History, Self-Awareness, and the Core Curriculum

This article argues that core curriculum history surveys should promote critical reading and thinking skills, a basic knowledge of history, and a sense of self-awareness. Self-awareness is suggested as an alternative to attempts to promote student civic character by such means as service education. It also outlines the interconnection of teaching and researching history and how a core curriculum course's structure and teaching approach should be rooted in the nature of its discipline rather than standardized teaching methodologies.