*I am working on some summary statements that I can use for planning purposes. These statements will represent core understandings that will underpin the lessons in my class. Moving forward, using ideas of backward design, I will craft learning experiences that help students to explore these ideas.
What is history?
With confidence, many eager students will likely say “it’s the study of the past”, as if the past were out there, existing prepackaged and ready to be learned. Is that a satisfactory description of histroy? Make sure to emphasize that history is NOT the past. History is a discipline, a way of approaching the past, a way of thinking, of asking questions and constructing answers about the past.
History is NOT a single story.
Historians create accounts of past events. In fact, we all do. When we talk about history, we typically mean accounts of the past, assertions about what a certain aspect of the past was like and what it means.
Since accounts of the past are not identical, judgments have to be made about these accounts. As you will come to see, our judgments about accounts of the past will be more sophisticated than true vs. false. We are going to explore why accounts of the past differ and what that reveals about the historian and the sources under consideration.
When accounts of the past are juxtaposed, we see that they reveal the perspective of the historian. The past cannot be detached from the person making claims about it. The choices made by an historian shape the account of the past that is presented. Cumulatively, accounts of the past can be viewed as telling different stories about the past. To the extent that there is overlap among the stories told by historians that shows us that historians are frequently working with a large number of facts in common.
Students often incorrectly believe that accounts of the past differ because the historian is working with a different set of facts. With this view, the student may express the idea that there is one true account of the past that, once and for all, will make other accounts unnecessary or irrelevant.
Historians do not work in a vacuum and, depending on the event, many facts will not be disputed. Different accounts of the past reveal differences among historians and the questions they ask, as well as the weight or value they attach to different pieces of evidence.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Source Work: Immigration Affidavit, 1911
One of the traps I find is easy to fall into, and I can see myself doing it here, is moving away from a source before really reflecting on it, especially in the search for additional context or the answer to questions triggered by the source. I want to revisit the original source, with the additional contextual knowledge I now possess, and a set of fresh eyes, listing some of the key points that stand out.
What does this source tell us about 20th century immigration?
-The language of this form is tied to federal legislation that was designed to regulate immigration.
-Controlling or managing the flow of people who seek to live in the United States is a topic that continues to capture the attention of policy makers, the media, and the public.
-The illegal immigration debates of today and the issue of border security can be viewed through a variety of filters, including reactions to Sept. 11, reactions to the most recent recession, long term demographic changes, debates about capitalism.
- Like today, this document, from 1911, must be attached to larger economic, cultural, and political issues. There was a huge movement of people from Europe to the United States during the period of 1901-10, close to 9 million people moved to the US during this time.
-The vast majority were from Europe (graph 1 and graph 2)
-What factors led to the spike in European immigration during this time? Economic and political dislocations often push people to move. Perceived opportunities, especially if family members were succeeding in the US might easily have attracted people to the US.
-This second (?) wave of immigrants, I suspect, can be tied to spike we see during the period 1881-1890.
- Class differences must be considered when examining how immigrants were treated.
- The affidavit refers to 30 people. We were able to find the manifest, listing the names of the passengers that were being referred to. These passengers were in steerage. A series of questions is on the manifest sheet (and here). These questions and the language of the affidavit reveal policy makers concerns about steerage passengers, seeking to enter the US.
More to come....
Join @classroomtools and I in this google group. You can post a source you would like to work with, and we will join you in your analysis.
(yesterday's post on this same source.)
What does this source tell us about 20th century immigration?
-The language of this form is tied to federal legislation that was designed to regulate immigration.
-Controlling or managing the flow of people who seek to live in the United States is a topic that continues to capture the attention of policy makers, the media, and the public.
-The illegal immigration debates of today and the issue of border security can be viewed through a variety of filters, including reactions to Sept. 11, reactions to the most recent recession, long term demographic changes, debates about capitalism.
- Like today, this document, from 1911, must be attached to larger economic, cultural, and political issues. There was a huge movement of people from Europe to the United States during the period of 1901-10, close to 9 million people moved to the US during this time.
-The vast majority were from Europe (graph 1 and graph 2)
-What factors led to the spike in European immigration during this time? Economic and political dislocations often push people to move. Perceived opportunities, especially if family members were succeeding in the US might easily have attracted people to the US.
-This second (?) wave of immigrants, I suspect, can be tied to spike we see during the period 1881-1890.
- Class differences must be considered when examining how immigrants were treated.
- The affidavit refers to 30 people. We were able to find the manifest, listing the names of the passengers that were being referred to. These passengers were in steerage. A series of questions is on the manifest sheet (and here). These questions and the language of the affidavit reveal policy makers concerns about steerage passengers, seeking to enter the US.
More to come....
Join @classroomtools and I in this google group. You can post a source you would like to work with, and we will join you in your analysis.
(yesterday's post on this same source.)
Monday, July 21, 2014
The Google Group, our first source
@classroomtools uploaded this source to the historical source analysis google group. I then provided an analysis of this source, using the prompt and question Bill posed as a starting point:
"This is one of my favorite sources to help students begin to understand some of the issues involved with immigration from Europe in the early 20th century. What does this tell us about turn of the century immigration?"
Here is what I wrote.
The US is often said to be a nation of immigrants. And it is. But not all immigrants are welcome in the United States, a fact that is true today and was true over one hundred years ago. The issue of immigration provides an entry point to explore various aspects of American culture, including competing core values and perceptions about foreigners. This source encourages us to consider immigration laws and how they are enforced as well as the extent to which outsiders could enter and acclimate themselves to the so called land of opportunity.
Written in the precise language of lawyers, this affidavit, signed in the summer of 1911 by Master Officer Roggeveen, provides details about the process of immigration, including its perceived potential to undermine or promote the values of the United States. This document shows us Washington playing a greater role in immigration. As I mentioned above, the affidavit is tied to federal law. We see how those who wrote or supported this source valued self sufficiency and expected it of anyone entering the country. The Master attested that no one on the ship was a "pauper or is likely to become a government charge."
This affidavit is for a vessel that arrived in New York from Rotterdam, Netherlands. It contained 30 people, all of whom were said to have been inspected by the Master Officer and a physician, called a "surgeon". This text illustrates that there were concerns about allowing people into the country who possessed various contagious diseases, such as tuberculosis. This ships passengers, it was attested, were free from any mental, physical, and even moral deficiencies. That some of these defects could be discerned by a physical examination conveys a faith in observation and reflects societal attitudes about the importance of biology in explaining differences in health, well being, and acceptable behavior.
When reading, we are also reminded of various Christian values and their connection to America's social institutions, such as marriage, and social relations. Values such as social stability and authority underpin inquiries into whether any anarchists or prostitutes are on the ship. Practicing polygamists or those who believe in polygamy are also unwanted. In my mind, I associate this with Mormonism, but I am not certain that all polygamists at the time would have been connected with that religion. If so, tensions between these competing religious ideologies are evident in this text.
I want to take a closer look at this: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41450323
"This is one of my favorite sources to help students begin to understand some of the issues involved with immigration from Europe in the early 20th century. What does this tell us about turn of the century immigration?"
Here is what I wrote.
The US is often said to be a nation of immigrants. And it is. But not all immigrants are welcome in the United States, a fact that is true today and was true over one hundred years ago. The issue of immigration provides an entry point to explore various aspects of American culture, including competing core values and perceptions about foreigners. This source encourages us to consider immigration laws and how they are enforced as well as the extent to which outsiders could enter and acclimate themselves to the so called land of opportunity.
Written in the precise language of lawyers, this affidavit, signed in the summer of 1911 by Master Officer Roggeveen, provides details about the process of immigration, including its perceived potential to undermine or promote the values of the United States. This document shows us Washington playing a greater role in immigration. As I mentioned above, the affidavit is tied to federal law. We see how those who wrote or supported this source valued self sufficiency and expected it of anyone entering the country. The Master attested that no one on the ship was a "pauper or is likely to become a government charge."
This affidavit is for a vessel that arrived in New York from Rotterdam, Netherlands. It contained 30 people, all of whom were said to have been inspected by the Master Officer and a physician, called a "surgeon". This text illustrates that there were concerns about allowing people into the country who possessed various contagious diseases, such as tuberculosis. This ships passengers, it was attested, were free from any mental, physical, and even moral deficiencies. That some of these defects could be discerned by a physical examination conveys a faith in observation and reflects societal attitudes about the importance of biology in explaining differences in health, well being, and acceptable behavior.
When reading, we are also reminded of various Christian values and their connection to America's social institutions, such as marriage, and social relations. Values such as social stability and authority underpin inquiries into whether any anarchists or prostitutes are on the ship. Practicing polygamists or those who believe in polygamy are also unwanted. In my mind, I associate this with Mormonism, but I am not certain that all polygamists at the time would have been connected with that religion. If so, tensions between these competing religious ideologies are evident in this text.
I want to take a closer look at this: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41450323
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Doing History
The historian is no different from anyone else in that she cannot shed her point of view (POV). POV is how a person sees the world. It is the lens of perception that colors and filters how a person interprets. POV is shaped by one's culture, experiences, and values.
Historians approach the past from a position in the present. The historian is not a detached observer of the past, simply reporting what happened. Unbiased accounts or so called objective histories do not exist because historians are not able to shed their point of view, and the sources they use to inform their interpretations are colored with the point of view of those who created them in a different time and place.
Newly created sources and sources that happen to have survived for decades or even centuries retain both the intellectual imprints of their creators, as well as the times they were created. This is what makes sources valuable. This is also what makes reading sources an exercise in inference and reading between the lines.
The interaction between the historian and the past is far from simple. Equally complex is the interaction between the reader and the works of historians, and the reader and his attempt to makes sense of original sources, which are fragments of the past.
The sources historians handle to answer their questions about the past will also have been created at particular moments in time by people with particular points of view. How historians approach sources depend on the questions they are asking. As a prerequisite, obviously, the historian always needs to be sure that a source is what they think it is. This is the process of authenticating a source. Is this actually a letter written in 1917 by an English soldier to his mother? The process of authentication is not typically performed by our students, though if you are using sources that have been adapted to modern language or excerpted for brevity, it is necessary to talk to students about this process.
Once a source is determined to be authentic, not to be confused with a determination of primary vs. secondary, a series of questions needs to be asked and answered. Most of the questions you ask are going to be tied to the big question that you are trying to answer. Some general questions that you are going to want to ask of all sources include the following:
What kind of source is this? Is it a letter, a diary entry, a newspaper article, government statistics, another historian’s perspective on this topic?
Why does source type matter? The inferences a researcher derives from sources are shaped by the type of source. First, it is necessary to make sure that the sources you are using align to the question you are researching.
For example, if you are reading soldiers' letters home you must remember that these letters were often read by the military before they were allowed to be sent home. Soldiers were aware of this and often self censored. To pursue a research question about soldiers' attitudes during World War I, you would have to rely on more than just letters. Other writings help to inform this question, including works of fiction such as stories and poems.
If you are looking for evidence of changes in economic conditions in post civil war America, you might look at newspapers or tax data. In both cases, you are not interested in the motivations of the authors of these sources in the same way as you were when reading the soldiers' letters. This is because your research question is different. If you were looking for evidence of anti Semitism in post WWII America and you were examining various newspapers, you would scrutinize much more closely the people responsible for publishing the newspaper and its contents, as well as information about its readers.
And how does the type of source I am reading, in the context of my research question, impact my reading of it?
Keith Barton and Sean Lang remind us that questions about a source's reliability are often misplaced. Reliable for what? Questions about reliability must always be asked in the context of one's research question. Remember, reliability is not the same as authenticity. And, unfortunately, reliability, in the minds of many students, is code for bias. Teachers need to be thoughtful about teaching students that point of view and bias are linked. Reliability, on the other hand, has to do with how well a source informs a research question. A source may be reliable for one research question and unreliable for another. Reading tax data to learn about soldiers' attitudes during a war is an example of using a source in a way that is unreliable in light of the research question.
Other questions to consider...
Under what circumstances was this source created? And how does this contextual information impact how I read this source?
How might I be able to use this source? As evidence of…..
Newly created sources and sources that happen to have survived for decades or even centuries retain both the intellectual imprints of their creators, as well as the times they were created. This is what makes sources valuable. This is also what makes reading sources an exercise in inference and reading between the lines.
The interaction between the historian and the past is far from simple. Equally complex is the interaction between the reader and the works of historians, and the reader and his attempt to makes sense of original sources, which are fragments of the past.
The sources historians handle to answer their questions about the past will also have been created at particular moments in time by people with particular points of view. How historians approach sources depend on the questions they are asking. As a prerequisite, obviously, the historian always needs to be sure that a source is what they think it is. This is the process of authenticating a source. Is this actually a letter written in 1917 by an English soldier to his mother? The process of authentication is not typically performed by our students, though if you are using sources that have been adapted to modern language or excerpted for brevity, it is necessary to talk to students about this process.
Once a source is determined to be authentic, not to be confused with a determination of primary vs. secondary, a series of questions needs to be asked and answered. Most of the questions you ask are going to be tied to the big question that you are trying to answer. Some general questions that you are going to want to ask of all sources include the following:
What kind of source is this? Is it a letter, a diary entry, a newspaper article, government statistics, another historian’s perspective on this topic?
Why does source type matter? The inferences a researcher derives from sources are shaped by the type of source. First, it is necessary to make sure that the sources you are using align to the question you are researching.
For example, if you are reading soldiers' letters home you must remember that these letters were often read by the military before they were allowed to be sent home. Soldiers were aware of this and often self censored. To pursue a research question about soldiers' attitudes during World War I, you would have to rely on more than just letters. Other writings help to inform this question, including works of fiction such as stories and poems.
If you are looking for evidence of changes in economic conditions in post civil war America, you might look at newspapers or tax data. In both cases, you are not interested in the motivations of the authors of these sources in the same way as you were when reading the soldiers' letters. This is because your research question is different. If you were looking for evidence of anti Semitism in post WWII America and you were examining various newspapers, you would scrutinize much more closely the people responsible for publishing the newspaper and its contents, as well as information about its readers.
And how does the type of source I am reading, in the context of my research question, impact my reading of it?
Keith Barton and Sean Lang remind us that questions about a source's reliability are often misplaced. Reliable for what? Questions about reliability must always be asked in the context of one's research question. Remember, reliability is not the same as authenticity. And, unfortunately, reliability, in the minds of many students, is code for bias. Teachers need to be thoughtful about teaching students that point of view and bias are linked. Reliability, on the other hand, has to do with how well a source informs a research question. A source may be reliable for one research question and unreliable for another. Reading tax data to learn about soldiers' attitudes during a war is an example of using a source in a way that is unreliable in light of the research question.
Other questions to consider...
Under what circumstances was this source created? And how does this contextual information impact how I read this source?
How might I be able to use this source? As evidence of…..
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Summarizing some key points made by Barton
This is an attempt to pull some of the biggest ideas from Keith Barton's text entitled Primary Sources in History: Breaking Through the Myths.
(Check out #inquirychat Thurs 7/17 for a Q and A session with Professor Barton!)
Just because students are working with sources does not mean that they are receiving "good history instruction".
You must take a closer look to see what students are actually doing with the sources. In addition, it is necessary to examine which sources the students are using and how the sources tie into the larger course of study. How teachers use primary sources is tied to how they perceive the discipline of history and to how they envision the work of an historian. Some teachers think that students will develop historical understanding from primary source work that is not supplemented by secondary source work, stating or implying that original sources are superior to secondary sources, the sources written by scholars years later. The reality is much more murky.
Since all sources are created for a variety of reasons, it is important to remember that primary sources, sources connected directly to the people or events under study, may not have been created for the purpose of conveying an accurate account of what happened. Historians know this and read sources with a careful eye. If students read primary sources looking to derive an accurate understanding of what happened, what a person was like, or why something happened, then they will be led astray easily.
For example, students turning to the Federalist Papers to learn more about the federalist and anti federalists would walk with away with a skewed view of the debate if this were the only source they examined. The big idea here is that primary sources are not inherently more reliable than secondary sources.
Summing up the above, accounts are created for a variety of reasons. And "some of these reasons have nothing to do with objectivity." Original accounts cannot be read the same way other nonfiction texts might be read.
Later today or tomorrow....
All primary sources are NOT testimony. Testimony is one kind of account.
Just because students are working with sources does not mean that they are receiving "good history instruction".
You must take a closer look to see what students are actually doing with the sources. In addition, it is necessary to examine which sources the students are using and how the sources tie into the larger course of study. How teachers use primary sources is tied to how they perceive the discipline of history and to how they envision the work of an historian. Some teachers think that students will develop historical understanding from primary source work that is not supplemented by secondary source work, stating or implying that original sources are superior to secondary sources, the sources written by scholars years later. The reality is much more murky.
Since all sources are created for a variety of reasons, it is important to remember that primary sources, sources connected directly to the people or events under study, may not have been created for the purpose of conveying an accurate account of what happened. Historians know this and read sources with a careful eye. If students read primary sources looking to derive an accurate understanding of what happened, what a person was like, or why something happened, then they will be led astray easily.
For example, students turning to the Federalist Papers to learn more about the federalist and anti federalists would walk with away with a skewed view of the debate if this were the only source they examined. The big idea here is that primary sources are not inherently more reliable than secondary sources.
Summing up the above, accounts are created for a variety of reasons. And "some of these reasons have nothing to do with objectivity." Original accounts cannot be read the same way other nonfiction texts might be read.
Later today or tomorrow....
All primary sources are NOT testimony. Testimony is one kind of account.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Making Some Connections
I am sorting out in my mind the ideas of worldviews, point of view, bias, perspective, social constructs...
All of us have a worldview, a broad set of conscious and unconscious ideas and assumptions about the world and how it works.
For any particular topic, we have a point of view that is shaped by our larger worldview, which itself is connected to various social constructs and individual experiences.
Within our point of view on any particular topic, we have certain leanings, or biases, which may be informed or uninformed.
All positions have embedded biases, since they are tied to an individual's point of view, which is part of that person's worldview, which is connected to the larger society and culture.
Worldview-----> Point of View--->Biases about Topic X
All of us have a worldview, a broad set of conscious and unconscious ideas and assumptions about the world and how it works.
For any particular topic, we have a point of view that is shaped by our larger worldview, which itself is connected to various social constructs and individual experiences.
Within our point of view on any particular topic, we have certain leanings, or biases, which may be informed or uninformed.
All positions have embedded biases, since they are tied to an individual's point of view, which is part of that person's worldview, which is connected to the larger society and culture.
Worldview-----> Point of View--->Biases about Topic X
Worldview
People possess worldviews or points or view. Worldviews are not static, yet they are not completely flexible. People are not born with these worldviews. They are learned and shaped by experiences.
Worldviews influence perception, which is the meaning people attach to experiences.
The world is perceived. Meaning is not objective, the same for all people. The meaning individuals attach to experiences can be tied to their worldviews.
Components of a World View
BASIC BELIEFS
Ethics- What should I do?
Epistemology- How do I know? (true vs false)
History- Where do I come from? How did we get to this point?
Future view- Where are we headed?
Beliefs- What do I value? How does the world work?
Social Institutions seek to shape worldviews: Family, Government, School, Media
Worldviews influence perception, which is the meaning people attach to experiences.
The world is perceived. Meaning is not objective, the same for all people. The meaning individuals attach to experiences can be tied to their worldviews.
Components of a World View
BASIC BELIEFS
Ethics- What should I do?
Epistemology- How do I know? (true vs false)
History- Where do I come from? How did we get to this point?
Future view- Where are we headed?
Beliefs- What do I value? How does the world work?
Social Institutions seek to shape worldviews: Family, Government, School, Media
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