A lesson that introduces a framework for understanding and interpreting political cartoons that can be used throughout your entire history course.

Political cartoons are vivid primary sources that offer intriguing and entertaining insights into the public mood, the underlying cultural assumptions of an age, and attitudes toward key events or trends of the times. Since the 18th century, political cartoons have offered a highly useful window into the past. Just about every school history textbook now has its quota of political cartoons. Yet some studies reveal that substantial percentages of adults fail to understand the political cartoons in their daily newspaper. How much harder then must it be for young people to make sense of cartoons from the distant past? The stark, simple imagery of many cartoons can be highly deceptive. The best cartoons express real conceptual complexity in a single drawing and a few words. Cartoons from the 1700s and 1800s often employ archaic language, elaborate dialogue, and obscure visual references. It takes a good deal of knowledge of the precise historical context to grasp such cartoons. In short, political cartoons employ complex visual strategies to make a point quickly in a confined space. Teachers must help students master the language of cartoons if they are to benefit from these fascinating sources of insight into our past.

A Cartoon Analysis Checklist, developed by Jonathan Burack, is presented here as a tool for helping students become skilled at reading the unique language employed by political cartoons in order to use them effectively as historical sources. The checklist is introduced through a series of classroom activities, and includes the following core concepts.

1. Symbol and Metaphor 2. Visual Distortion 3. Irony in Words and Images 4. Stereotype and Caricature 5. An Argument Not a Slogan 6. The Uses and Misuses of Political Cartoons

1. Make copies of three political cartoons taken from recent newspapers and magazines. Then make copies of three political cartoons from your history textbook. Try to choose clear, concise cartoons on issues familiar to your students. Plan explanations of any obscure references and allusions, especially in the historical cartoons, and identify background information about them that students will need. 2. Plan how you will group and pair your students for activities one and six. 3. Make copies for each of your students of the Cartoon Analysis Checklist and Documents 1-3. (If you are using the lesson with multiple classes, you need only make a class set of the first page of each of the handouts.)

1. Divide the class into two groups. Ask one group to discuss the contemporary cartoons and agree on a one-sentence explanation of each cartoon. Ask the second group to do the same for the historical cartoons. Stress that political cartoons are not like the comics. They are about social and political issues, and they express strongly held viewpoints about those issues. Emphasize that it is impossible to fully understand most political cartoons without some background knowledge of the issues they deal with. This is a preparatory exercise, so don't apply too strict a standard to judging what students come up with. The goal is to have them make initial interpretations on their own to see what that entails. 2. Have each group present its cartoons and explanations. Ask students to list any cartoon details they do not understand. Discuss whether their confusion is due to a lack of background knowledge or to something unclear about the cartoon itself. Finally, discuss the challenges of understanding historical cartoons as compared to the challenges of understanding contemporary political cartoons. 3. Explain that political cartoons use a special "language" to make strong points about complex issues in a single visual display. Various visual and (usually) written details convey a "message" designed to sway the reader. 4. Distribute the Cartoon Analysis Checklist. Explain that students can use it whenever they have to analyze a political cartoon. Go over the Checklist briefly. 5. Explain that students will work on six sets of handouts, each of which will illustrate one point on the Checklist. Distribute the first Document. Ask students to study the cartoon, read the background information on it and the relevant Checklist item. Add any additional information you think students may need. 6. Have students work individually or in pairs. Tell them to take notes in response to the questions on the worksheet (second page of each document handout). Share the ideas from these notes in a class discussion. 7. Repeat steps five and six with each of the six handouts (1-3 and 4-6).

• Students need to understand that political cartoons are expressions of opinion. They use all sorts of emotional appeals and other techniques to persuade others to accept those opinions. They cannot be treated as evidence either of the way things actually were or even of how everyone else felt about the way things were. They are evidence only of a point of view, often a heavily biased point of view.
• Students should not view their main task as deciding if the cartoon was right or wrong, though criticizing its bias can be a part of what they do.
• Just because cartoons are biased expressions does not justify student cynicism about using them as historical evidence. They can provide many kinds of evidence in a vivid, even entertaining way. Asking questions will encourage students to make inferences from the cartoon. Sample questions include: What conditions might have given rise to this cartoon? What groups might it have appealed to? What values does the cartoon express overtly or implicitly?

A discussion that moves students beyond either/or debates to a more nuanced historical synthesis.

By the time students reach adolescence, many believe that every issue comes neatly packaged in a pro/con format, and that the goal of classroom discussion, rather than to understand your opponent, is to defeat him. The SAC method provides an alternative to the "debate mindset" by shifting the goal from winning classroom discussions to understanding alternative positions and formulating historical syntheses. The SAC's structure demands students listen to each other in new ways and guides them into a world of complex and controversial ideas.

The SAC was developed by cooperative learning researchers David and Roger Johnson of the University of Minnesota as a way to provide structure and focus to classroom discussions. Working in pairs and then coming together in four-person teams, students explore a question by reading about and then presenting contrasting positions. Afterwards, they engage in discussion to reach consensus.

1. Choose a historical question that lends itself to contrasting viewpoints. For example, we illustrate the SAC below with the question "Was Abraham Lincoln a racist?" but many other questions lend themselves to the technique. For example, "Was dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary to defeat the Japanese?" or "Could the Constitution have been ratified if slavery had been abolished?" and so on. 2. Find and select two or three documents (primary or secondary sources) that embody each side. (Remember that you can pull these from existing document collections on the web or in print.) 3. Consider timing, make copies of handouts, and plan grouping strategies. The time you will need for a SAC that uses about four documents will depend on the amount of experience your students have with the activity structure and the difficulty and familiarity of the documents. Plan on using about two class periods for your initial SAC.

Modified and adapted countless times by researchers and teachers, the technique has five basic steps (See Handout 1) with procedures to display for students. 1. Organize students into four-person teams comprised of two dyads. 2. Each dyad reviews materials that represent different positions on a charged issue (e.g., "Was Abraham Lincoln a racist?"). See Handout 2 that helps students track their analysis and prepare their positions. 3. Dyads then come together as a four-person team and present their views to one other, one dyad acting as the presenters, the others as the listeners. 4. Rather than refuting the other position, the listening dyad repeats back to the presenters what they understood. Listeners do not become presenters until the original presenters are fully satisfied that they have been heard and understood. 5. After the sides switch, the dyads abandon their original assignments and work toward reaching consensus. If consensus proves unattainable, the team clarifies where their differences lie.

Students' debate framework starts early and runs deep. Even when told that they need to understand—not undermine—an opposing position, students will try to find holes in their opponent's positions and aim to refute them. We recommend

• Introducing the idea of "active listening" to your students and having them practice it in dyads for a few minutes
• Establishing the rule: Jot down notes when confused, do not interrupt the presenters
• Making sure students can refer to the procedures throughout the activity by posting them or making handouts

As students start to see other perspectives and nuance in the materials, the absence of a certain answer may confuse them. We recommend reassuring students that uncertainty and complexity are expected during this activity. Encourage them to make notes that specify their confusion, new ideas or questions.

Was Abraham Lincoln a racist? Background for the teacher: How we judge people in the past is at the core of historical understanding. Should we think less of Thomas Jefferson because he was a slave owner? How should we regard forms of slavery sanctioned by the Bible? How do we regard people who believed in witches? Or that the ordeal was a way to establish truth? In other words, how do we judge people in the past, people who thought differently from us and perceived the world using different beliefs and assumptions? This question pivots on two opposing stances: first, that there are a set of universal virtues—kindness, fairness, openmindedness, goodness, decency, and tolerance—that transcend time and space. Alternately, the opposing stance sees human virtues as relative, shaped by the dictates of particular settings and circumstances. In this sense, an "enlightened person" looks very different on questions of human decency depending on whether he or she lived in the 13th century, the 19th, or today. Ideas related to the question of how we judge the past will come up in students' conversations. This is how it should be and as directed in the Common Pitfall, students should be encouraged to track these ideas as pairs prepare and present and then to discuss them as they try to reach consensus. In this Structured Academic Controversy, this question of how to judge the past is considered by examining the person and the time of Abraham Lincoln. Specifically we ask, Was Abraham Lincoln a racist?

Racist, n., one who believes that his or her race confers an inherent superiority over others. (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

The two handouts will help you introduce and set up this activity and there are four documents that accompany this SAC. Each dyad should get all four. Acknowledgments. We thank Professor Walter Parker at the University of Washington's College of Education for helping us see the enduring value of the SAC approach in the history classroom.