For the past two generations, American students history grades have been dropping rapidly. http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/07/opinion/callista-gingrich-u-s-history/index.html describes this change as an effect of not being able to captivate the students and that they need to find fun ways to teach these topics. But why do students do well in math, science and English if the same teaching mechanisms are being utilized.
https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2016/the-decline-in-history-majors says that the number of history majors has dropped significantly in the last four years. This fall is likely due to the fact that most graduates are unable to pursue a career relating to their major. History majors are likely to become teachers, and there is a limited amount of jobs in that realm. This discourages our profit driven society to pursue such majors.
Students are realizing that beyond basic history taught in grade school, there isn’t much of a need to continue learning history. Similar to what Aldous Huxley writes in his book, “Brave New World” where citizens are discourage to learn more about the past as it is useless. The charters in the book agree with this statement because they see no need to learn about the mistakes of the past and only venture into the future and live in the present. I think this theme is becoming more and more common among people today, especially among current students who will opt out of history courses and pursue jobs where history is not needed.
Hi chloe! I found this post very interesting. This is something I have never really considered, but I agree that history tends to be a subject that is not as widely considered for a career path as other subjects may be. Although, I did find a link, “History is not a useless major, Fighting Myths with Data” , that discusses a similar topic to you: that history is being lost as our youth doesn’t see it as a practical subject to major in, but this article also writes about how history majors are possible and there are still many jobs out there for them, we just need more people to know about it. I think that could relate to what you said about the way students are being taught. I thought this was really great post that was very informative.
https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/april-2017/history-is-not-a-useless-major-fighting-myths-with-data