I have three principal goals in my survey classes. First, I want students to have some knowledge of the facts of American history. We have found that many students come to Kennesaw poorly prepared in this area.
Students seem to know intuitively that facts are meaningless by themselves.
I suspect so many students come to college hating American history because of misguided high school teachers who emphasized names and dates to the exclusion of larger ideas. I tell students the first day of class that I will never tell them a fact that is not directly connected to a dozen others. Third, I want students to be able to read and think critically, and so I assign a number of brief readings, in both primary and secondary sources, for students to read on their own in preparation for class. I have also taught several sections of History 2275, Introduction to Local History and Historical Methodology. The main goal of this course is to teach students how to do historical research using the vehicle of local history.