Wars of the 20th century will be the focus of a grant of nearly $1 million working to spruce up K-12 education of American history in Madison-area schools, the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday.

The program, titled “Life During Wartime,” will educate teachers about America’s wars through three-week summer courses in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Teachers will also be able take advantage of resources at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum as well as various public lectures to teach the nearly 50,000 students in the Madison area.

University of Wisconsin emeritus professor of history Stanley Schultz is the co-director of the project and believes American wars should be a key part of K-12 education.

“I teach my own students that American society has changed, shifted and altered in large measures in the past 150 years in response to the wars in which we’ve been engaged,” Schutlz said. “We hope to further educate the educators, the teachers themselves, who will bring the materials they access and learn through us, back to the classrooms.”

Richard Zeitlin, director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, said he believes the museum will help teachers teach and students learn over the three-year project.

“We will be teaching teachers,” Zeitlin said. “Not how to teach, but teaching teachers about subject matter. It’s our expertise. It’s the Veterans Museum’s only focus.”

The partnership that will take advantage of the grant includes the Madison Metropolitan School District, historians from UW and Madison Area Technical College and the Veterans Museum.

Some veterans will also be made available to visit classrooms — something Schultz said his students always enjoyed during their discussions of the Vietnam War.

Schutlz, who has in the past collaborated with writers from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” was proud of the “collation” — calling it one “George Bush could only envy, because ours actually works.”

“We are building something for the next three years that we hope will endure and have a much greater impact for many, many more years down the road,” he continued.

DOE Midwest representative Todd Zoellick came to Madison from his office in Chicago Tuesday to applaud the coalition.

“All [of them] coming together to make sure that our teachers are adequately prepared and have the extra knowledge they need and are equipped with the resources they need to go into the classroom and make history an exciting experience for our children,” Zoellick said.

The Madison grant is a part of $114 million that will be given to 40 different states from DOE over the coming months.

Other areas, such as rural parts of central Illinois, may receive travel grants that will allow teachers to visit the places they are teaching about.

“Every one of them is a little bit different. It doesn’t all have to be about war,” Zoellick said.

Milwaukee Public Schools will also soon be receiving a Teaching American History grant, Zoellick said.