Celebrating Presidents’ Day & K-12 U.S. History Instruction

As we celebrate Presidents’ Day, Pioneer Institute is pleased to share video highlights, research, and op-eds that we have produced in recent years marking the importance of key presidents in American history – and the vital importance of their inclusion in K-12 instruction.

In recent years, Pioneer has actively promoted rigorous, content-based academic standards that include U.S. History and civics instruction. The Institute has published research and polling on the lack of understanding of U.S. History, which has largely been neglected in public schooling; sponsored a U.S. History essay contest for Massachusetts high school students; and hosted numerous events and papers featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. historians and internationally-recognized figures. Watch video clips of our many public forums, below.

Watch our videos and read our related reports and commentary: 

Gordon Wood, Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Founding era

Jack Rakove, Professor of History, Stanford University, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Founding era

Willard Sterne Randall, Professor of American History, Champlain College, and author, the Founding era

Fred Kaplan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, Queens College & the Graduate Center, City University of New York; author, John Quincy Adams: American Visionary

Daniel Walker Howe, Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus, Oxford University and UCLA; Pulitzer Prize-winning author, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

David & Jeanne Heidler, co-authors or editors of 12 books, including Old Hickory’s War: Andrew Jackson and the Quest for Empire

James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War historian and Princeton University Professor Emeritus

Jeff Shesol, author of Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court; presidential speechwriter, Clinton administration

Edmund Morris, Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of three-part biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan

Thomas Putnam, Former Director, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum

Related Op-eds, Research, and more:

Birmingham: Are Lincoln – and U.S. history – being left behind?

“Now he belongs to the ages,” Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said upon the death of President Abraham Lincoln. But on the sesquicentennial of Lincoln’s assassination we’re in jeopardy of producing a generation of young people who are largely ignorant of our nation’s past. Read more…

Imperiling the Republic: The Fate of U.S. History Instruction under Common Core 

Shortchanging the Future: The Crisis of History and Civics in American Schools

The Rise and Fall of the Study of American History in Massachusetts