Family History is History with a fairly good measure of geography

Having attended formal school education for about twenty years and after teaching at the college level for about five years, I have a pretty good feeling for the level of historical awareness and knowledge among those who go through our American school system. In many areas of the United States, the teaching of history has succumbed to political correctness to the point where much of our history cannot be taught at all. There are news articles such as one from the New York Post entitled, "Why schools have stopped teaching American History,"  that point out the lack of history education. In our local schools, social studies has replaced history. At least one state has eliminated the high school requirement to teach history at all.  See "Early American History could be a thing of the past." In addition, universities are eliminating or modifying their entry requirements for history related classes.

The lack of historical content in the K-12 curriculum is not a particularly new issue. Here is a quote from the following book:

Steeves, Kathleen Anderson. 1998. Working Together to Strengthen History Teaching in Secondary Schools.

Schools have been directed, often by local or state-mandated curriculums, to "take on" many of the problems faced by the society at large. School curriculum specialists have often included such social issues as race relations, teenage violence, patriotism, civil rights, and the family in history or civics classes. The classes thus become "social problems" courses, leaving serious historical study behind to focus on current events and contemporary issues taken from the evening news or weekly news magazines. Even then, background information that might have included historical knowledge on any of these topics is woefully lacking.

My own experience indicates that very few people in the United States have even a moderate understanding of U.S. and even world history. Even people who are older, likely only had one or at the most two classes in history during their entire school experience. Overall, I find few people who "love" history.

Because family history and/or genealogy are essentially and irrevocably history, how can we expect people to love doing their family history when what we are talking about is a subject that they have been conditioned to avoid and in many cases dislike?

In addition to the lack of history education, there are even fewer schools that actively teach geography.

So how does this impact genealogical research? Immensely. Genealogists do not have any greater historical or geographical awareness and background than the average person unless they just happen to be interested in history and geography or taken courses in a college or university. However, their ancestors and more importantly, their ancestors' records are embedded in their particular historical and geographical context. Much of the confusion and inaccuracy evidenced by online family tree programs, particularly the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is the result of an abysmal lack of knowledge of history and geography. All the computer skills in the world are not going to overcome this historical and geographical naiveté. The only way this obstacle to accuracy can be addressed is through consistent education that encompasses more than a superficial veneer of knowledge.

The challenge is that such a level of historical and geographical awareness will have to be achieved without the benefit of any formal educational foundation. If anything, today's students, i.e. those currently attending K-12 schools, have only minimal history and geography requirements for graduation. In Provo, Utah, where I live, to graduate, high school students are required to take a half-credit class in geography and half credit class in world civilization and a one credit class in U.S. history. Most university or college students can graduate, unless they are majoring in history, without taking any additional classes in either history or geography.

Genealogy and family history are history and as long as we pretend that we can "do genealogy" without a knowledge of its historical context, we will be shooting blind.