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Teaching History Through Inquiry

By Stephen Lazar

One of the great challenges of teaching high school history is negotiating two competing charges.

We must equip students with a degree of cultural literacy by exposing them to America's past and humanity's shared heritage. In states like New York and Virginia (where I have spent my teaching career), students must be able to demonstrate this content knowledge when they take high-stakes history exams.

But we must also ensure that our high school students gain the skills and knowledge necessary to be critical thinkers and citizens in our democracy. Our world is saturated with media, and students need to learn how to evaluate the information they encounter, based on where it comes from, who is producing it and when, its use of evidence,...