Use this article:

Stearns, Peter N. “Goals in History Teaching.” In Learning and reasoning in history, edited by James F. Voss and Mario Carretero. London ; Portland, OR: Woburn Press, 1998
alongside the introduction to the 1994 history standards. His critique of the standards is quite interesting (and from inside the discipline as opposed to from a political standpoint) and would provoke a solid conversation.
Funny line: “A colleague who recommended, tongue in cheek, that the responsibility for defending Western values be given for the next ten years to biology courses, to let history off the hook, was not entirely off the mark.” p.286.