Article: “Thinking: How Students Learn About the Past”
“…lecturing at students, especially beginning students, was not the most effective method of teaching…“
Throughout the article, there are many options given to history teachers as a way to aid them in their job to get their students to really understand the information being taught in history classes. All of these options have the purpose of getting away from lecturing being the main method of delivery in history classes across America, especially in high schools. The author talking about “beginning students” being the most at risk to lecturing is the most important part of this quote, as it can cause them to quickly lose interest in whatever the material is. Students still in the K-12 system go through the curriculum doing homework every night, having to get grades good enough to pass the standardized tests and move on to the next grade level, where they go through essentially the same process — it becomes extremely repetitive. Our goal as teachers is to provide a variety of creative ways for students to not only learn the material necessary to move through the K-12 system, but to do it in a way that really engages students and allows them to practice the essential skills that history can give to them.
“…students will cling so firmly to their belief in the dominant narrative that they will ignore clear evidence that contradicts what they believe.”
This quote is in reference to students only visualizing the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War due to its prevalence historically, despite there being images and scholarship on people who were pro-war. What really stood out was that this is a concept that never really occurred to me until now. For the example given (the Vietnam War), any time I hear that in a historical context, some of the first images that come to my mind are of the anti-war movement in the 1960s. In high school and college, I had never really thought about the opposite side to this, as the anti-war movement had such a significant impact in congruence with the counterculture movement leading into the 1970s. When you think about, it seems silly that everyone in America during the Vietnam War was against it, as there has never been such a united stance between any group of people during any event in history. This raises the question: how many other parts of history taught in schools are so engulfed by the “dominant narrative” that students don’t even think of exploring other views?
“…the facts do not matter. Historians… care passionately about facts supported by evidence.”
This is the core of every historian’s work, and one that has found its way into the public discourse in this modern technological age. What we’ve learned is that anyone can throw facts out into the world, and because not everyone does their due diligence to ensure what they’ve seen or heard is true, that fact becomes true until someone does the work. False information — in any context — can have disastrous consequences. It would be interesting to see how much evidence is enough to successfully back up a fact, whether it is being proven by a historian or an influencer on Twitter.
