by Amber Rhea
History class dumps books, gets personal | The Des Moines Register (via think4yourself)
The History major in me loves this.
(via apsies)
This is pretty cool. Seems to me, though, that the best way to go about it would be to use both the textbooks *and* the primary documents.
(via amberlrhea) mm, in theory i’d like to agree, but so many history textbooks are TERRIBLE - awfully written, disturbingly unquestioning of the assumption that america is the number-one best country ever, filled with irrelevant facts that cloud young adults’ ability to piece together larger themes of american history (or, um, actual adults with mild ADD, like me - textbooks KILL me). i HATED american history until i had a teacher in tenth grade who basically didn’t use the textbook at all - he assigned readings but you only needed to do them for quizzes, which weren’t a huge part of your grade; papers and tests you could get by on his lectures (which were great, very engaging and thorough) and the primary and accessible secondary readings he’d hand out. he would also take time at the end of every little unit to devote a class period to discussion of whatever we’d just talked about. i didn’t learn anything from the textbook - no one did - but i learned a ton from his class, including, for the first time, how to think of history as more than just disjointed events happening one after the other.
is it inherent to the nature of textbooks to always suck and impede both learning and interest in the subject? no, i don’t think so, and in college in particular i’ve had a couple textbooks (especially shorter, more focused ones, like the ~300 page history of hitler & nazi germany i just wrapped up) that were very clear and readable. but for whatever reason, high schools tend not to use these.
so, to sum up - in theory, i agree with amber, but in practice, i can very easily imagine a situation in which using both textbooks and primary documents would NOT present an advantage over primary documents alone, especially given that so many high schoolers are way overloaded with homework already, and especially if this is paired with a knowledgeable, engaging teacher (which i have to imagine someone who would be up for this would probably be).
(via isabelthespy)
“so many history textbooks are TERRIBLE - awfully written, disturbingly unquestioning of the assumption that america is the number-one best country ever, filled with irrelevant facts that cloud young adults’ ability to piece together larger themes of american history”
-My point exactly. Students could compare and contrast the presentation of an historical event in a traditional textbook vs. in a primary document, and in the process learn/discuss issues of how supposed “objective” sources aren’t necessarily so, how one’s perspective colors how they represent an event, how history is written by the victors, how one should read everything critically and skeptically, etc.
