WAH

WAH () is a recently formed movement which seeks to integrate world history education with American history education. Currently, this movement is gaining support from many historical association as well as several American secondary schools and colleges.

Early Development and Naming
In 2001, John D. Bridgewater, who has been teaching in Brooklyn High School in Brooklyn, New York, decided that separating world history and American history completely is a major flaw in the American education system. As a result, he pressured the history department of Brooklyn High School as well as state educational boards to change the existing frameworks and curricula of history education to integrate the two topics in high school courses. He then developed a course integrating the two topics and named this course "World and American History," and abbreviated it as "WAH". Later, as a nationwide movement began to spread this methodology of integrating the two topics, the term "WAH" began to refer loosely to this movement itself. Today, "WAH" is no longer considered an abbreviation because of its ubiquity among educators and historians as well as as to detach this movement from simply an abbreviation but instead to allow it to embody a concept.

Adoption in American Educational Institutions
Ever since the "WAH" movement began, it has gained unprecedented support from the government as well as from individual schools, colleges. This resulted largely from its effectiveness in allowing students to better understand the United States' role in globalization. In June 2003, the United States Department of Education stated that "the 'WAH' movement is clearly the future path of history education nationwide as learning about other cultures and heritages alongside our own will help our future to better understand the issues that face our world and will help our youth to deal with and to eventually resolve these issues." In fact, the College Board recently announced an interest to develop an AP exam which combines both histories as well as analysis and connections between the two into one exam alongside the traditional examinations which focus either on world history or American history. Additionally, many colleges are restructuring their curricula to cover the two topics together in great depth and to provide more connection between the events in both America as well as elsewhere. Recent trends and analysis suggest that the style of history education prescribed by the 'WAH' movement may soon become the norm in American schools.

Similar Movements in Other Countries
The WAH movement has spurred the development of similar movements worldwide which emphasize both an understanding of World History as well as of national history simultaneously. Such movements include the People's History Movement in China, the Global India Movement in India, and also the Global British Movement in Great Britain. These movements worldwide share the same focus and ideology of the WAH movement, which is essentially to educate students about the role of national history and culture in a global scale.

The Future of the Movement
Despite having accomplished the majority of their goals to a moderate extent and having already influenced many schools, colleges, and textbook publishers, the WAH movement continues to bring new innovations to the way in which people perceive history. The WAH movement has recently established a non-profit organization, The WAH Foundation, in order to ensure that history progresses in developing nations and that this ideology continues to grow both in the United States as well as abroad. Additionally, leaders of the WAH movement have created institutions of higher learning such as WAH University in order to encourage the future generations to appreciate history.

Criticism
Many teachers and historians criticize the philosophy of the "WAH" movement. First of all, it requires a great investment in order to combine the two topics effectively into textbooks and to restructure curricula, and critics believe that these funds could potentially be better spent. Secondly, critics believe that adoption of this new policy would lead to the fall of patriotism and national pride because if American history is combined with world history, not enough time may be spent on American History.

Notes and References

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See Also

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