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What Makes History Usable

What Makes History Usable

The World History Project connects the people, places and events of history from the past to the present, to help create ways to think about the future

Key Ideas

As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.

Think about the following questions as you watch the video


  1. Bob Bain describes a long debate that politicians and educators have “waged war” over, about what should be taught in the history classroom. What are the two sides and what do they argue?
  2. What was the big driving question Bains’s students in Detroit studied?
  3. What did students do over the course of the school year, after they shared the stories they collected?
  4. What did looking at multiple narratives help students do?
  5. According to Bob Bain, what makes history usable?