Happy Labor Day. This summer, I took a minor league baseball  pilgrimage to Myrtle Beach, SC (home of the Pelicans and Kenny Power’s fictional Merman) via Durham North Carolina to see the legendary Durham Bulls play.  Combined with the Washington National’s success, this season has been a very fun one indeed.  As I drove through North Carolina, however, I had repeated flashbacks to my time living in Brazil, specifically during 2003.   The source of my memories was NC’s license plate which boosts the claim “First in Flight.”  It was on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brother’s 1903 Kitty Hawk run that I became aware that a counter argument and broader circumstances even existed concerning first flight narratives. Enter Mr. Santos Dumont, Brazilian inventor, aviator, and eccentric. (I had been flying into the airport named after him for years at that point but hadn’t bothered checking who he was).  At a recent visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, staff there had never heard of Dumont despite his achievements and this entry in Smithsonian Education. Dumont, I am confident, remains in obscurity in US education and thus North Carolina’s claim has been elevated to “truth.”

This post is not to engage in the Dumont v. Wright debate.  Rather, I would like to use it as an inroad to address the state of Global and Transnational historical perspectives in secondary history/social studies education.  I think there is little doubt that the national paradigm, including celebratory claims to “firstness” and national “ownership” of events, ideas, inventions, people etc. are unfortunately alive and well.  Wjile at Virtual High School, a course we offered included a discussion prompt asking students to identify what sports are truly “American.”  This was done without exploring what a national claim entails , detailing the limitations of such national claims, examining theories of nationalism, or considering systems thinking beyond national boundaries. It seems these types of inquiries are more relevant, higher order, and rigorous.  Contemporary histories embrace global and transnational paradigms. Certain universities, like Georgetown and University College London have established centers around these models of thought.  The result has been an abundance of scholarship using these theories and methods.  In a recent article in the Globality Studies Journal, historian Akira Iriye notes

“The privileging of the nation as the key unit of analysis, and of international relations as the basic framework in which to look at the world at a given moment in time, had led to an incomplete understanding of the past, not a full view of how humankind had evolved. It may be said that historians finally caught up with history when they became interested in paying greater attention than their predecessors to non-state actors and transnational phenomena, not just to nation-specific stories or to vicissitudes in interstate affairs.”

Also,  The “Making History” website hosted by the University of London is an excellent resource for historical theory and practice.

The La Pietra Report of 2000 formally announced  the need for globalizing historical understanding and perspectives beyond the nation. This practice had been carried out, however, for decades.  SUNY Stonybrook’s Center for Global and Local History (directed by Wolf Schafer) recognizes British Historian Geoffrey Barraclough as a key figure in the development global history. Likewise Randolph Bourne’s 1916 essay “Trans-national America” indicate a that contemporary calls for perspectives broader than the nation are a return to a past approach, not a new movement to undermine national identity. Still, clarity over these terms is not crystal clear.  Andre Kuech in his article “A Survey of World History Studies: Theory, Methodology and Networks” wrestles with the peculiraties and lack of universal agreement around  global, transnational, and world history. He contends, “Each different historical approach essentially works to map out a network of actors and connections, or a series of networks of actors and connections, in order to account for the large-scale processes of human interactions over time. The differing units of analysis used in world, global and transnational studies directly affect the geographic scales they can cover.”

Kuech concludes that “exploring and investigating the underlying characteristics of human interactions, world and global historians will be better able to comprehend not just the who, what, and when of global connections, but also the why and how these connections have increased, spread and varied over time. My contention is that historians should carefully consider their usage of the terms ‘global,’ ‘transnational’ and ‘world’ before employing them in historical projects.”   I contend that history education in high school is indeed one of the historical projects Kuech alludes to.

Bridging the gaps that exist between the academy, the public, and secondary history education can be effectively done by teachers.  To that end, I offer a

list of prompts to start the conversation and action around the integration of global and transnational perspectives in high school. In the broad scheme of things, I believe this move will elevate history and the social sciences to a level held presently by STEM education.  The skills and mental constructs that develop from global and transnational studies better equip students for the future than that provided by national models of the past.

Prompts to consider:

• Discuss the concepts of agency, structuralism, and knowledge construction with students.
• Use multiple Periodizations and discuss the the role of the nation and nationalism in our world views.
• Use online timelines to engage technology and collaborative practices. (A suggested list is here)
• Utilize multiple narratives that run counter to and problematize textbook and heritage studies.
• Discuss the purpose of history education in your school.
• Engage in Professional Development in global and transnational history.
• Communicate to the community what these types of history entail.

Professor Bruce Van Sledright, in his 2010 work  The Challenge of Rethinking History Education: On Practices, Theories, and Policy identifies History (with a cap) as being the national/official narrative reinforced in schooling, media society etc (I tend to call this heritage). With a small “h” history supposes that constructing stories about the past are complex, varying, multiple and together provide a clearer understanding of the past.  Typical things identified as “American”, jazz, jeans, democracy, football, etc, all have a global and transnational history. Moving beyond the national model is waaaaayyy overdue. What are you doing to make it happen in your school and community?