Gorn helps make history come alive; as executive director of National History Day Inc., Cathy Gorn challenges both students and teachers to reconnect with America's past triumphs and struggles

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 15, 2002 | by Stephen Goode

Cathy Gorn is executive director of National History Day Inc., a program for middle-and high-school students that begins each year with local-level contests. The young people present documentaries, exhibits, papers and performances they've prepared themselves about historical subjects. The program was begun in 1974 in Cleveland by a Case Western Reserve University history professor deeply concerned about how poorly history was being taught in public schools and how little students knew about the subject. From that small start it has expanded into a nationwide event that each year includes 700, 000 student contestants and involves 40, 000 teachers.

Contestants compete singly in individual competitions or with others in group contests. Each year, National History Day (NHD) has a single theme upon which all presentations must be based. In 2002 that theme was "Revolution Reaction Reform in History."

The students who win local contests move on to the state level. The program then culminates with a national contest held each dune at the University of Maryland in College Park where winners from each state compete for national honors. Approximately 2,100 students and 500 teachers reach the College Park competition.

But NHD is much more than a contest. It's also an educational program that has been enormously successful at spurring interest in history among the young, and an enormous boost to teachers for whom NHD provides a variety of instructional materials and summer institutes to support teaching of history as a dynamic subject.

In a Sept. 17 speech in the Rose Garden of the White House that was delivered on the 215th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution, President George W. Bush announced a national program called "Our Documents: A National Initiative on American History, Civics and Service." It's an educational undertaking in which NHD will play a major role, along with the National Archives, the Corporation for National Community Service and the USA Freedom Corps.

NHD Executive Director Cathy Gorn got involved in National History Day when she was a graduate student at Case Western Reserve in the early 1980s, starting first as someone who "stuffed envelopes and that sort of thing," but considering herself lucky to be a part of such an effort.

In 1995, when Gorn became executive director, the organization was in dire financial trouble, a crisis she overcame through a combination of tenacity and conviction that the work NHD does for students and teachers is very, very important. "It's not a job you get up every day to go to," she tells INSIGHT. "It's a cause you work for."

INSIGHT: Tell us about President Bush's initiative and how you became involved.

CATHY GORN: The president decided that he wants to push citizenship education through the study of American history. He's been concerned that students who are fond of talking about their rights don't always understand the responsibilities that support such rights. So he wanted to develop some kind of program to encourage young people to study and discuss and have conversations about what it means to be a citizen in a democratic republic.

This is being sponsored by the USA Freedom Corps. They contacted the National Archives, realizing that when you think about democracy and American history you think about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and who holds those? The National Archives. The National Archives got us involved.

Q: So how will the program work?

A: It's called "Our Documents." The National Archives is putting up on a special Website [www.ourdocuments.gov] 100 of what we call "milestone documents" in American history. Part of the initiative involves asking the general public to read the documents and have conversations about them. Toward the end of the program, which will be around July Fourth next summer, the public is to vote on the 10 most significant documents in American history.

That's the part of "Our Documents" for the general public. There's a student program, too. The "Our Documents" theme complements this year's National History Day theme, which is "Rights and Responsibilities in History," so it's perfect timing for us. Students will as usual be preparing presentations about this.

But the initiative has asked us to come up with a teacher contest, too, and so for the first time NHD will be presenting a teacher contest called "Teaching Our Documents." We will be encouraging teachers to develop a lesson plan based on one of the 100 milestone documents and send it to us so we may choose the top winners. The awards for both the teachers and the kids will be presented at our national contest next June.

Q: National History Day has done lots of work with teachers before, so this isn't a completely new experience is it?

A: We've really never run a teacher contest. But we do Summer Teacher Institutes. We do workshops. We develop curriculum materials. In fact, one piece of this project is to create a sourcebook for teachers on how to use the documents in the history classroom.