Text on Trial: Picture in Text without Reference to Source

Caption in Text= "Galileo tries to defend himself before the Inquisition. The Court, however, demands that he recant."

Discussion: This source states that the above painting is from the 19th century. And this source attributes the painting as follows: "Galileo before the Holy Office, a 19th century painting by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury."

Why is this a problem? The painting appears under a section titled Interact with History. The authors are attempting to show the reader what the trial may have looked liked. It is not stated that this work of art was created centuries after the trial, nor is any attempt made to discuss how art reveals information about the artist, the society and times he lived in, and his view of the past.

Text on Trial: Origins of Geocentric Theory

Our Textboook: "This earth centered view of the universe, called the geocentric theory, was supported by more than just common sense. The idea came from Aristotle, the Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C."

"Ancient societies were obsessed with the idea that God must have placed humans at the center of the cosmos (a way of referring to the universe). An astronomer named Eudoxus created the first model of a geocentric universe around 380 B.C." Source: http://cmb.physics.wisc.edu/tutorial/briefhist.html

"Aristotle developed a more intricate geocentric model (which was later refined by Ptolemy), general cosmology clung to these misconstrued ideas for the next 2,000 years." Source: http://cmb.physics.wisc.edu/tutorial/briefhist.html

Discussion: Our class text states that the geocentric theory "came from Aristotle", ignoring anyone who may have influenced Galileo. This an offense of context as well as, potentially, of discovery.
An offense of context occurs when the text presents a topic with little of no background information. I suspect we will find these context offenses frequently.


Another source discusses Eudoxus: "Perhaps Eudoxus’s greatest fame stems from his being the first to attempt, in On Speeds, a geometric model of the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets known in antiquity. His model consisted of a complex system of 27 interconnected, geo-concentric spheres, one for the fixed stars, four for each planet, and three each for the Sun and Moon. Callippus and later Aristotle modified the model. Aristotle’s endorsement of its basic principles guaranteed an enduring interest through the Renaissance."

Note: More research needs to be done. I am suggesting, however, that stating "the idea came from Aristotle" demands further investigation.

Here is a link to a version of Aristotle's On the Heavens, as well as a Wikipedia overview of the text.
Aristotle begins to discuss the earth in Book II, Part13. (Book II, Part 13 in a google doc )

Draft of #HSGovChat Questions for Sunday 8/11

1. How do you define inquiry learning? What is it/what isn't it?
2. Why is student inquiry particularly valuable in a government class?
3. In your government class, when do students engage in inquiry learning?
4. What are some challenges/obstacles associated with having students learn via inquiry?
5. Given the open ended nature of inquiry, what are some ways to manage it without stifling student exploration?
6. What are some resources you have used to create inquiry lessons in your government class?
7. What are some inquiry lessons, activities you would like to share with others?

Textbook on Trial: The Charges and Getting Started

The charges: How will I get this started? (yesterday's post)

I am thinking I will need to spend some time exploring with students what they already know about our adversarial system of criminal justice. An easy way to initiate this discussion is with the following question: What is the difference between being "innocent until proven guilty" vs. "guilty until proven innocent"? This question provides an opportunity to discuss the idea of burden of proof, which means it is up to the prosecution to prove to a jury that the defendant is guilty of the charges he is being accused of.  
 
Now explain to students how this semester we will be using the idea or framework of a trial to learn more about history and how history is created. Throughout the course we are going to be putting our textbook on trial. It is the prosecution's contention that the authors of our textbook are guilty of the following "crimes of reason" (might try a different phrase): 

-overgeneralizing
-errors of omission
-providing simplistic accounts
-supporting assertions about the past with little or no evidence
-providing little or no context about a past event
 
(Some of these charges overlap. Are these enough? Are there others you would add?)
 
Need to Consider

To conduct a trial there needs to be laws, law enforcement, as well as the following actors: prosecution, defense, judge, jury.

All involved need to understand the law. To make sure that my students understand the laws I listed above, I will need to spend time elaborating, developing these laws. (Thinking of adding to our "legal code", if you will, a series of logical fallacies.)

Also, notice how none of the charges say that the authors are lying outright. I think sometimes teachers and students think that this is the only way that textbooks distort the past. Through this assignment we will often explore, I suspect, more nuanced ways that distortions of the past occur.

Initial Exploration of the Text

I want to spend time with the textbook, so that I can think about ways students will interact with it. At this point, I will likely be all over the place in my planning, trying to get a feel for all of the moving parts.


For this reading of the text, I want you to imagine that you are in the prosecutor's office. We need to spend some time organizing our case, which requires us to think about the law as we carefully read the text.

Have students turn to page 165 in our Modern World History textbook. Already, by providing students with the "mentality of a lawyer" (of a critical reader) you will have changed dramatically how they approach the text. 

I will likely work through this page of the textbook with students. This will give me a chance to talk about how textbooks are written and what we should be looking for.
 
Page 165 begins with a "Setting the Stage" paragraph. This is an introduction to the section of the text we are reading, which is called the Scientific Revolution.

When writing an intro, an author is preparing the reader for what is to come later in the text. It is ok and accepted that a writer will be general in this opening paragraph.
 
Under "Setting the Stage" is a bold heading in red: The Roots of Modern Science. Again, we will often find an introductory paragraph under such headings. As critical readers, it is important that we use these headings. In many ways, these headings cue the reader about what they can expect to learn from this section of the text. The author is telling the reader that the proceeding paragraphs will address the following question: What are the roots of modern science? (Talk about turning the section heading into a question)
 
Point out to students that it is after the introductory paragraph that we will be strictly holding the author to the rules of reason. This is where we, as prosecutors, are going to find violations.
 
There are two smaller green headings: The 'Medieval View' and 'A New Way of Thinking'. The Medieval View only gets two paragraphs. This is a red flag since it is quite difficult to deal with topics in a careful, thoughtful way in just two paragraphs.
 
The first paragraph is 5 sentences: "During the Middle Ages, most scholars believed that the earth was an unmoving object located at the center of the universe. According to that belief, the moon, the sun, and the planets all moved in perfectly circular paths around the earth. Beyond the planets lay a sphere of fixed stars, with heaven still farther beyond. Common sense seemed to support this view. After all, the sun appeared to be moving around the earth as it rose in the morning and set  in the evening."
 
And here is the second and final paragraph of this section. It is also 5 sentences: "This earth centered view of the universe, called the geocentric theory, was supported by more than just common sense. The idea came from Aristotle, the Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy expanded the theory in the second century A.D. In addition, Christianity taught that God had deliberately placed earth at the center of the universe. Earth was thus a special place on which the great drama of life took place."  
 
What problems do we detect in these two paragraphs?

Paragraph 1
 
-When was the Middle Ages? Where does this term come from? (The defense will likely look for references to this term in previous sections of the text. Is the term used previously?)
 
-"most scholars believed that the earth was an unmoving object": Were there some who did not? That is how this phrase reads. If so, who?
 
-"the idea came from Aristotle": Is this accurate? Aristotle was the first to come up with geocentric theory? This, I think, is a question we need to explore deeper.
 
"Beyond the planets lay a sphere of fixed stars, with heaven still farther beyond." A visual would be helpful here. Any art/drawings from these periods that the author could have used?
 
 More to come... 
 
What are your thoughts? ideas?
 
 
 

Textbook on Trial: Some opening thoughts

The idea of having my students put our class textbook on trial came to me earlier this summer. My wife was in the middle of watching the George Zimmerman trial, and I was in the midst of reading and tweeting about historical thinking skills. 

What I was doing and what my wife was doing started to merge, to the point where I could not help but notice the similarities between what lawyers do and what historians do. 

I am obviously not the first to recognize that the thinking skills, habits, and attitudes of mind often internalized and utilized by lawyers, at times at least, bear close resemblance to how historians think, how they approach evidence, and how they construct interpretations about the past. 

Indeed, the structure and procedures of the American legal system, which is adversarial in nature, also resemble, in ways, how historians handle evidence, construct arguments, and, ultimately, prove their case to readers. 

It is understandable, yet disheartening, that these similarities may go unnoticed. Anecdotally, and more formally, it has been well established that many students and teachers associate learning history with memorizing facts. Often, these crammed facts are then regurgitated on tests in the form of written responses and dozens of multiple choice and true/false items. The facts are then forgotten so that the next test can be conquered. This is a dance that occurs in too many classrooms.  

The gap between what historians do and how history is taught in schools is often wide. Some of the differences are justified; many are not. 

This assignment, which I currently imagine as ongoing and semester long, will attempt to decrease this chasm by deliberately highlighting the parallels mentioned above and below. Specifically, I will use an adversarial framework to teach my students how to think like a lawyer and an historian as they put their history textbook on trial.  

Here is a quick list of some of the thinking skills this assignment will emphasize:

-Asking questions of sources 
-Identifying and questioning  facts
-Speculating about physical evidence
-Considering the benefits and problems associated with eyewitness accounts 
-Creating a narrative that conforms to (is supported by) the facts (Making the facts conform to a narrative structure, making disparate pieces of evidence fit together, like putting together a puzzle without all of the pieces. Also, noticing when this is done and pointing where and how it was done) 

-Identifying and making inferences 
-Corroborating stories/accounts of the past
-Critically examining accounts of the past (questioning these accounts,handling conflicting accounts of the same event,understanding and explaining why accounts of past events may differ) 
-Deciding when we can express confidence or when we should be skeptical about our ability to "know what happened" in the past 
-Establishing context to understand past events

-Establishing context to construct accounts of the past

Some caveats
Teacher who rely solely on textbooks to teach history considerably limit their students' awareness of the dynamic and sophisticated nature of the discipline of history. Though some of you may disagree, I am comfortable saying that textbooks have a place in a history classroom. 

At the same time, if my child ended up in a history class with a teacher who did not use a textbook, I would be less concerned than if they ended up in a class where on a daily basis the teacher taught directly from a textbook. 

Finally, to a large degree, my idea is a gimmick, a way of imposing certain attitudes and expectations on my students from day 1 of my class. I do not envision this structure to follow a mock trial format. In the coming days, I will attempt to get more specific, elaborating and refining as I go.

Your thoughts? I encourage (and need!) comments, reactions, questions, ideas... Thanks :)

Information Overload and How to Cope

Last night I spent an hour tweeting with government teachers from around the country (world?). As Twitter teacher discussions  often are, it was fast paced, stimulating, and tiring! Twitter is to professional development what a high def cable tv is to the old rabbit eared models. And to think, if I had not become active on Twitter this year, I would have likely gone the whole summer not talking to a single teacher. Those days are over.

In fact, the days of me yearning to talk teaching with a variety of other teachers are over. I can now do that with ease. As I mentioned during last night's discussion, there are taboos, unwritten rules, against being too chatty during the school day. Most teachers, including myself, are often busy grading and prepping for the next day to be genuinely open to impromptu reflective conversations about our craft.

To address this, principals will often mandate monthly department meetings, where some time is spent with colleagues talking about what we teach (curriculum), how we assess (formal and informal tests), and, occasionally, how we teach (methods). The results of these planned curricular meetings are often concrete by design; a test is made or an exam might be reviewed and revised. During these planned meetings, open ended Socratic style reflection and dialogue about the nature of teaching and learning is often seen as inefficient and, in my experience, discouraged.       

Anyway, back to my summer work. This summer I have read dozens of journal articles about education, with a particular focus on history teaching, student inquiry, and the use of primary sources in the classroom. While reading, instead of writing notes in a copybook for my eyes only, I tweeted about them. And teachers responded.

At first, responses were occasional. In a short time, however, the responses I received and the connections I made increased exponentially. Indeed, this summer I learned how to use technology, especially Twitter, to create a virtual graduate school, a place I can go when I am interested in growing as a teacher and a learner. Twitter is a place I can go to ponder and reflect, where the only taboo is using too many characters! 

Today, we are lucky to have such easy access to information and to each other. Having virtually unlimited access to so many resources is intellectually intoxicating and, at times, mind numbing.  

I have come to realize that in order for me to truly benefit from these resources, I must consciously build time into my day to disconnect and reflect. Cognitive digestion, if you will. Writing on this blog is one way that I slow down and try to integrate new resources, ideas, and questions with my existing knowledge and skills.

Yesterday, I was reminded of the importance of regular reflection and processing time when I read something that I had read a few weeks prior. As I was reading this text again, I realized that in many ways it was like I was reading it for the first time. I had read it earlier this summer, but I had not reflected enough on the author's central message for his core ideas to become part of me.

Regular reflection and writing helps you to articulate your philosophy of teaching and learning. I see my philosophy as a core set of ideas that I use to filter and process new ideas and perspectives.

We all have a philosophy, whether we can easily state it or not. And the best way, in my opinion, to benefit from the amazing access to resources that we have today is to spend lots of time bringing your philosophy to the surface by writing about it and the new resources you encounter.

Only then will you be able to intelligently respond and grow. Do you blog about education? Why? Please let us know by leaving a comment and link below.  

Setup: Youtube to MP4 to Dropbox

Find Youtube video

Download it as MP 4

Import MP 4 into Windows Live Movie Maker

Trim video to a short clip. Less than 5 mins.

Save as .wmv file

Convert from .wmv to MP 4

Save MP 4 to Dropbox