In The Student’s Friend Concise World History: the Capitol Hill riot, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Congress acts on climate change, and more ..read more

In the latest addition to the FFH Video series, Mike Maxwell identifies six basic elements of history education that are a mystery to history teachers because the history-education profession has yet to acknowledge or define them. 16 minutes. Click here ..read more

Could it be: a) history for understanding present-day issues, b) the history of human development through time, or c) recurring dynamics of history? What do you say?  https://youtu.be/yYwG97Ng34c ..read more

A presentation to the 101st Annual Conference of the National Council for the Social Studies by Mike Maxwell. YouTube video: https://youtu.be/aucFp9SmS4k ..read more

This multi-part lesson demonstrates how Recurring Dynamics of History can be taught in the classroom. It’s titled “Democracy is Fragile; It has repeatedly fallen to authoritarian rulers.” Available in online and printed formats at https://futurefocusedhistory.blog/recurring-dynamics-of-history-sample-teaching-module/. Enjoy ..read more

Not only do American students perform much worse in history than in other core school subjects on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), students also perform worse in history compared to kindred social studies fields. The most recent NAEP assessments in social studies were conducted in 2018 among eighth graders. Fifteen percent of these students performed at or above the proficient level in American history, compared to 24 percent in civics and 25 percent in geography. Considering that American history has long been the most prominent social studies subject taught in the nati ..read more

Since the publication of my book Future-Focused History Teaching in 2018, it has become apparent that some historians will remain uncomfortable with the idea that general principles can be derived from the subject matter of history. Perhaps these people might find it easier to support the sensible concept of future-oriented history instruction if the term recurring dynamics of history were substituted for the term general principles of history. Recurring dynamics in history are equivalent to the general principles that define other academic subjects and virtually ..read more

The historically weird school year of 2020-21, with its closings, openings, online teaching, and masked crusaders is over and done with. Hopefully teachers are taking a well-deserved break before thinking too hard about the next school year. We chose this pause between show times to bring back the Future-Focused History Blog from its pandemic hiatus. “Hello” old friends, and “Welcome” to the new folks who signed up to join us during the interregnum. At this time, I would like to propose a significant modification to our terminology. As you are likely aware, general principles of history cons ..read more

Hello friends- I probably should have posted this message before now, but like a lot of people I’ve been waiting to see what’s next. This blog has been essentially dormant since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, which is pretty much consuming all the air in education circles. With concerns about closing and reopening schools and how to conduct on-line learning, I doubt there’s much bandwidth left just now to consider reforming history education. Recently I’ve been working on some updates to my two books on history education. Both now include references to the term “recurring dynamics” of h ..read more

One dollar provides ten meals. Can you help? Feeding America: https://bit.ly/3fUphrv *CBS Face the Nation, May 17, 2020 ..read more