
August 28, 2021
Wineberg lays out a layered analysis of how history is typically taught in American high schools and how that teaching process continues to be under siege from forces across the political spectrum. Challenges begin with arguments about the very nature of "history." Wineberg fines little agreement between textbooks and ed professionals. That disagreement provides plenty of basis for disputes about what to include in classes, and how to interpret the topics that are included.
Published in 2001, the book feels naive in light (that phrase should be updated to "in the dark") of current events and the decreasing understanding of science. The nature of historical thinking will never be in a 1:1 correlation with, say, mathematical or physics thinking. Consider for a moment, how many news stories have you seen about some child genius graduating from Harvard at 12 years old? Lots of them. How many of those 12 year old geniuses specialize in math, physics, or biology? All of them. How many are historians, psychologists, poets, novelists, anthropologists, ethnographers, linguists, social workers? Pretty close to none of them. Why? Because the types of thinking and understandings in those disciplines is different to the core, from those other disciplines. Those modes of thinking require a different type of education and lots of human experience. It's difficult to provide either of those in a school setting. However, we can start students on the way to deeper human understanding by providing materials and experiences that better model the processes of humanity experts. We do it in science and math already.
Continuing current efforts to squeeze everything into testable factoids, will continue to fail students.
A final note. It was dismaying to read that the most cited "historical" film cited by students and parents was "Forest Gump." Sheesh. That monument to playing stupid and blindly following orders has helped lead us to the quagmires of the anti-vax,anti-science, anti-humane behaviors driving conflict in the US today.
Published in 2001, the book feels naive in light (that phrase should be updated to "in the dark") of current events and the decreasing understanding of science. The nature of historical thinking will never be in a 1:1 correlation with, say, mathematical or physics thinking. Consider for a moment, how many news stories have you seen about some child genius graduating from Harvard at 12 years old? Lots of them. How many of those 12 year old geniuses specialize in math, physics, or biology? All of them. How many are historians, psychologists, poets, novelists, anthropologists, ethnographers, linguists, social workers? Pretty close to none of them. Why? Because the types of thinking and understandings in those disciplines is different to the core, from those other disciplines. Those modes of thinking require a different type of education and lots of human experience. It's difficult to provide either of those in a school setting. However, we can start students on the way to deeper human understanding by providing materials and experiences that better model the processes of humanity experts. We do it in science and math already.
Continuing current efforts to squeeze everything into testable factoids, will continue to fail students.
A final note. It was dismaying to read that the most cited "historical" film cited by students and parents was "Forest Gump." Sheesh. That monument to playing stupid and blindly following orders has helped lead us to the quagmires of the anti-vax,anti-science, anti-humane behaviors driving conflict in the US today.
November 2, 2020
I am not a teacher but enjoy reading history and have a difficult time articulating why I find it so fascinating. On the one hand, it is the past, and it is near impossible to draw an accurate cause/effect lesson from the past. There are too many variables, and life cannot be run as an experiment where we change a variable to get a different outcome. On the other hand, I find it personally enriching and enjoy thinking about the question, "Why do we study history?" This book provides several articles/essays on this topic, as well as some purely pedagogical observations and hypotheses. While it addresses "historical thinking," that is a reason for reading history. I like the new perspective it gave me, looking at history like a detective looking to solve a mystery. I took my time reading this over the years. I was most interested from my individual perspective and not so much for pedagogical reasons, so I set it aside for a couple of years. My interest peaked recently with teaching my kids from home, giving a little more meaning to a non-teacher as myself in the last couple of essays.
August 15, 2019
I'd like to believe that everyone would find this book as interesting and relevant as I do, but alas I know that's not the case. THEY SHOULD THOUGH! Loved the insights into the theory of teaching history; was hoping it would have more advice or practical take-aways, but that wasn't ever the point, I don't think. Particularly memorable bits: research on how teenagers' historical understanding is built around families/pop culture, specifically movies; his broad defense of the necessity of "thinking historically" and teaching students to read critically, question texts, and build new understandings; his detailed accounts of professional historians reading, questioning, and using sources (fascinating to hear them narrate their thought processes); and suggestions about forcing students to wrestle with history by creating new stories themselves (which isn't something I make them do). Oh and one last thought --his case studies tracking history teachers classes through a year of school make me petrified of ever letting anyone do research in on me teaching my classes!
November 26, 2017
An incredibly useful book for history teachers and anyone interested in history education. In this book, Wineburg questions the way people tend to think about history and the way it should be taught. He argues persuasively for viewing history as a set of skills and a way of thinking rather than simply a list of facts, names, dates, and events to be memorized, using a number of different approaches to make this point and to show how this method of history instruction can be achieved. This would entail movement away from textbooks, a means of conveying knowledge that Wineburg critiques and views rather unfavorably, and towards creative uses of primary sources in the classroom. This book has really helped shape the way I think about history education, and I would highly recommend it to anyone else in that field.
March 28, 2019
As an Intermediate/Secondary teacher, I found some of what Wineburg said to be very interesting and in some cases helpful in planning long range units. However, the text seriously shows its age - published in 2001 - it basically points to flaws in the way the history and social studies curriculum is delivered (mainly in the United States) and discusses outdated technology. Its chapter on universal design is still relevant (Backwards Design) but little else is pertinent to Canadian educators who moved away from traditional 'lecturing' history classes years ago. It is a text which requires follow-up research from the past 20 years to see what has changed and include the mobile technology that was not around in 2001.
September 30, 2023
Not boring as I predicted! Actually an interesting book and observations on history education. Sometimes the language was very dumbed down one chapter but then the next chapter felt overly complicated or overly explained.
Loved reading the real life stories and examples of teachers using different methods/strategies for teaching history in a classroom setting. Maybe the critiques or suggestions could have been more critical or constructive after the vignettes, but still would recommend to any teacher teaching social studies at the secondary level.
Solid, average education book I would recommend if asked but would not go out of my way too.
Loved reading the real life stories and examples of teachers using different methods/strategies for teaching history in a classroom setting. Maybe the critiques or suggestions could have been more critical or constructive after the vignettes, but still would recommend to any teacher teaching social studies at the secondary level.
Solid, average education book I would recommend if asked but would not go out of my way too.
April 2, 2025
Proposes some great ideas on how to view history in the high school classroom. I do wish it would be a bit more specific at times with instructions on how to apply the concepts. Also, while some of the data made sure to include students of all levels, I was frustrated with the exemplary examples, which almost exclusively came from honors or AP classrooms. It's also difficult to apply these visions of classrooms to modern students and the social environment current history teachers face.
Still a valuable read for educators, but it probably needs to be paired with modern research.
Still a valuable read for educators, but it probably needs to be paired with modern research.
November 4, 2017
Vale, pues esto es oficial, comienzan las lecturas relacionadas con el tema opos, con la profesión soñada y con la motivación. Este libro estrena estantería!
Para ser la primera obra con la que entro en materia estoy gratamente satisfecha. Un buen repaso sobre muchos de los debates a la hora de enseñar y aprender historia, los conceptos de segundo orden, cuestiones de género, revisión de las aulas... dinámico, llevadero y con variados estudios sobre el terreno. Bastante bien =)
Para ser la primera obra con la que entro en materia estoy gratamente satisfecha. Un buen repaso sobre muchos de los debates a la hora de enseñar y aprender historia, los conceptos de segundo orden, cuestiones de género, revisión de las aulas... dinámico, llevadero y con variados estudios sobre el terreno. Bastante bien =)
June 16, 2020
As a history teacher in alternative learning environments (homeschool co-ops), this book gave a really good view of what is not working in how history is disseminated to the next generation. I think one solution would be to stop trying to fit 5000 years of history into one school year. Take a page from classical homeschool education and break it up into digestible time periods. Knowledge of history is important. Don't rush through it.
January 3, 2023
Wineburg’s Historical Thinking is a monograph composed of ten essays that explore what it means to teach, learn and understand history. It is composed of analyses based off of several original qualitative studies that examine how historians read, understand and contextualize text, issues of gender, issues of morality in the classroom, and more.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 16, 2023
Given its age, this text remains relevant to the 21st-century history educator. The dilemmas Wineburg explores are still present as teaching in a post-pandemic world becomes arguably more complex. A must read for any history teacher who desires to truly impact historical thinking skills upon their students.
February 1, 2025
Read this mostly in one day, and I regretted needing to go that fast, but I hit the due date for the book and just wanted to finish. I felt like the book was helpful, though I am not a K-12 teacher. There was a helpful section on historical memory and another on primary source documents and teaching students to think about historical context. Good one!
July 29, 2018
A classic must-read for history educators.
Read
November 3, 2019Super boring. Read for my Intro to Secondary Education class.
April 4, 2020
Wineberg's book is primarily historical pedagogy aimed at school teachers. In other words, this is not a book for those that are well read in academic historiography/theory.
Read
May 26, 2020Historiographic approaches are always urgent in pedagogies, there are many valid points on how students think and access. Recommended for history students.
August 17, 2020
I literally stopped listening in earnest somewhere mid-way. I am not the lamest of readers of non-fiction but I rarely come across such a ponderous and self-righteous writing style.
TLDR: Skip.
TLDR: Skip.
September 3, 2020
I was expecting it to concentrate on the history angle but this book is mostly about teaching.
September 9, 2021
This is a must read for anyone who teaches history.
October 26, 2021
I loved this book! I had to read it for my Social Studies Methods class! I will cherish it forever in my future teaching career!
March 17, 2022
An interesting discussion comparing and analyzing the styles of real teachers, and how it affects students.
May 27, 2025
Banger, wider reflection in works.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews