When President Bush enacted the, "No Child Left Behind Act", he created a large hindrance of learning for the subject area of history and other humanities. This act primarily focusses on the subject areas of math and literacy. With the recent election of President Obama, similar patterns have continued to exist concerning the area of history. President Obama's policy concerning education focusses on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Author, Chelsea Gibson, states, despite the continued emphasis of math and literacy and the support these subjects receive from the government, history and social studies will always teach our children important life lessons. This in turn will create responsible and informed critical leaners. Gibson states 4 reasons as to why the application of history in schools creates critical and informed lifelong learners: 1. History teaches analytical skills. History requires students to make connections and allows them to ask question. Gibson states, critical thinking is the foundation for history therefore, making critical learning an essential learning tool. 2. History is also integrated into other curriculum areas such as the Arts, psychology, philosophy, and modern languages. 3. History teaches and improves writing skills. 4. Finally, history makes students more aware of their heritage.

George Santayana coined the phrase, "Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it." Author David Crabtee states, that the past greatly influences decisions and actions for the future. This article takes the perspectives and opinions of important authors and professors concerning the significance of teaching history in our classrooms. These authors discuss common misconceptions, benefits, considerations, limitations, and effects of teaching our students history. Having a curriculum that stresses the importance of history creates critical thinkers. Teaching history is an effective teaching and learning skill for both student and teachers. Crabtee helps us understand this through his example of Christopher Columbus. History helps students learn about different perspectives and opposing point of views. Stacia Deutch also lists several reasons as to why it is important to teach our children history such as, teaching our students good and bad decision making, learning from past examples, and a better understanding of people and culture. These authors also presented some limitations and considerations teachers can think about when teaching history. Professor John Fielding states that teachers need to engage students in learning history. Teachers need to teach history with the goal and focus of engaging their students. This can be done through: debates, role playing, artistic posters, and projects, the use of historical fiction.

Recent years have seen a sharp decrease in social studies subject areas. Studies have shown that students are not properly informed or educated about our countries political system and its operations as we would hope them to be. Classroom time has been focused on literacy and numeracy. This negatively influences a student's critical thinking skills as future voters. Steve Goldberg stresses the importance of restoring social studies at the forefront of the curriculum in order to shape our students into responsible and civil citizens. This article does a great job of discussing how the discipline of social studies creates critical and informed thinkers. Social studies provide a platform for discussion concerning our country and the global world. Students are able to critically think outside the box and make sense of the world. They are taught basic skills that they can apply to their everyday lives such as, learning through a historical context and interpreting graphs and charts. Steve Goldberg states that these are numeracy and literacy skills that can be applied to the real world.