…..the teaching of history serves three functions at once. One, obviously, is intellectual. History is the grandest vehicle for vicarious experience: it truly educates (“leads outward” in the Latin) provincial young minds and obliges them to reason, wonder, and brood about the vastness, richness, and tragedy of the human condition. If taught well, it trains young minds in the rules of evidence and logic, teaches them how to approximate truth through the patient exposure of falsehood, and gives them the mental trellis they need to place themselves in time and space and organize every other sort of knowledge they acquire in the humanities and sciences. To deny students history, therefore, is to alienate them from their community, nation, culture, and species.

by Walter A. McDougall, FPRI Newsletter, February, 1998.

The Three Reasons We Teach History

 What skills and processes lead to student learning?

 How do our students understand what they are reading?  How can new learning be related to the prior knowledge of students?

President Benjamin Harrison's declaration in honor of the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World DISCOVERY DAY 21 OCTOBER PROCLAIMED A NATIONAL HOLIDAY BY THE PRESIDENT (Washington, July 21) The following proclamation was issued this afternoon by the President:

I Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States of America . . . do hereby appoint Friday, Oct. 21, 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, as a general holiday for the people of the United States. On that day let the people so far as possible cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.

Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment.

The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the centre of the day's demonstration.

Let the national flag float over every school house in the country, and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.

In the churches and in the other places of assembly of the people, let there be expressions of gratitude to Divine Providence for the devout faith of the discoverer, and for the Divine care and guidance which has directed our history and so abundantly blessed our people.

New York Times, July 22, 1892, p. 8

Sourcing:

Before reading the document ask yourself:  Who wrote this?

  What is the author’s point of view?

Why was it written?

 When was it written? (A long time or short time after the event?)  Is this source believable? Why? Why not?



What else was going on at the time this was written?

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What was it like to be alive at this time?

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What things were different back then? What things were the same?

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What would it look like to see this event through the eyes of someone who lived back then?

“By the end of the 19th century, the United States was getting a makeover. Unprecedented immigration had transformed the country's look overnight; in the 30 years between 1880 and 1910,18 million newcomers came to Americas shores. And they were immigrants of a different breed—European, to be sure, but a different kind of European; what in those days were called 'Slavs,' Alpines,' 'Hebrews,' 'Iberics' or 'Mediterraneans.‘ They were swarthy, spoke strange languages and worshipped God differently from the indigenous Protestant majority……….” “Catholics badly needed a hero.”

But knowledge possessed does not mean knowledge deployed. When most people look at this document it is not knowledge of immigration trends that gets 'activated.' For many readers, the alpha to omega of thinking begins and ends with 'Columbus.' It is almost as if the Columbus button in memory is pressed, and the document provides the green light to erect a soapbox and preach the gospel of our age.

History provides an antidote to impulse by cultivating modes of thought that counterbalance haste and avert premature judgment.

What new questions arise as the historian/student attempts to analyze the material?

Where are the gaps in knowledge?

What new thing can we learn?

 Read the “Thinking Historically and Other Unnatural Acts” article. (Permission for reproduction has been given to the grant by Teaching History)  Bring one lesson that you have previously developed on the Constitution, the Constitutional Convention or something similar. These will be “baseline” PRE-EXAMPLES of lessons, so please do not fancy them up. The evaluator will have a “thank you” for bringing them with you on Feb. 9  Think about what a rubric might look like that evaluated the student’s ability to analyze sourcing, contextualization, close reading and corroboration.

 From the Stanford History Education Group and HistoricalThinkingMatters site pick one lesson and use it with your students by the end of the semester. (Adapt the lesson as necessary).

 Both websites are linked on the blog.

 Apply the rubric developed by our TAH group to assess student performance of the historical thinking process.

 During our summer workshop we will be developing a new lesson based on our understanding of “historical thinking.”

http://historicalthinkingmatters.org

http://sheg.stanford.edu/?q=node/45

The lesson on yellow paper is from Unit 3: Revolution and Early America. Not all lessons specifically focus on sourcing, context and close reading. Some focus on corroboration or do not specify the focus.

March 16, 2011 = 1776 Discussion WIMBA directions to come soon.