High school history courses tend to brush over “prehistory” in America, that part of history between the arrival of the first humans in the Americas and the arrival of Europeans with quill and paper to record what they saw and what they did. For a few kids this would be the most exciting part of the course; for all kids, my experience is that textbooks tend to short change what we know, and especially how we know it.
A key problem for the non-archaeologist high school history teacher is just where to find information about prehistory.
A few archaeologists are blogging, and bitten by the meme virus of the moment, they gather together the better posts of recent weeks into a “carnival.” Four Stone Hearth is a carnival of archaeology. Four Stone Hearth 7, hosted by Aardvarchaeology, has several posts that can provide good information for history classes.
Students should learn skepticism in history classes, why to doubt fantastic claims and just-so stories, and how to evaluate sources of information and find good ones. Students often brought in stories intended to debunk standard histories, often involving UFOs or supernatural claims. Hot Cup of Joe’s entry, “Forbidden Archaeology? Some So-called Out of Place Artifacts,” explains the problems of OOPAs — out-of-place artifacts — often claimed to show that most archaeologists or other scientists withhold information that would confirm some of the more wacko ideas about history and prehistory. In the explanation he casts righteous doubt on a bizarre book that is wildly popular among conspiracy buffs, Atlantis Rising.
Students might also be interested in a report from Remote Central on objects found under glacial deposits in Minnesota which have some appearances of being knapped stone tools. This story could form a neat exercise in a series of lessons on what we know about history, and how we know it.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
When Jefferson got back to Virginia, he spent much of his time doing exactly what he thought was the good stuff: Crafting a good government for a good nation, Virginia. Among other things he served as governor, and he wrote about 150 model laws for the good government he so earnestly hoped to see. In 1779, he wrote a law to cement the religious freedom James Madison had persuaded Mason and Jefferson to include in the Virginia Bill of Rights. But the law languished in a busy legislature still working to win the right to make that government work, in a war with Britain. Jefferson wrote about his successes and failures, as a record for others (see 
Texas’ regular license plate features a Space Shuttle, some stars and a crescent Moon, but a lot of Texas 8th graders are foggy on just why. I hope kids living near Houston have a better idea, since the 
