The introduction to this report traces the history of the Northampton History Project from its inception in the summer of 1967 to its close in 1970. Beginning with half the students of one junior high school and one teacher, the course prepared by the project is now required of all Northampton 8th graders and is taught by four specially trained…

The creation of an 8th-grade American history course and the training of teachers for the course are the goals of this project. Primarily a course in national history, it uses local (Northampton, Mass.) events and people as a key to understanding the larger national picture. The course objectives were to enable students to analyze, interpret, and…