Professor Peter Myers investigates Martin Luther King, Jr.'s concepts of civil disobedience and political action, as well King's thought, as found in his writings and speeches, more generally. This lecture continues in Martin Luther King, Jr., Part Two.
Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.
This lecture continues from the lecture Mark Twain and the American Character, Part One.
For the lecture, follow the link below and scroll down to the second seminar under Wednesday, August 4.
An older version of this lecture can be found here.
Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.
For the lecture, follow the Website Title link and scroll down to the first seminar under Wednesday, August 4.
This lecture continues in Mark Twain and the American Character, Part Two.
An older version of this lecture can be found here.
I am writing a lit review on Digital History, and want to include some work regarding APPARTS. I've had difficulty finding scholarly work regarding the APPARTS strategy. I am hoping that you know of a couple of scholarly articles that deal with APPARTS.
APPARTS was developed by the Social Studies Vertical Teams Committee of the College Board to promote equity and access to Advanced Placement courses. By the mid-1990s, the College Board committed itself to the elimination of gate-keeping strategies for entry into AP courses, believing that many underserved students could benefit from a more rigorous curriculum. Contingent on the success of those students was earlier exposure to rigorous academic work from middle school on. As a result, the College Board developed a series of pre-AP initiatives designed to foster better preparation for challenging courses. One of those was the Social Studies Vertical Teams Guide.
The original Social Studies Vertical Teams Guide was divided into five sections:
Several Advanced Placement Social Studies exams require students to analyze primary source documents and write an essay known as the Document-Based Question (DBQ). With that in mind, the Social Studies Vertical Team Committee generated a strategy which would allow students to more closely analyze primary source documents and more effectively use the essence of those documents in their essays. Thus APPARTS was born.
APPARTS is designed to get students to focus on key elements of the document and to evaluate the relative importance of these elements in affecting the reliability of this document. Those elements are:
The purpose of APPARTS is to develop student skills which will enhance their ability to use primary source documents as evidence in analytical essays. Ideally, APPARTS should be introduced in a pre-AP setting (middle school) well before students encounter their first Advanced Placement class.
APPARTS is not a test-taking strategy. Document-Based Questions on the Advanced Placement exams allow students only 15 minutes to read and analyze somewhere between eight to 12 documents. There is no time to go through the APPARTS process. Therefore, APPARTS must have become, in the words of the AP Social Studies Vertical Teams Guide, "a habit of mind." Student must have had enough practice so that it has become an intuitive part of examining documents.
We are not aware of any research done on the use of the APPARTS strategy, but we hope that this information about its origins is helpful. The literature that addresses historical reading and asking questions of text may be useful—please explore Research Briefs.
Edward Turzanski of the Foreign Policy Research Institute attempts to sum up what students should be taught about the War on Terrorism, in order to prepare students to critically analyze world events and plan for and anticipate future events. He suggests that the languages of cultures beyond the Spanish-speaking and Western European world and world geography need to be more widely taught.
Audio and video options are available.
Over more than 15 years, Rocky Gap High School of Rocky Gap, VA, has offered students the opportunity to participate in a history and technology project. While working on the project, students conduct oral history interviews, and archive these interviews and related photographs in a database and, in many cases, online.
The main page can be somewhat difficult to navigate. However, the largest portion of content can be found under Stories of the People. This section contains roughly 90 oral history transcripts on the lives of Bland County residents. Topics range from train rides and farm life to working in a World War II aircraft factory and religious practices. Some of the transcripts are also accompanied by photographs of the interviewee throughout his or her life.
Yet other transcripts link to collection pages which bring together related oral histories, as well as narration written by students. In some cases, video and audio versions are available in addition to the text transcripts. Topics include the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), church, death practices, farming, logging, the railroad, school life, tunnel building, and Bland County residents at war.
For more information on the project and its facilities, try the links under "Mountain Home Project."
This website is excellent as inspiration for beginning your own local history projects, as well as a fantastic resource for anyone looking for information on life in rural Virginia.
Note: The site is frequently unavailable for short bursts of time. Try again later if you reach a 404 error page.
In what town did Benjamin Ryan Tillman found a normal school?
It depends on what you mean by "founded."
Benjamin Ryan Tillman was involved in the early development of both Clemson (now University) and Winthrop (now University). Clemson began as a military school, while Winthrop was for training teachers, which is to say that it was a "Normal school." In 1886, Winthrop was actually founded by educator David Bancroft Johnson in Columbia, SC with seed money from a Boston philanthropist. At that time it was known at Winthrop Training School for Women. Tillman, then the governor of South Carolina, made the school state-run in 1891 and it was renamed The South Carolina Industrial and Winthrop Normal College. In 1893, it was renamed again, and was known as Winthrop Normal and Industrial College.
The records say Tillman, who was then a U.S. Senator, was "instrumental" in having the school moved to Rock Hill in 1895, where it is today. Whether his role was so prominent that he could be said to have "re-founded" the school in Rock Hill is a matter on which historians have disagreed. The first building erected for the college in its new location was Tillman Hall, an ornate Romanesque-style building, constructed with convict labor from the state penitentiary. In 1920, the school became known as Winthrop College, the South Carolina College for Women. In 1974, the school became co-ed and changed its name again to Winthrop College. It was integrated in 1964 (arch-White Supremacist "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman would undoubtedly have been appalled). In 1992 the school became Winthrop University. It now has an enrollment of about 6,500 students in its liberal arts curriculum.
Benjamin Tillman served on Winthrop’s Board of Trustees from 1891 (he was its chairman at the time the school relocated to Rock Hill) until his death in 1918. He had sisters that either worked at or attended Winthrop. All three of his daughters attended the school.
Images:
Senator Tillman, his wife, and their daughter at the Democratic National Convention, 1912. Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Congress.
Tillman Building, Winthrop College campus, Rock Hill, South Carolina, Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress.
For many of the details of this answer, I am indebted to Gina White, the Director of Archives and Special Collections at the Dacus Library of Winthrop University.
Winthrop University's website.
Simkins, Francis Butler. Pitchford Ben Tillman, South Carolinian. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2002; orig. published 1944.
—— The Tillman Movement in South Carolina. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1926.
Snowden, Yates ed. History of South Carolina, volume 5 (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1920).
Harvey Sicherman, President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, looks at the current war in Iraq; and asks what relationship it has with the War on Terrorism. He outlines previous presidential stands on terrorism, which largely ideologically opposed terrorism, but did not take direct, open action against it—contrasting them with Bush's active declaration of war against terrorism. Sicherman argues that the war in Iraq functions as an extension of the war on terrorism and of previous U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Video and audio options are available.
David Eisenhower of the Foreign Policy Research Institute considers the current necessity of approaching terrorism and the current war as teaching subjects, and looks at how national crises—such as 9/11—pose certain rhetorical and leadership demands on presidents, and how President Bush reacted to these demands.
Video and audio options are available.
Paul Dickler of Neshaminy High School reviews several points he considers important in teaching on 9/11 and terrorism, as well as in teaching history more generally.
Audio and video options are available.