Meaningful Work

The American Federation of Teachers
American Educator's Winter issue includes an article on:

"Meaningful Work: How the History Research Paper Prepares Students for College and Life"

http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/

While there is lively new concern for our neglect of promising STEM students, there continues to be almost no interest in encouraging serious high school students who are reading history books and writing history research papers on their own (because their schools, for the most part, don't care if they do stuff like that). We may perhaps see some improvement in our STEM performance, but the vital ROOTS of knowledge of history and skill in academic expository writing will continue to shrivel, and we may have even more inarticulate and aliterate engineers, and scientists (as well as other members of the voting public) as ignorant of history as ever. Let us reconsider our inattention to the ROOTS (academic reading and writing) of a sound liberal education while we still can, if possible.


Will Fitzhugh