The president has stopped funding for National History Day just nine weeks before the event takes place. National History Day had already gotten contracts for the next two years of funding, but now the anticipated national event may not take place.
According to the AP, National History Day was created to help students in 6th through 12th grades to study history, create projects to explain their research, and then bring the finalists together at the National History Day convention. Over half a million students participated in it last year at the local level. They chose topics, carried out research, created projects ranging from presentation boards, documentaries, and research papers, and then they presented them at the local level and state level. The best 2,800 went on to the national convention. The program is now fifty years old and it keeps growing every year. This year the Federal support was targeted to be less than $200,000.
According to the AP, National History Day represents “years of championing evidence-based argumentation, participants say they find the work more relevant than ever.” The story goes on:
“National History Day was founded to invigorate history curricula beyond the “boring textbook” that students felt had “no meaning,” according to executive director Cathy Gorn. She cast the mission nowadays as one that strengthens democracy. A strong social studies education is an “antidote to conspiracy theories” and necessary for developing engaged citizens, she said.
The nonprofit does not “promote a particular agenda,” she emphasized, but instead guides students through their own inquiries. It equips teachers with classroom resources for navigating the Library of Congress, conducting oral histories and annotating bibliographies, among other skills.
“We are not telling the kids how to interpret the past or what to interpret of the past, but how to go about creating an interpretation and an argument based on the real research,” Gorn told AP.
“In learning that, they learn the importance of historical perspective,” Gorn added. “And they learn, hopefully, to understand the past to be part of the future.”
Judges said the projects jumpstart a lifelong pursuit of knowledge that serves all students regardless of their future endeavors. One of the most important lessons is to follow the “rabbit hole,” according to Robyn Gausman-Burnett, a University of Maryland geographical sciences doctoral student. She said National History Day trains students to never stop digging for “that next supporting piece of evidence,” or “the other half of the story that isn’t easily found on the Google search.””
The National History Day funding is apparently being redirected to fund President Trump’s new “Garden of Heroes” where he will honor those he chooses. There will be 250 people represented by statues. He issued an executive order called “Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday.”
Kevin Levin has an interesting story on this development.
