Thoughts on the outline/notes

I struggled a bit with starting the outline.  I just couldn’t figure out how to put what I was thinking on paper, but once I figured out the angle I wanted to use, writing the outline was pretty easy.  I’m used to doing them for myself and I’ve had to hand them in for other classes.  Generally I find them useful so I didn’t really mind doing the outline.

The notes are a different story.  I don’t find the format very useful at all.  Since these sources aren’t very long and there are a pretty limited number I prefer to write right on the sources.  That helps me put together the main ideas and if I need a specific fact it’s pretty easy to find.  Maybe the notes will be more useful when I’m using a larger number of sources?

As far as the research project goes I’m curious about the effect of the Depression on children.  Specifically I’m interested in the effect on education.  Some questions I would like to know about include:

How was public education funding effected by the economic crisis?

How did the effects of the Depression on education differ in different regions and states?

What affect did the Depression have on children’s access to public education?

How did schools deal with the increasing number of students who were living in poverty?     

Textbook perspectives

I was sort of aware this issue with textbooks because for my birthday I got the book Lies My Teacher Told Me which addresses a lot of issues with text book publication.  ( I don’t know what this choice of present says about me or the friends who gave it to me…)  This is the Wikipedia link about the book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me (I know it’s not a “real” source, but it will just give you an idea of what the book is about if you haven’t heard of it before.)

Jessica’s idea to use primary sources is a really good one.  I think teachers are encouraged to do that for other reasons as well, but a teacher can highlight the fact that textbooks are a source with a perspective, just like primary sources, while discussing firsthand accounts.  Jessica mentioned that it would obviously be difficult to use all different textbooks, and I agree that it would be pretty impossible to have students (or a school district) buy and read different accounts for every topic just to “cover all the bases” as she said.  I did hear of a teacher in my high school who was able to do something like that for awhile.  The school wanted to adopt a new AP US History textbook so the teacher was able to use all different samples the first year she was teaching the course.  So the class read one textbook for one unit, and then switched to another textbook for another unit.  After they had gotten a feel for each of the different books being considered the class gave their feedback about the way different texts covered different issues.  For example, did one text give no information on how women and minorities were affected in comparison to one that gave very thorough coverage? Was one text more organized and coherent than other?  That’s one example when students got exposure to textbooks not being the absolute truth.  It’s not always possible to do it that way, but there are ways to demonstrate perspective to students, even with sources that are often considered “neutral”.   

Some thoughts about honest history

To begin my post I’d like to consider one of my favorite quotes from these readings: “the history we teach [must be] a candid appraisal of our own society’s strengths and weaknesses, not simply an exercise in self-celebration – a conversation with the entire world, not a complacent dialogue with ourselves.”  This quote is from the last page of Foner’s article.  This quote goes right to the heart of what is wrong with the Florida law that is apparently meant to prohibit the interpretation of history (something which I agree with Becker, is impossible not to do anyway).  Only learning the history of one’s own greatness seriously handicaps the development of the society that teaches history that way.  Not only will it be impossible for that society to understand events such as terrorist attacks, but it deprives that society of intellectual richness.  Learning that there is only one perspective limits the ability to think hypothetically and develop the ability to come up with innovative solutions. 

Teaching history that is “a candid appraisal of our own society’s strengths and weaknesses” can be likened to teaching a child about a parent’s qualities.  Of course a parent wants their child to think well of them.  Every parent wants a child who believes that they are wise, insightful, loving, and just.  And it would be wonderful if every child had a parent who did embody these characteristics.  But it is not to the child’s determinant if the parent has not always perfectly possessed these qualities; indeed no person ever does.  And while some parents try to hide the fact that they are imperfect from their children, children seem to benefit from knowing the truth about their parents, especially as they grow.  Knowing that a beloved parent who one respects has made mistakes does not make the parent a bad person in the eyes of the child.  Knowing that the parent has grown and improved will make the child respect the parent.  This is the view that should be adopted about teaching history.  Knowing that the history of our nation and society is full of errors, miscalculations, and injustices does not make students lose all respect for the history of our country.  Instead it gives us a fuller understanding.  History students will learn more from that type of history than a self serving history.  Knowing the faults in our history is what will allow us to enter the dialogue with the rest of the world, hopefully allowing for more peaceful relations and respect of our own homeland, and isn’t that a patriotic goal?   

Justifications for Studying History

I liked several of what might be considered the justifications for history that the authors raised.  One that I found particularly appealing was Stearn’s argument that history is valuable because of the skills it teaches.  Personally I am studying history because I want to be a teacher, so for me, the study of history has an immediate practical value.  I need to learn history in order to become a teacher.  So for me, there is a nice, easily defined, practical reason for pursuing the subject, much like a nursing student is studying nursing to become a nurse or an engineering student is studying engineering to become an engineer.  I’ll admit that I am a flip flopper about the position I am about to present (I contradict myself about this same issue often), so don’t believe everything I say!

However, I am sympathetic of people who are studying History who don’t have the intention of going into teaching or graduate work.  Stearns also addresses the fact that art is good for art’s sake, but he also lays out what skills a student historian will learn in his quest to master this subject.  The study of history teaches critical thinking skills and analytical skills so that even though a History degree may not be correlated to a job the way a Nursing or Engineering degree is, someone who studies History still posses valuable skills for a career. 

The reason I put the disclaimer above that paragraph was because as a generally very practical person I sometimes fret about the usefulness of a history degree in such a tight job market.   

First Post

My hopes for History 200 are mostly formed based on what I have heard about it from people who have taken it before.  I hope to improve my writing skills, particularly in my own field – history.  I know that I struggle with tenses when writing history papers.  When I talk about historical events I tend to use the present tense (like “So then the people get even more angry at Marie Antoinette because they think she is mocking them.”).  In high school I had a teacher who got so tired of me forgetting to stay in the past tense when writing papers that he just told me to just write everything in the present tense.  I hope I’ve improved that bad habit a little in college, but I think it will be beneficial to get some instruction about how it should really be done.  That’s just an example of something I know I need to work on, and I hope that History 200 will help me improve. 

Why do I like the study of history?  I think the best answer goes back to the extremely cliché phase, “those who don’t learn their history are doomed to repeat it.”  The most fascinating thing about history for me is when I learn about events in the past and I realize that something about the world today can be explained by what happened in the past.  That is one of the reasons I like Middle Eastern history so much.  The fact that we are sending soldiers to a place in 2011 can often be traced to events ranging in time from ten to a thousand years ago.