Every semester, I tell my students something that often gets them excited about my course.
This course is not about memorizing dates, places, and names. It is about learning how to synthesize historical events to be able to understand the past, live in the present, and predict the future. I make this distinction because history should not be minimized to a day and time.
History is deeper than a timeline. When students peel back the layers of historical events, they learn the political, economic, and social impacts of the events and how they have shaped the country they live in today.
For generations, history education has often been reduced to names, dates, battles, and tests. Students are expected to remember information long enough to pass an exam, only to forget much of it later. While factual knowledge matters, memorization alone does not teach students how history is actually made. According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, remembering is only the first level of learning (Bloom et al., 1956).
Bloom’s Taxonomy, created by Benjamin Bloom, categorizes the six cognitive levels of learning into a hierarchical framework that moves from the stage one of remembering to the more complex level of creating at stage six (Bloom et al., 1956). Classrooms across the world use this framework to teach concepts to students every day.
Historians do not simply memorize history. They ask questions. They search archives. They examine evidence. They compare sources. They conduct interviews. They build timelines. They reconstruct stories. In other words, they investigate. That is the experience I want for my students.
Rather than simply reading about historical figures, my students become historians themselves. They conduct oral history interviews, investigate archival records, document lives, and connect personal stories to broader moments in United States history. They discover that history is not something sitting quietly inside a textbook or lecture rooms. History lives in families, churches, neighborhoods, universities, and communities waiting to be documented before it is lost.
This approach moves students beyond simply remembering, analyzing, or evaluating historical content. They become active participants in the historical process. They preserve evidence, amplify overlooked stories, and accept responsibility for safeguarding the historical record for future generations.
In my emerging Pegram Digital Public History Educational Framework (PDPHEF), I have tentatively identified this as an additional stage of learning: Preserve and Steward. While Bloom’s Taxonomy describes how students acquire and apply knowledge (Bloom et al., 1956), Preserve and Steward recognizes the responsibility that accompanies historical understanding. Students are no longer consumers of history; they become its caretakers, ensuring that the voices, experiences, and records they uncover remain accessible for future scholarship and public understanding.
Possible student products include:
- institutional archives
- oral history repositories
- museum collections
- digital exhibits
- historical databases
- community archives
- digital preservation plans
- publicly accessible websites
One of the most powerful lessons students discover in this stage is that American history is not a collection of isolated famous individuals. It is the accumulated story of millions of people whose lives shaped the nation in ways both large and small. My students quickly learn something different. All historical events are American history.
The scientists, educators, veterans, entrepreneurs, ministers, artists, farmers, faculty members, and everyday citizens they research were not standing on the sidelines while history happened.
Students were preserving history.
When students document those stories through oral histories and archival research, they are doing more than completing an assignment. They are preserving community memory and expanding our understanding of the American experience.
Bequita Pegram, Ph.D. ’23
That process changes students as much as it changes the historical record. They begin asking better questions. They learn to evaluate evidence. They recognize that every source carries perspective. They understand that preserving someone’s story is both an intellectual and civic responsibility. Most importantly, they discover that history belongs to all of us—not only to professional historians.
If we want students to value history, we must invite them to practice it. History education should not end with remembering what happened. It should begin with investigating why it happened, documenting whose stories have yet to be fully explored, and preserving those stories for future generations.
That is why my students don’t just study history. They preserve and steward it.
References
Bloom, B. S. (Ed.), Engelhart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. David McKay Company.
Bequita Pegram, Ph.D. 23’, is a history lecturer at Prairie View A&M University.