1.

Bob Bain describes a long debate that politicians and educators have
“waged war” over, about what should be taught in the history classroom. What
are the two sides and what do they argue?
One group argues “It’s a set of essential or core facts, names, dates and events
that make history so important,” as they march under the banner “Content &
Facts
Matter Most”.

2. What was the big driving question Bains’s students in Detroit studied?
I spent time designing a history course for students in Detroit. And we used a
big driving question—why did people throughout history move in and out of
the Detroit area?—to structure the course.

3. What did students do over the course of the school year, after they shared
the stories they collected?
Old map of the Great Lakes
Region, black and white
streetscape, communities of
people through time
And then, over the course of the school year, students investigated changes
in migration patterns to southeast Michigan and their impact over thousands
of years, looking for, analyzing, and interpreting

4. What did looking at multiple narratives help students do?

It helped them to see the history of their city in a far more complex way.

5. According to Bob Bain, what makes history usable?

Making decision of the present using stories from the past