Losing Our History, Losing Ourselves

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American history or any historical study is endangered today in America’s elementary schools. As the realities of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became the driving force behind curriculum, time committed to history shrank. Why is history taught, why is history important? History defines a people. Not surprisingly as nation states emerged, history rose in importance. The elementary school is the first point at which a person engages in the organized study of their country’s history, their past. NCLB has driven that history away—from 45 minutes a day to 45 minutes every other day if that much. History along with science was hit by assemblies, testing, and everything else to preserve math and reading times. The results are becoming clear.

Eight years ago some schools were departmentalizing their 5th and 6th grades, meaning that teachers with expertise in a discipline whether it was history/social studies, science, math, or language arts taught that subject to all the fifth or sixth graders. One could expect that student achievement and interest would rise after exposure to a teacher who had specific training in that subject and was energized by the subject. The state of history was good and appeared to be getting better.

The goal always was to provide a base for identity and for the responsibilities of citizenship.

While history teachers of all ages may wince at the historical generalizations of upper elementary students, at least they had a sense of the national story. That story may have relied heavily on Pilgrims, presidents, and heroic figures, but the students had a baseline from which they could build. They continued through the scope and sequence of adding complexity and ambiguity to the story. The goal always was to provide a base for identity and for the responsibilities of citizenship.

Today, however, middle school teachers talk about having to start from zero. Students come to their classrooms knowing virtually nothing about their nation, its government, or the duties and responsibilities of a citizen. Jefferson is crying in his tomb. How can a democracy survive when its people do not know or understand their past?

...the place one learns about the history and government of his or her state and local area has been in elementary school.

If losing or delaying until eighth grade the ability to know and understand the history of one’s nation is a problem, the state of state history is worse. When one looks at the standard scope and sequence of a K-12 curriculum, the place one learns about the history and government of his or her state and local area has been in elementary school. Fourth grade is typically where students in Wisconsin study Wisconsin history. The next appearance of state history may be in high school where it is attached sidecar style to the motorcycle of U. S. history. The history of the state is an afterthought, often unsupported by a textbook in high school. A popular Wisconsin history for high school courses is now out of print.

From the inception of public education in the United States, teaching citizenship through the teaching of the nation’s history has often been a primary purpose of education. No longer is that goal a true part of most elementary curricula. Teachers are told to teach history by reading sources to increase literacy skills. While practice improves skills, historical reading is about analysis of the content within a context. One must “do” something with the reading. That act of doing requires context beyond the document, as Sam Wineburg’s research has shown (1).

History in the elementary schools needs to be taught as a base for the search for meaning, not just as a method to improve reading levels.

For earlier generations an appreciation of history began in elementary school by learning the stories of Valley Forge and Daniel Boone, exploring the Oregon Trail, confronting and grappling with the pain and sorrows of diverse peoples coming to live together. The stories were often simplified and romanticized, but engaged students found a way to create seed beds from these stories that were ready for cultivation later in their academic careers. In later grades students came to understand the elementary stories as models and lessons to be applied to the world. History in the elementary schools needs to be taught as a base for the search for meaning, not just as a method to improve reading levels.

A nation without history is but an empty shell. The present state of history in the elementary schools is in danger of becoming an empty shell despite the efforts of effective, dedicated teachers. We live in a nation too concerned about the now of commerce and career and not concerned with the spirit of the people we have been and may remain. Acknowledging the important place of history within the elementary curriculum is the first step toward a better education and a wiser nation.

Footnotes
1 Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2001).
Teaser

A nation without history is but an empty shell. The present state of history in the elementary schools is in danger of becoming an empty shell despite the efforts of effective, dedicated teachers.

Diana Laufenberg on the Power of Visuals

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Image, Tablue Data Visualization, Apr. 14, 2010, courtneyBolton, Flickr
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History teachers (tend to) love history. Students do not (often) love it so much. This is a perplexing situation that I have bounced around in my brain for the past two decades. When I was a student, I liked the teachers and felt as though I was being educated, but I did not love my history classes. That is until I enrolled in a special freshman seminar at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire: "Medieval Foundations of the Modern West," co-taught by a history professor, Dr. Thomas Miller, and an Academic Adviser with an art degree, Jeannie Harms. This course was about nurturing freshmen as students but also approaching history from an interdisciplinary angle. It was incredibly unconventional and I loved every minute of it. There was a significant 'visualness' to the history—we were constantly digging into paintings and illustrations and artifacts of the era to extract their history, for ourselves.

The Need for Images

As I developed my own classroom practice, it occurred to me that I needed to include that compelling visual component in my teaching as much as possible. Some years I have been more successful than others at achieving that balance, and there have been years when I was more acutely aware of the need. Consider this student: a 12-year-old girl with a 2nd-grade reading/writing level, identified with a specific learning disability in both areas. She is in my classroom in adherence with the inclusion model. I quickly realize that her struggles with the written word have nothing to do with her capacity for logic and critical thinking. She is bright and actively participates in class discussion, but is left out of the conversation much of the time because the reading and writing stand between her and the ideas. To address her identified areas of struggle, she is scheduled into small, intensive remedial classes, but much of the content is well below her actual intellect; she is bored.

I began to realize that if I introduced the concepts visually, this student was much more motivated to attempt the assignment even though she struggled. In addition, her ability to engage verbally in the discussion and group work related to the content improved. Here's the other bonus moment—introducing concepts in a visual way motivated most of the kids. It helped them to access the ideas or get hooked by the story so that they then wanted, all on their own, to know more, inquire, and dig. Two minutes of historical video on the Space Race can get a room of 13-year-olds completely rapt and intrigued. A famous political cartoon with clever components can provoke a stream of compelling questions. An infographic comparing unemployment rates in the Great Depression to those today can link the personal experiences of the students today to the historical concept of the Great Depression, helping them look for commonality and divergence in the events. As teachers of history we often place reading and writing before discussion, leaving behind those students averse to or struggling with the written word. By flipping the compelling component to the front of the day or lesson, students are much more likely to buy into the learning. I learned this all those years ago in that freshman seminar.

Data Visualizations

As technology advanced and I began to use more video, I also stumbled across the occasional data visualization. My interest was piqued. These visualizations were not just a way to capture interest but also a way to introduce highly complex ideas and relationships quickly, so as to elevate the level of dialogue and inquiry. One such example is GapMinder from Hans Rosling. If you have never investigated this tool, I dare you to spend less than an hour on your first visit. Watching the bobbing and weaving of country data through time makes the data beautiful and meaningful to many students and fills them with curiosity. The visualizations created by Slate and The Guardian for the unrest in North Africa and the Middle East deliver a deluge of rich information to the learner in forms that suggest connections between events, geography, and time. Tools like these can include the vast majority of learners, regardless of reading ability, in a dialogue of ideas and critical thought.

Accessing and Assessing in Many Ways

This is not to say that we shouldn't work with students on their areas of struggle, but we can teach students to access and assess content in more ways than just reading and writing. That 12-year-old girl taught me that seeing a student as a voraciously curious brain and not just a reader/writer was critically important. We teach the whole child, not just the parts that decode letters. Our history classrooms have the ability to become fertile ground where citizens engage in truly enriching dialogue about issues of import. I want to involve all of my students in the conversation, not just those interested in the history or those that can access the reading, but all the students, their interests piqued by engaging and relevant resources about which they can ask thoughtful questions.

For more information

Our Tech for Teachers section introduces you to visualization tools like Many Eyes and Wordle.

Mind mapping and mental mapping are data-visualization techniques students can embrace, and English language learners can also benefit from bringing more visuals into the classroom.

Framing History with Historical Questions

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Photography, puzzle, 21 March 2005, Nasir Nasrallah, Flickr CC
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Why Essential Questions (EQs)?

After six successful years implementing three Northern Nevada Teaching American History projects, it became apparent to us that we could challenge ourselves and our teachers to move beyond individual professional development experiences and engage in a long-term, three-year project aimed at fostering collaboration between vertical teams of upper elementary, middle, and high school teachers. Because teachers at these various levels had different curricular foci in American history, we sought common ground through common themes and questions. A primary goal for these vertical teams was to reframe their entire curriculum around the same essential questions (EQs) to facilitate historical inquiry and historical thinking.

Essential questions are open-ended questions that address the big ideas of history, have no predetermined correct answer, allow for multiple interpretations, and, most importantly, are applicable across historical eras and to contemporary events. Four to six well-written essential questions could frame every unit of study across all grade levels. After setting the instructional stage with these essential questions, teachers could structure historical inquiry around specific historical questions (HQs) for each unit of study. An HQ is directly related to specific historical content and to an individual EQ. The formula used by teachers was: EQ + history standard = HQ. Our article, “The Past as a Puzzle: How Essential Questions Can Piece Together a Meaningful Investigation of History” in The Social Studies (2011), details the process and results of our adventure implementing EQs and HQs in grades 5–12.

(For more examples of EQs and HQs for elementary, middle, and high school, download this chart.)

Overcoming Difficulties

The first difficulty we faced in this process was collaboratively writing the overarching essential questions. Writing questions that were truly open-ended and thematic proved difficult to say the least. Despite originally believing that one eight-hour session introducing the concept and writing the EQs would be enough time, we found that the process actually took almost the entire year. We had to allow teachers time to process and play around with the questions before we could adopt them as a whole group.

...we had to provide additional tools, guidance, and mentoring in ways to think about EQs as a framework rather than an addition to their classroom goals.

Even more difficult was facilitating the use of EQs with integrity. That is, EQs were meant to help teachers reframe their curriculum around broad themes and enduring questions but were not initially used in this fashion. For some teachers, the leap to instruction and assessment around EQs was natural. They had a yearning to focus on the big picture and enduring ideas while engaging students in inquiry, and so the change was embraced. However, a majority of the teachers involved struggled with reframing their curriculum around EQs. They were eager to implement EQs, recognized the potential for increased student engagement and understanding, and even regularly inserted EQs into their lessons. They hung posters of the EQs in their rooms and talked about them sometimes during class. BUT, for these teachers, we had to provide additional tools, guidance, and mentoring in ways to think about EQs as a framework rather than an addition to their classroom goals.

Positive Results

Despite the initial difficulties, we have all found great success in implementing EQs. Teachers have noted that students in their classes who were exposed previously to the same EQs in lower grades grasp the enduring issues in history and comment on their comfort in using EQs to inquire deeply into the content.

We have been most impressed by the natural link to the next NNTAH project focus: creation and implementation of Document Based Questions (DBQs). Familiarity with using questions to guide the curriculum supported the move towards answering historical questions with DBQs. Historical questions, directly aligned with EQs, were the foundation of the document based questions. Teachers were able to create DBQs that supported their year-long focus on enduring issues in history, because the historical questions under study were always linked to the EQ. In 2010–2011, 44 teachers created their own high-quality DBQs based upon essential and historical questions. Since that time, many have reported creating additional DBQs to support historical inquiry in their classrooms.

Teaching with Lectures and Documents

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Marginalia, CHNM
Question

How do I mix document-based teaching with lecture-style teaching to try to make sure the students learn the entire curriculum?

Answer

Using a variety of instructional strategies in your classroom makes good sense.

Ideally, your choice of strategy is guided by your instructional purposes, the particular content you are teaching, and your students’ abilities, interests, and knowledge. And while some may see document-based teaching and lecturing as antithetical, we see many ways they can be complementary.

First consider timing.
Do you want to start a new unit by engaging students with investigating a relevant historical question through a document-based activity? As students try to answer a narrowly framed question like did Pocahontas rescue John Smith? they can generate more questions about the broader context of the event. This need to know leads nicely into a lecture.

Conversely, it may be that you want to start a new unit with a lecture reviewing prior units and introducing important background knowledge that can help students when they start analyzing documents.

If you can prepare a lecture on a topic that you know will be needed in the unit, you can even put it into your back pocket and use it as needed.

Second, consider type of lecture.
While we frequently think of lectures as straight delivery of information, lectures are more flexible than this. Consider these variations:

A lecture that begins with and then takes off from the analysis of a primary source;

A lecture that ends with a question that frames subsequent document-based activities;

A lecture that responds to student questions that arise from these same activities;

A lecture that models the use of sources in historical argument through using them as guideposts throughout its entirety.

Third, consider how varied instructional activities complement, reinforce and extend each other throughout the unit.
Do students have the chance to use what they have learned? Do they need further support or practice with new content or skills? Does an activity connect to the central learning goals for the unit or course?

Fourth, you may want to look at this research brief for an account of how one experienced teacher used both lecture and document-based activities.

Your question asks about how you can help students learn the entire curriculum. This is the real challenge that we have no short or easy answer for, but both these instructional strategies can be helpful in meeting that challenge.

Film Review: Ken Burns's Jazz

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Photo, Herbert Bernett plays jazz..., Mobile, Alabama, 2010, Carol M. Highsmith
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This is the second in a series of film reviews reprinted from the Journal of American History. These reviews model ways of looking critically at popular films, documentaries, miniseries, and other history-based features. Look for one each month!

Jazz, the much-heralded 10-part PBS video series, is an American historical event in itself. The broadcast programs and their ancillary documents—a boxed set of 10 videocassettes, a book, a boxed five-CD set of music, a single CD personally selected by Burns, 22 jazz albums devoted to individual artists featured in the documentary, and more—is the most publicized and widely promoted presentation this music has received in its hundred-year history. The magnitude, scope, and all-embracing exploitation of musical, visual, and verbal elements might favorably be compared to Richard Wagner's vision of a Gesamtkunstwerk that, for him, resulted in a four-opera Ring Cycle, a theater specially built for the production at Bayreuth, disciples, detractors, enormous expense, and long-lasting consequences. Although we await the consequences, and regardless of criticism pro and con, Ken Burns's Jazz is a significant undertaking of great magnitude and serious purpose that will be remembered as an influential advocate for America's native art music, jazz.

The series should be considered from at least four points of view, for it succeeds in one, is less successful in two, and fails in the fourth.

The series should be considered from at least four points of view, for it succeeds in one, is less successful in two, and fails in the fourth. As an example of the documentary filmmaker's art, the craftsmanship is superb, and the series earns high marks. As a social history of jazz in the 20th century, the narrative is interesting and sometimes compelling, but the story is incomplete and exclusive. As a musical history of jazz, it fails miserably. And, finally, as the third large episode in the Ken Burns trilogy on race relations in America—The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), and Jazz—the three together and individually present a dramatic personal view of black and white tensions in America viewed from different vantage points and experienced in widely contrasting locales, environments, and time frames. The trilogy stands as a landmark historical presentation of one man's view of America's struggle for racial equality, and Burns has crafted his presentation so that it might be palatable and understandable to a worldwide lay audience. Of the three, Jazz has stirred the most interest throughout the world and the most diverse and fervid critical and popular reaction. Even before the series completed its public debut, an event stretching out over four weeks of prime-time television, the film impacted the art form itself, stirred artists, critics, and laymen into serious contemplative activity, stimulated the sales of jazz books, records, and concerts, and brought an unprecedented awareness of jazz and its heroes to a mushrooming audience.

After Nick LaRocca's claim that jazz was invented by the white musicians of New Orleans, the ever-ebullient Wynton Marsalis's stunned silence and loss for words is drama at its best.

As an example of the filmmaker's art, Jazz is stunning. Miles of footage and thousands of photographs and recordings demonstrating jazz performances, musical venues, and contemporary events and places have been recovered and discovered, cleaned up, selected, and sequenced to fit seamlessly in a tight narrative. Some of the images have not been published before, and all have been meticulously polished with the latest technical wizardry. Even long-familiar movie excerpts are presented better here than elsewhere. They are sharper, brighter, and fitted with a high-quality music track. The experts who appear as talking heads, most notably Wynton Marsalis, Stanley Crouch, Albert Murray, and Gary Giddens, are convincing and articulate individuals, and their insertion in the overall narrative is never superfluous or gratuitous. After Nick LaRocca's claim that jazz was invented by the white musicians of New Orleans, the ever-ebullient Wynton Marsalis's stunned silence and loss for words is drama at its best. Burns's camera captures every subtle inflection of eye movement, smile, shock, and grimace. Further, some of the interviews of living jazz musicians are truly poignant. When tears well up in the eyes of Dave Brubeck as he relates an incident in which his father showed him a cattle brand burned on the chest of a black neighbor, there is no escaping the gripping pathos of the moment. These videocassettes are of such high quality in both dramatic content and technical virtuosity that they will be used in schools for many years to help explain and promote this music.

As a social history of jazz in the 20th century, the film documentary is good but flawed. Its coverage of selected musicians, selected locales, and a 60-year time frame, 1900 to 1960, is excellent. Better to follow the lives and work of some great figures in depth than to create a superficial, all-inclusive list of players and tunes that everyone will forget. We can all quibble about whether it was better to spend more time on Coleman Hawkins but little or none on Art Tatum, Bix Beiderbecke, Bill Evans, or Benny Carter, but Burns's method of making a selection of key figures and dealing with each expansively keeps the series from being, as one critic aptly put it, balanced into blandness.

In taking the Great Man approach to history, Burns has adopted a 19th-century system of viewing events rather than a late-20th-century methodology for explaining our past.

He should not have pretended to deal with the last 40 years of the century, for episode 10 is totally inadequate and poorly done. Also, historians should be reminded that, in taking the Great Man approach to history, Burns has adopted a 19th-century system of viewing events rather than a late-20th-century methodology for explaining our past. Further, he accepts the medieval premise of speculum musicae, music as the mirror of reality. He states over and over that jazz reflects, at every stage of its development, the social, cultural, and political circumstances that surround it. This premise would be impossible to defend critically. There are times when this is true, and there are times when jazz is blissfully unaware of its surroundings. He gives, as one example, Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" as "a reflection of the country in the moments before the Great Depression." I cannot see how he can support this statement. What is it reflecting? The African Americans in Harlem, the Wall Street entrepreneurs, or the white middle-class farmers in Kansas and Iowa? This is bull-session history. Gunther Schuller says in Early Jazz (1968).

Louis's "West End Blues" . . . startles us with the powerful thrust and punch of its first four notes. We are immediately aware of their terrific swing, despite the fact that these four notes occur on the beat . . . The four notes should be heard by all people who do not understand the difference between jazz and other music.

I understand what Schuller means and can check his words against the music itself. Also, in a different time frame, one can build a case for "Free Jazz" as antiestablishment music of the 1960s and view Max Roach's Freedom Now suite as an overt political statement, but the filmmaker's interest peaks out long before his cursory and superficial presentation of Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and their followers.

Jazz, the series, presents a tale of black musicians striving for equality, artistic recognition, and some of the regular entitlements of white, middle-class Americans, such as financial security, health care, freedom to travel, and so on, in a bigoted and essentially racist society. In doing so, Burns and his advisers ignore Latino contributions and circumstances, minimize the quality and magnitude of white contributors, and are seemingly unaware of jazz in Europe and Asia. Most important, in focusing on the first six decades of the century, they ignore the fact that American society has changed dramatically since 1960, and jazz was a part of that change. Black Is Beautiful, Black Power, the Nation of Islam, and the martyrdom of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (and the jazz stemming from these realities) all take place after the real end of his story. Episode 10, 1960 to the present, is clearly the weakest link in the series.

Musically, and as a musical history of jazz, the series is just short of a disaster. Tragically, laymen will never know the difference. In nearly every instance, even when a work is touted as a masterpiece, it is treated as elevator and restaurant music, something to be talked over and relegated to some level of subliminal perception. The height of disrespect and lack of awareness occurs when the narrator cites a performance as a defining work of art and then the director allows the sound engineer to change the music to fit the demands of the script.

The height of disrespect and lack of awareness occurs when the narrator cites a performance as a defining work of art and then the director allows the sound engineer to change the music to fit the demands of the script.

This happens many times throughout the series, often enough to convince this reviewer that, regardless of what the narrator says about the intrinsic value of the music, it rates no better treatment than timely background music for a movie. Charlie Parker's "KoKo" is a perfect example. "KoKo" is not movie music to be altered by deleting a few seconds here and adding a few seconds there, but Burns allows this to happen with the seamless virtuosity of digital technology. It is unthinkable that any literate spokesman for the arts would change 50 measures of Ludwig van Beethoven's Opus 127 string quartet immediately after declaring it to be a masterpiece of the genius's late period. Can anyone imagine Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper being moved to a larger hall and having three disciples on the left copied and inserted into the frame on the right to fill the available space, making what might then be called Leonardo's Jesus and the Fifteen Disciples? Burns effects exactly this kind of sleight-of-hand with "KoKo" and other masterpieces by other great artists as well. Near the end of episode 7, after a showing of the dramatic atom bomb explosion on Hiroshima and after a few introductory words from the jazz altoist Jackie McLean, the narrator says.

On November 26th, 1945, 11 weeks after the surrender of Japan, Charlie Parker finally made his first recording under his own name for the independent label, Savoy Records. . . . Four sides were cut that day: "Billie's Bounce," "Thriving from a Riff," "Now's the Time," and a new tune, built on the chord changes of "Cherokee," called "KoKo."

The music begins, and, toward the end of the piece's musical introduction, the narrator adds his encomium: "'KoKo' is one of the most extraordinary recordings in jazz history. There is no doubt about it." "KoKo," by Charlie Parker, is a masterpiece of jazz art that lasts 2 minutes and 51 seconds beginning to end. There are no wasted notes, the phrases fall one after another in logical sequence, in a breathless drive toward a musical goal that can only be described as brilliant. The "KoKo" Ken Burns offers his listeners lasts approximately 4 minutes and 10 seconds, a hodgepodge of snippets glued together by digital splicing. It becomes a destroyed masterwork stretched for the convenience of a narration and for a closing quotation from Ralph Ellison, in which a reader states the episode's theme: "Usually, music gives resonance to memory. But not the music then in the making. Its rhythms were out of stride and seemingly arbitrary, its drummers frozenfaced introverts dedicated to chaos." Bebop was not dedicated to chaos! Ken Burns's recreation of "KoKo" is chaotic, for it destroys the symmetry, the syntax, and the grammar of a jazz classic. Ken Burns is no jazz musician, and I suspect he is not much of a musician at all. What he has fed us in four weeks of listening is a fascinating personal vision of race in America during the first six decades of the 20th century. Jazz, to him, is background music for his tale.

Strangely, that vitriolic critique is not the real bottom line of this review. This morning I ate breakfast in a blue-collar café and heard Bird and Diz playing "Salt Peanuts" on the piped-in local radio station. I have not heard real jazz on a pop music station since the 1950s, and I have Ken Burns to thank for that.

Bibliography

This review was first published in the Journal of American History, Vol. 88, No. 3, 1195-1198, 2001. Reprinted with permission from the Organization of American Historians (OAH).

For more information

Looking for more resources on jazz? We have links out to more than 15 websites on jazz and jazz history, including the website that accompanied Ken Burns's documentary. The Library of Congress's new National Jukebox is also a fantastic place to go for music history from 1901–1925. Browse by genre, and choose "Popular music," and then "Ragtime, jazz, and more," or search by artist name or title.

If you've only got a few minutes to spare, how about learning about women in jazz and blues with our archived weekly quiz?

Guampedia

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Illustration, Landing Place at Guam, Jan-July 1863, T. Coghlan, Flickr Commons
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Don't let Guam be forgotten in your classroom! After all, it is one of only 16 non-self-governing territories worldwide that are recognized by the UN. As such, leaving Guam out of history is to ignore a rather remarkable political exception.

Guampedia offers a range of short articles on everything from architecture to World War II. These pages also feature relevant photographs and further resource listings. Additional sections offer basic facts on Guam (motto, population, etc.) and its major villages. Be sure to check out the history lesson plans to see if there's any ready-made content appropriate for you to introduce to your classroom.

Additional ways to explore include a selection of media collections including photographs, illustrations, soundbites, and video; MARC Publications, including issues of the Guam Recorder, lectures, and additional e-publications on topics such as archaeology and stonework; and traditional recipes.

Making Personal Connections to the Past by Finding Historians

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Photograph, Man at Telephone I, 1920-50, Theodor Horydczak, LOC
Question

Is there a historian that would be willing to Skype a 4th -grade classroom on the American Revolution?

Answer

At a National Archives lecture historian David McCullough once made a startling but quite obvious assertion. "Each of us has," he reminded the audience, "at our disposal the world's greatest research device: the telephone." Times have changed since that 1993 lecture I attended and so too has technology, but McCullough's message still serves us well almost two decades later. If you want to find something—or in the case of this article, someone—you have to reach out.

It matters not what grade level you teach. If you are interested in hooking up with historians . . . you must be the one to make the leap.

It matters not what grade level you teach. If you are interested in hooking up with historians to help you enliven your curriculum or fuel your own intellectual yearnings, you must be the one to make the leap. I have been literally connecting historians with my Applied History class at West Springfield High School since 1992, when we held a long-distance phone conference with filmmaker Ken Burns. Since then students have connected with many historians by speaker phone including Edward Linenthal, Louis Masur, Robert Utley, Nicholas Lemann, and the late Walter Lord, among others.

Since the inception of the collaborative Teaching American History Grants I believe that historians, more than ever, are willing to talk with you and your students. So how do you get started and once you have the process in place what do you do?

Say you are studying the American Revolution and George Washington and you want your students to interact with a Revolutionary War era historian or biographer. Start with where George lived, his home in Mount Vernon, VA. Most top-drawer historic sites have a direct pipeline or e-connection to historians who are working in the site-specific subject matter. Chances are these sites have educational curators or specialists on staff that can help you find someone who can speak articulately to the topic at hand.

Plan Carefully

What is essential is that once the process gets underway you and your students do their homework. Like any research project you and your students must invest the necessary time to make it successful and meaningful. Planning is essential. You need to consider how far out into your curriculum you want to hold such a conference. We all have busy schedules and it is imperative that you be flexible with the person to whom you are connecting. I generally plan for two months out or longer when I make my first pitch. Your students need to prepare, too. If you are connecting with an author you must ensure that your students read the author's work beforehand; otherwise, there will be awkward pauses.

Point out that "how" questions and "why" questions will elicit more of the historian's expertise than factual ones that can be answered by consulting a textbook or encyclopedia.

What I do is have students submit to me, several days before the scheduled conference, an index card with a question that they are posing for the author. I read through the cards and select the best questions. Before I make the phone call I pass out the cards to the students and then bring them up to the speakerphone one by one. A brief introduction is made and then the question is posed. What generally evolves is a conversation between the students and the historians with me facilitating the call, but staying in the background. These are moments for the students.

For elementary students, you may need to do even more preparation. Make sure students have studied the topic recently and are familiar with what historians do. While they may not have the reading skills to read the historian's text, you can still introduce his or her area of expertise, the subject matter that she or he studies, and some age-appropriate texts. Introduce the kinds of questions that may be appropriate for the conference, for example, pointing out that "how" questions and "why" questions will elicit more of the historian's expertise than factual ones that can be answered by consulting a textbook or encyclopedia. This is an opportunity for students to also ask questions that get at what is exciting, puzzling, or ambiguous about the historical topic. And they can find out more about why a person would become an historian, the day-to-day aspects of research, and the ways historians work to decipher history through investigating pieces of the past. In any case, you may need to devote some lessons to effectively preparing your young students for a productive conversation.

Look for Local Resources

Consider also working with your local university history departments. With collaboration being the operative word in education these days, make it real. You might even be able to get the person to come and visit your classes, taking the whole process to a very different level. Also, for information on museums and historic locations in your area, check out the Museums and Historic Sites section of our website.

Ambling down this path may at first seem risky, and it is. I was very nervous when I contacted Ken Burns's studio in 1992 to ascertain the possibility of such a conference call. What I have discovered since then is, if you are genuinely sincere about your motives on behalf of your students then you and they will discover the power of making just such a connection. And I honestly believe that the person on the other end of the line from you and your students actually enjoys the outcome, too. I have never received an answer of "no" from anyone of whom I have made the request. And that I think speaks volumes.

America: The Story of US

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DVD case, America: The Story of US, web shop, history.com
Question

I have been watching The History Channel, America: The Story of US. I have read the comments from other readers. Some believe that it is a good video for use in the classroom, others say that it is full of misinformation. I would like to have an opinion from a master teacher. What do you think about this video series? Is the information factual or full of misinformation?

Answer

America: The Story of US is a 12-hour, six-part survey by cable channel History, formerly known as The History Channel. The most watched and highest rated program in the network's history, the series is also going to be sent free of charge to every school in the country. So how historically accurate is the program, and how useful is it for the classroom?

As Dr. Jeremy Stern writes for History News Network, the answer is: not enough. "History’s much-touted event is, in reality," he writes, "a shallow and fragmentary jumble." Dramatic moments are "ripped from any larger historical context or explanation in a welter of reenactments and frenzied CGI animation, while celebrity talking-heads [. . .] spout feel-good banalities and populist clichés." Leaning towards "unquestioningly laudatory and simplistic patriotism," the series is not likely to offend.

But How Can We Make Best Use of It in the History Classroom?

One way to do this is by thinking of it as another secondary account, similar to a textbook. You might employ the technique of "opening up the textbook." Even though the series is a TV production, the same techniques apply. In the "Superpower" episode, for instance, the series, tells the story of the creation of the interstate highway. As one commentator notes, "the car was your ticket to personal freedom." Such an excerpt might be paired with documents for students to analyze. Did all Americans feel positively about the interstate highway system? Who was in favor of it? Who was against it? When was each source produced and for what purpose? How does this influence the story they tell? After comparing the video excerpt with additional sources, ask students to synthesize the information and make a claim that can be supported by the evidence.

. . . just remember that it's a source like any other and that students should be encouraged to question, examine, and evaluate it.

Another way the series might be used in the classroom is as an "authority" to challenge. The technique of "questioning textbook authority", like the technique of opening up the textbook, works equally well with
a video source. For this exercise, you might show students a clip from the "Millennium" episode focusing on Vietnam War protests. Start by giving students sources on the topic. Then, after students have digested them, show them the clip and ask them to critique it. What does the video get right? What does it get wrong? What is included? What is left out? Which claims are supported and which ones aren't?

Alternatively, have them analyze a short clip closely. Ask students to identify the argument or viewpoint represented by the clip and how it conveys that argument. Have students consider features such as word choice, camera angles, soundtrack, and sequencing of images to uncover how the clip conveys its message. Ask students whose voices and perspectives are missing from the clip.

We haven't watched the whole series, and it's too long to show students in it's entirety. But America: The Story of US can potentially be used in a number of productive ways in the classroom; just remember that it's a source like any other and that students should be encouraged to question, examine, and evaluate it.