Five Lessons for Every Student (by David McCullough)

Published on Mar 24, 2012

First, don't memorize dates and don't memorize quotations. You can look them up. What matters is what happens and why.
1) Go back.  Understand that the United States of American did not begin with the Declaration of Independence.
2) Learn history through other means than books and teachers. I would like them to learn history through music, through plays, by doing drawings, through architecture. 
3) Take on the lab technique. A teacher, Jim Percoco, does this by having students study statues. Give students a photograph or show them a building, or street corner, or neighborhood, and make a mini little documentary or write a play about it or write a paper about it. Don't give students everything. Let them figure it out. 
4) Let them have the chance to work with original documents or the nearest facsimile possible. Let them see that these were written by real people, with a paper and pen. 
5) Take them to places where things happen. Take them to historic sites. 

Historian David McCullough takes a question from the audience at the National Book Festival, September 25, 2011. This is a clip from the C-Span Video Archive

Here is the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPPLHq_gsP8

Appreciation goes to Susan Goding for posting this clip from CSpan (and for taking time to transcribe the tips).