This study examines world history education in the United States from the late 19th century through 2002 by investigating the historical interplay between three mechanisms of curricular control: scholarship, curriculum recommendations, and textbook publishing. Research for this study has relied on unconventional source classification, with historical monographs which defined key developments in world history scholarship and textbooks being examined as primary sources. More typical materials, such as secondary sources analyzing philosophical educational battles, the history of educational movements, historiography, and the development of new ideologies from have been incorporated as well.
Since educational policy began trending towards increasing levels of standardization with the implementation of compulsory education in the late 1800s, policymakers have been grappling with what to teach students about the wider world. Early scholarship focused on the history of Western Civilization, as did curriculum recommendations and world history textbooks crafted by professional historians of the period. Amidst the chaos of two World Wars, economic depression, the collapse of the global imperial system, and the advent of the Cold War traditional accounts of the unimpeachable progress of the Western tradition began to ring hollow with some historians. New scholarship in the second half of the twentieth century refocused world history, shifting away from the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations model which emphasized the separate traditions of various societies and towards a narrative of increasing interconnectedness. While this view has come to dominate present day historical world history research it has not yet replaced the older Western Civilization model in the education system. Curriculum recommendations continue to be undermined by partisans committed to a model based on century old scholarship which has been abandoned by the field itself and textbooks illustrate an uneven and varied approach. A closer look at the three mechanisms in the two periods (1890-1960, 1960-2002) suggests that creating a greater synergy between the mechanisms is likely necessary if the narrative suggested by contemporary world history scholarship is to take hold in the classroom of today. The development of a defined introductory narrative, supported by the scholarship, reflected in the college survey, and promoted in curriculum recommendations and textbooks are the suggested path to creating this synergy.