Historically Speaking

[velvetpage]

I was reflecting this morning on one of the difficulties of growing up politically aware and interested in history.

In a nutshell, the problem is that my history teachers, with only one exception, were much older than myself. My grade 9 teacher was the right age to fight in Korea, though he didn't. My OAC teacher (grade 13) retired that year - 1994 - and he had not taken early retirement; he was in his sixties. The only exception was my grade 11 Ancient Civilizations teacher, who was fresh out of teachers' college at the time. Every girl in the school had a crush on him. Yes, me too. Because of the branch of history he taught, he doesn't play much of a role in this discussion.

As a result of packed curricula and older teachers, I find that there are huge chunks of the twentieth century that I know almost nothing about. My theory is that for my teachers, these things were current events. They remembered reading them in newspapers and seeing them on TV. So when they were teaching modern history to me in the late eighties and early nineties, they concentrated on what had always been history to them - the Wars and the inter-war years. I remember doing some aspects of life in the Fifties, specifically Korea, and we touched on JFK and similar elements of the sixties. I remember doing the Suez Canal crisis, but that was about the end of the year. For me, history stopped around 1967. The class ran out of time, and besides, we already knew about that, didn't we?

Well, no. We didn't. Many of my classmates didn't care to, of course, but I did. I missed Tommy Douglas and the début of Canadian Medicare; I only learned about that from a documentary a year or two ago. I missed Trudeau, and the FLQ Crisis. Tanks in Quebec City? It was news to me, twenty years later, when I watched another documentary about Trudeau. It happened at some point in the seventies - I'm still not sure when.

I realized this morning that one full-page article, written by a correspondent who had been in Beirut when the Syrians arrived and was still there when they left, had taught me more about that conflict than I had ever known before. This, in spite of the fact that I had a Lebanese friend in grade 10 who told me bits about life in Beirut - how electricity was a luxury based on a functioning home generator, for example.

In my own teaching, I've noticed this phenomenon several times. The first time I taught grade 7 history (during which the American Revolution is covered) I likened the Boston Massacre to the Rodney King riots. It didn't take long to realize that my kids didn't know what I was talking about, so I did the math. The kids in question had been babes in arms when that happened. It was not a part of their cultural and historical framework. More recently, I have talked about the Prime Minister immediately before the current liberal government (that is, before Crétien.) My kids were not even born when Crétien was elected. It was my first federal election where I was eligible to vote. I remarked on how upset I'd been that Canada got a female Prime Minister for the first time, and we didn't get to elect her. These little ten-year-olds stared at my blankly and mentally relegated me to the age of the dinosaurs.

These kids don't know about the first Bush, or his Gulf War - events that shaped my political awareness. Many of them are familiar with the civil war in Yugoslavia, because that's the reason their families are in Canada. But they themselves were almost all born here, and they know what their parents tell them about that conflict.

So what exactly can I do to make sure that current events and recent history -things within my lifetime - are not left out of my kids' education? I'm not sure - other than to talk about these things, draw the connections, watch them absorb information.

Comments

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

I guess ideally a modern history class starts at an appropriate date and follows up to the current year. If it were me, I might collect a series of newspapers - maybe 100 - one from each month for the past decade or so, and have the students read them in reverse order. Maybe that would give them a sense of scale and the feeling that events you discuss weren't all that far away. It's hard to impress that on a kid who has only lived a decade. A decade seems a lot shorter to me now than it did when I was 6, I know that for sure. Even now, my sense of scale is wobbly. Stuff that happened in the 60s happened not that long ago, yet it was ages ago - 40 years! It's hard for the human mind to get a handle on history no matter what age it is.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

The problem is that we all grow old, and as the relationship of a year to our lifespan shortens, time goes faster and faster....
There is an alternative to growing old, but no-one really fancies it either....;-)

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Hmm...all those current events are in easily accessible periodicals...

Do they already know how to research magazines? I'm not sure how to select subjects, but the idea would be to collect copies of news on a given subject. Something like two articles a year, from five years before they were born to the year they were born.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

This is a good idea, but it presupposes access to magazines. Our school library has absolutely no periodicals. This might be a good project for a grade 10 history class, though.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Re: tanks: October 1970. I was five months old. :) Rambling below:

I think part of the problem (at least, in our school) was outdated textbooks. We missed large chunks of information (at least until Grade 13 Canadian History) regarding the 50s and 60s in Canada. I still know very little about that era, frankly (my parents came here in 1961, so though I do know a bit about what happened after that here in Canada, I know at least as much about Scotland in the first half of the 20th century as I do about Canada -- no doubt many immigrant and first-generation kids have the same kind of experience).

We regularly watched a CBC-produced kids' current affairs show in class (it was called "What's New?" and focused on "who, what, where, when, and why") and did work related to what we learned from it. I think that was in grade 5 and 6. We also did things like watch the first shuttle launch, watch a solar eclipse on TV, have speakers (in grade 1 we had a group of veterans visit for Remembrance Day -- WWI, II, and Korea), read newspaper articles, etc. Bringing history into the context of current events really made a difference. When Rene Levesque and the PQ first won Quebec, we studied the history of French Canada (the Acadians, the Plains of Abraham, the Metis Rebellion -- esp. in terms of how it polarized English and French Canadians, conscription, etc.) to try to gain some understanding of why they'd want to separate from the rest of Canada.

Part of the problem may be that, yes, we're so used to speaking to people of our own generation (or older) about various historical events, that it's hard to remember that kids have no clue. I have friends who were born in the late 70s and early 80s with whom I can't have certain discussions, because they just don't get it. Cold War? Nuclear threat? No clue. Some are more informed, true. But regardless, to them, it's history. To me, it was current events. They don't know what it is to wonder every single day whether the world's going to blow up. :(

I think context is important. If you can relate today to yesterday and to their own lives and experience somehow, it's all more likely to sink in than it is when read in isolation. Hands-on projects, plays, historical field trips (local museums and such), creative writing (placing themselves into a certain place and time), interactive stuff, A/V, etc. Bringing in speakers, people who were there or historical interpreters or museum outreach staff (who can do things like bring in items that relate to the period in question). Encouraging kids to do family history -- as far back as possible -- is good, too. One of the most memorable projects I ever did in school involved family history -- I brought in photos of my great-great-grandparents and did a family tree, one girl brought a quilt her great-grandmother had made, some of the Native kids brought in beadwork and sculpture their grandparents had made, and so on. It was fun for everyone, both to share their own family history, and to explore that of others.

Also, this may be a good time of year to relate history to science by planting heirloom flowers and vegetables. I don't necessarily mean on school grounds, but they can plant seeds in coffee cups with vermiculite in them (better to get that in a large bag, if possible, it's cheaper and reusable) so that even the prissy ones don't get too dirty. They can watch them grow, learn about the history of farming, and then when the seedlings are big enough, they can pot them up if they don't have a yard at home, or stick them outside in the ground if they do.

Straight book-learning of history is far too boring, dry, and irrelevant to most kids. Much more fun to get them to stick their hands into the past. Provided it doesn't cost too much, of course (donations! volunteers! yay!). :)

[collie13.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Spain we learned Western European geography. Then we moved back to the US, and I found out I'd missed the US geography class and we were now starting on US history. To this day, I still have a terrible time with maps of my native country ("where did you say Missouri was? Isn't that too far to the west?!"), but I can rattle off most of Western Europe with ease. :)

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

All I know of US geography (being UK born bred and raised over half a century) I learnt from Western Movies.
Thus I know Denver is the state capital of Colorado. Where the Grand Canyon is? And there is a Benson, Arizona.

*sings* What did Delaware, boy, What did Delaware? She wore a brand New Jersey,......

[collie13.livejournal.com]

LOL, and yay! I'm not the only lost one in the US! ;)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I have never studied U.S. geography specifically, but years of reading American stuff and watching American TV have given me a pretty good idea where things are. If you asked me the state capitals and more or less what section of the country things were in, I could tell you correctly most of the time. I, too, am much better at Europe, but then, I've spent considerably more time in Europe than I have in the States. France, especially. I can't tell you which direction Rotterdam is from Amsterdam, but I know they're both in the Netherlands and what kind of terrain to expect there. Ditto with most of the countries I haven't actually visited yet. (My list of things to do the next time I go to Europe is very long. )