Teach Effectively!

I was pleased to happen upon a Web site entitled The Concord Review. The folks there—principally Will Fitzhugh—pitch the idea that academic excellence should be treated just as well as athletic excellence, so they have a varsity team of high school history writers. According to the home page, “Varsity athletics and athletes are celebrated everywhere. We celebrate varsity academics.”

It’s got to be one of the few places where high school students can published scholarly papers, and the couple I skimmed looked quite good. There are sections of the site identified as “The National History Club” and “The National Writing Board,” each of which has its own functions.

Here’s more from the site’s about-us page:

The Concord Review was started in March 1987 by Will Fitzhugh during a sabbatical from the high school in Concord, Massachusetts. The goal was to find and acknowledge exemplary history research papers by high school students in the English-speaking world, and to distribute them in a quarterly journal to inspire more reading of history and more work on history research papers by other high school students.

The organization was incorporated as a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation in Massachusetts in June of 1987, and nonprofit 501(c)(3) status was granted in June of 1988.

In August 1987, a brochure calling for papers was sent to every high school in the United States and Canada and 1,500 schools overseas. By the Spring of 1988, a good number of papers had been submitted and there were subscribers in 14 states and 4 other countries.

Link to the Web site.