Reprint of an article as published in the December 2004 History Matters! (Volume 17, Number 4), the monthly newsletter of the National Council for History Education, Inc. For information on NCHE, please visit www.nche.net.

Editor's Note: The following text, from a speech delivered May 2, 2003, is adapted and published with permission from an article in a special issue of The Journal of Education containing the proceedings of a conference on The Power of the Liberal Arts in the Classroom, sponsored by the Center for School Improvement at Boston University. NCHE member, Mary Beth Klee, makes the argument that our youngest students can learn and enjoy history.

History is the story of change over time. It is the story of how we human beings have changed, and also how we haven't changed. It is many more exalted things as well - the story of human triumphs and failures, the story of doggedly persistent ordinary folks and amazingly gifted or warped individuals, the story of paths that have proven fruitful and paths that should be shunned. But mostly it's the story of continuity and change - our oldness and our newness.

In the last twenty years, as I've taught American and world history to students of different ages, I've been struck by the unique power of this discipline in the lives of students. It has the power to reassure and to challenge. Reassure us that in many ways our problems are not new; they are perennial and part of the human condition. Students become aware that they have company. Others have stood in their shoes. History is partly about how we stay the same.

And challenge - history alerts students to newness and change. They develop an understanding that some eras, situations, and opportunities are qualitatively different and unprecedented - that innovation is possible. History is also about how we've changed.

The German Romantic poet and novelist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1842), lived at the crossroads of two great revolutions - the democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century and the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century. Goethe posited that all of us seek answers to three big questions in life: What is the story of all mankind? What is the story of my time? And what story is mine alone?

History provides reassuring and energizing answers to each of those questions - ones that I think even our youngest students begin to intuit and grow excited about when they embark, as I believe every child should, on the organized study of the human past.

In the past thirteen years, I've worked with two strong K-8 history programs - both are "Stone Age to Space Age" initiatives. They are content-rich, broad, and ambitious - covering the whole scope of World and American history within kindergarten to eighth grade. Strong history programs share a commitment to chronology as an organizing principle because chronology helps explain where we've come from, how we've changed, and how we've stayed the same.

In one sequence of study, young students get an overview of world history in K-4. By the time a child is in third grade, he or she will have had an introduction to ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, Greece and Rome, an overview of their geography, major accomplishments, and major figures.

That agenda is accomplished in age-appropriate ways. For example, kids can make play-dough maps showing the locations of major rivers and mountain ranges. They etch their own cuneiform tablets in clay. They read picture-book biographies of fascinating figures like King Tutankhamen or Queen Hatshepsut or Confucius. They sing songs about Greek democracy and hear tales of Zeus or Athena. In imagination they follow Hannibal over the Alps.

Every once in a while, these activities come home to you in revealing ways. In one of my third grade classrooms we were beginning the study of ancient Rome. My students had already studied, in first and second grades, ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, and Greece. So now we had reached the classical world. And I asked them before we started: What did they want to know about ancient Rome? What did they expect to find? And eager hands shot up.

One boy said with a bit of knowing exasperation, "I'm just betting there's a flooding river around here someplace." One girl said, "I want to know if they had a king like the pharaoh in Egypt or if it maybe was a democracy like Greece - and us." Yet another child said, "I hope they have good stories about their gods, and I think it was probably gods, not one God, 'cause it was ancient times."

These eight- and nine-year-olds had better historical intuition than many college students I have taught. Why? What's going on here?

"I'm just betting there's a flooding river around here someplace." This boy is harkening to what he knows about early river valley civilizations - after three years of organized study between ages six and nine, he had attained a clear understanding that the development of civilization is tied to its geography and its resources. Somewhere in the back of his head, he's running a tape that says "annual floods, fertile soil, surplus of food, division of labor, building of cities . . . "

The little girl who wonders "if they had a king like the pharaoh in Egypt or if it's a democracy like Greece - and us": She already knows that human beings are always pressing for an answer to the questions: Who will rule? How shall we be governed? Will the strong always lord it over the weak?

The child who says, "I hope they have good stories about their gods, and I bet it was gods, not one God 'cause it was ancient times": knows that at an early stage in time, people almost always looked to numerous nature gods, and that the step toward monotheism - the worship of one God - is something more recent and qualitatively different.

What Is the Story of Humankind?
These youngsters were intuiting that there are questions common to all civilizations and all humankind. And there is reassurance in that. The reassurance is, "We are not alone." Others have trod this path.

Kids who are given the opportunity to study the past often find solidarity with those who have gone before them, a sense of connection that is both a source of reassurance and a gift. By connecting students with the past, we can cultivate in them an awareness that now - at this moment in time - the ship is theirs. The journey is not a tour given by someone else. They are steering this craft, and the journey is what they make it.

What Is the Story of My Time?
I want to speak to history""'s energizing potential when kids come to realize that each age faces its own distinct challenges. Sometimes we human beings must respond to situations and problems that have never existed before. Sometimes we have to grapple with novel situations and seek new solutions. Again, the advantages of a sequentially organized program of historical study leap forth - because then kids can see the context.

The sequentially organized study of history helps students understand the human journey as exactly that - a journey. It helps kids understand that in good times each generation just takes a step forward. In amazing times, we might take a few steps forward. But nobody ever figures out all the best answers to the tough questions right away.

Let's consider the example of the development of democracy. When kids encounter the reality of Greece in 500 B.C., and in particular the anomaly of Athens, and listen for the first time to the words of Pericles, they get excited because, unlike the proclamations of the pharaoh to his scribes, or Darius to his courtiers, they hear the ring of something at once new - in the context of this time - and yet very familiar. Pericles proclaimed: "We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who 'minds his own business'; we say that he has no business here at all."

Now, in that time and in that place, did wealth and birth still matter? Yes. Did gender matter? You bet. Were all people free and equal? No. But was this fifth-century Greek democracy still a huge step forward? Kids who have studied the context will respond with a resounding "yes."

"Well," asks the third grader about ancient Rome, "was it ruled by a king like the pharaoh or was it a democracy like Greece - and us?" That can make all the difference.

What Story Is Mine Alone?
Finally, "What story is mine alone?" That question takes a lifetime to answer, and it's an inherently personal one. But history, by providing so many human models both good and evil, helps students imagine who they might be, and who they never want to become.

Several years ago I was teaching first graders about the Age of Exploration. The culminating project was first-person explorer reports. The kids drew names from a hat and were excited about their reports, except for one sensitive boy who drew his name from the hat, looked at it carefully, then came up to me and said, "Can I please be somebody else? I got Pizarro and I just can't be him."

"Why not?" I asked. We had read about Pizarro, and the boy reminded me about how Pizarro had deceived the Inca leader, Atahualpa, betrayed the Inca people after he took their gold by killing their leader, and then enslaved their civilization. The boy said, "I just can't be him. He's too evil."

It is rare but revealing when a six-year-old can look you in the eye and say, in essence, "This is not my story. This would take me where I do not want to go." We need to honor that. The boy got to be Amerigo Vespucci.

History provides the reassurance and the challenge, "You are unique. Men and women who have lived before you can light the way, but your story will ultimately be yours alone." Even the youngest students can grasp that idea.

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