Well, I just read through the practice test. I used to teach, but not history. But, even still, this test irks me a bit. It appears to be more focused on having the student draw correlations between old ideas and modern ills than it is about the student developing a deeper understanding of historic events. I look at this test and have to admit that if I was thirty-five years younger and taking this that I would not take away from it a deeper understanding of history but instead would walk away with a distaste for almost any idea expressed by an historic figure. The test seems more about learning to dislike your history rather than understand it.

The first example where this is obvious is the question about George Washington's statement where he was expressing reluctance in getting involved with Europe's problems in handling France's post-revolution government. The question is more concerned that you correlate Washington's statement with America's isolationism in the 1900's despite that isolationism following a period of rapid expansionism than it is you understanding the full context of the debate on fledgling America's involvement in internal disputes in Europe. I don't find that particularly helpful or edifying. The student should be trying to understand the debates around these issues as they were being had at the time. If you're trying to blame Washington for American deciding not to join the League of Nations, well, not only are you a bad historian, but you're also quite ignorant. No one having the debate over the League of Nations was saying, "Guys, look, we can't join those Europeans! Remember Washington and France? It's a no brainer!" Seriously, no one was saying that, yet this test seems to think that Washington's idea pervasively infected the national conversation of the 1920's. As I said, in the years between Washington's quote and the isolationist policies of the 1900's, America had been involved in many, many international conflicts. The idea that we abandoned Washington's idea for a century and that the day we decided to go full tilt to isolationism it must of been because of him, well, that's pretty nonsensical. Yet, there is definitely a correlation the test wants you to make.

I just find this test to be a symptom of a larger problem, that problem being a generation of teachers with a complete lack of understanding when it comes to pedagogical principles and, in many cases, a complete disregard for them. Teachers are less and less concerned with the science behind how to instill academic competency in students and are more concerned with how to make them think a certain way, and it's troubling. I got out of teaching in part because of that (there's other parts that were even more critical to my decision, but this was one of them). This test just seems to be evidence of what I'm saying. It isn't indicative of a history curriculum in which the students actually understand history but instead is indicative of a curriculum which would have students associate every political or philosophical concept with something controversial or distasteful in modern America. History is full of atrocity, and you shouldn't gloss over it. But, at the same time, you shouldn't be going out of your way to focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. If you spent more time learning about child labor laws of 1901 than you did learning about the Enlightenment or the Revolutionary War, my guess is you don't really understand history at all and instead grew up to be a union activist.