Now in its 50th anniversary, National History Day continues to inspire students to seek out difficult truths through research.
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COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — This wasn’t your typical tri-fold poster board display. High school freshman Alexandra Bui created an oversized replica of a mail-order catalog out of a plank of wood, a creative, oversized way to communicate her research into how the Sears catalog influenced the delivery of consumer goods to Black shoppers who faced in-store discrimination in the Jim Crow South.
Bui, from Temple, Texas, is one of half a million young scholars who took part in this year’s National History Day, an annual campaign run by a Maryland-based nonprofit that encourages students to internalize their history education and thoroughly examine the past. With the 2024 edition marking its 50th year of promoting evidence-based debate, participants say the initiative feels more relevant than ever.
The contest aims to allow middle and high school students to dig deeper into a topic of their choosing at a time when students are encountering harmful misinformation online and Republican-led states like Florida are trying to limit historical analysis in the classroom.
“We can investigate. We can talk to experts. And we can get to the truth,” Bui told The Associated Press.
This year’s theme was “Turning Points in History,” and students were asked to explore ideas or events that sparked change. More than 2,800 finalists spent months visiting libraries and poring over primary sources to advance to the national competition. Contestants lined the hallways of the University of Maryland this week, eagerly awaiting the presentation of their tri-fold exhibits, documentaries and even plays. They practiced their lines, chatted with their peers, and sometimes brought props to campus and coordinated costumes to fit the era. The national winner will be announced Thursday, but all of the contestants had already won several other competitions to qualify for the competition.
National History Day was created to invigorate the history curriculum beyond “boring textbooks” that students found “relevant,” said Executive Director Cathy Ghosn. Today, she sees its mission as strengthening democracy. Strong social studies education is “an antidote to conspiracy theories” and necessary for developing engaged citizens, she said.
Ghosn finds this process especially effective today, when many kids want to understand the context of current events. He emphasizes that the nonprofit “doesn’t push a particular agenda” but instead guides students in their own explorations. The organization provides teachers with classroom resources to build skills such as browsing the Library of Congress, conducting oral histories and annotating bibliographies.
“We are not teaching children how to interpret the past, what to interpret it, but how to create interpretations and arguments based on real research,” Ghosn told The Associated Press.
“By studying it, students learn the importance of historical perspective,” Ghosn added, “and hopefully, they learn to understand the past and be part of the future.”
National History Day has also launched a $15 million fundraising campaign, but Ghosn said raising money for history education is difficult.
The humanities have historically been underfunded in K-12 public education. But there is growing recognition that today’s high school graduates must sort through a much more complex information environment than previous generations, according to David Knight, a professor of education finance and policy at the University of Washington. The education policy field is beginning to understand the increased need to educate young people about the difference between primary and secondary evidence, for example.
Judges said the project sparks a lifelong quest for knowledge that will benefit all students, regardless of their future career path. According to Robin Gausman Barnett, a doctoral student in geographic science at the University of Maryland, one of the most important lessons is to follow “the rabbit hole.” She said National History Day trains students to never stop searching for “that next piece of supporting evidence” or “the other half of the story that can’t easily be found with a Google search.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation on the internet these days,” said Macy Hewish, a high school student from Logan, Utah, “so being able to find those little nuggets of gold is really important.”
“You may come across material that contradicts your thesis,” says Hannah Jang, a student at an international school in Korea. “That’s part of the process. You have to be able to accept that, and then research the reasons behind it.”
Many students interviewed by The Associated Press said their projects were born out of personal experience: Three middle schoolers who live near Alabama State University investigated a nearly 30-year-old federal court case that challenged funding disparities between their local historically black and predominantly white schools.
They said the legal battle is part of their history and they want to learn more about their history.
Renowned documentary filmmaker Ken Burns tasked the finalists with defending American democracy. During a question-and-answer session with the students, Burns said they “have to say no” to “authoritarians” who want to turn the nation back into “superstitious rednecks.” Burns told the Associated Press that he was optimistic because he saw many of the students “questioning, digging deep into the archives, and not accepting constraints or limitations.”
“We’re just trying to tell a complex story about America,” he said. “This should bode well in the long-running struggle between those who want to restrict these things and those of us who think the truth will liberate us.”
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