liesmyteacher

Amelia, Sam, Paige, Caitlin, Hana

WHAT WE HAVE SO FAR:

__**I. Introduction**__  A. High School students hate history 1. When students are asked to list their subjects favorite to least, history tends to be at the bottom of the list. 2. When students can, they avoid it, even though most students get higher grades in history than in math, science, or English. 3. Not history itself but traditional American history courses turn students off. B. Teachers 1. Some teachers respond to history by abandoning the overstuffed textbooks and reinventing their American history courses. 2. Too many teachers grow disheartened and settle for less. 3. Gradually they end up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only material that will appear on the next test. 4. In general, college teachers are happy when their students have had significant exposure to the subject before college. But not teachers in history. History professors in college routinely out down high school courses. a. History is the only field in which more courses students take, the stupider they become. C. Us 1. History reveals how we arrived at this point. 2. Understanding our past is central to our ability to understand ourselves and the world around us. __**II. Chapter 1: Handicapped by History**__  A. Helen Keller 1. When asked, students only remember significant things Helen Keller accomplished until she graduated college, whereas she had sixty-four years after that that people omit B. Woodrow Wilson 1. He was the reason racism started __**III. Chapter 2: 1493**__  A. False Information about Christopher Columbus (and why) 1. Many people over-praised Columbus for his “new” African discovery of America, but no one bothered to praise the Vikings or the other explorers who had technically already discovered America previously -The printing press and increased literacy allowed news of Columbus’s findings to travel across Europe much farther and faster than news of the Vikings’ expeditions 2. Even if Columbus had never sailed, other Europeans would’ve soon reached the Americas -So in some ways, Columbus’s voyage was not the first, but the last “discovery” of the Americas -Columbus’s importance: mainly attributable to changing conditions in Europe, not to his having reached a “new” continent 3. Almost everything that most history textbooks recognize as “Columbus’s findings” are either wrong or unverifiable -The authors of history textbooks have taken us on a trip of their own, away from the facts of history, into the realm of myth -We have been “deceived” by an outrageous concoction of lies, half-truths, truths, and omissions that is in large part traceable to the 1st half of the 19th century 4. The accounts in textbooks resemble each other closely, sometimes using the same phrases. Overall, the level of scholarship is discouragingly low, maybe because their authors are more at home in American history than European history. -Ex: They don’t seem to know that the Renaissance was syncretic -Italians combined ideas from India, Greece, Arabs, and other cultures to form something new 5. Question: What is going on here? -Conclusion: We must pay attention to what the textbooks are telling us and what they are NOT telling us 6. Q: Why don’t textbooks mention arms as a facilitator of exploration and domination? Why do they omit most of the foregoing factors? If crude factors such as military power or religiously sanctioned greed are perceived as reflecting badly on us, who exactly is “us”? Who are the textbooks written for (and by)? -A: Plainly, the descendants of the Europeans. THEREFORE, American textbooks promote the belief that the most important developments in world history are traceable to Europe. 7. Something high school students should think about.. -We don’t usually think about the rise of Europe to world domination. It is rarely presented as a question. It seems natural, a given, not something that needs to be explained. But deep down, our culture encourages us to imagine that we are richer and more powerful b/c we’re smarter. BUT there are no studies showing Americans to be more intelligent then, say, Iraqis -Since textbooks don’t identity or encourage us to think about the real causes, “we’re smarter” festers as a possibility, along with the idea that “it’s natural” for one group to dominate another. -The way textbooks treat Columbus reinforces the tendency not to think about the process of domination. The traditional pic of Columbus landing on the American shore shows him dominating immediately, which is true, but they imply that taking the land and dominating the native were inevitable, if not natural. B. Why not just explain the truth to students? 1. Textbooks don’t like controversy -If they allowed for controversy, they could show students which claims rest on strong evidence, which on softer ground. If they challenged students to make their own decisions as to what probably happened, they would also be introducing them to the various methods and forms of evidence (oral history, written records, cultural similarities, linguistic changes, human genetics, pottery, archaeological dating plant migrations) that researchers use to derive knowledge about the distant past -But textbooks seem locked into a rhetoric of certainty and presents history as ANSWERS, not QUESTIONS. 2. New evidence that emerges may confirm or disprove these arrivals as archaeologists, historians, and biologists compare American cultures and life forms with cultures and life forms in Africa, Europe, and Asia. BUT keeping up with such evidence is a lot of work. THEREFORE, to tell about earlier explorers, textbook authors would have to be familiar with sources such as those cited in the three preceding notes. --> CONCLUSION: It’s just easier to just retell the old familiar Columbus story C. Things changed to make things “interesting” (to make a better myth) 1. They got the date right and the names of the ships. Most of the rest they tell us is untrustworthy. 2. Many aspects of Columbus’s life remains a mystery (ex: where he was from, his class background, where Columbus thought he was going) 3. Even Columbus’s death has been changed to make a better story -Lie: Columbus was sick, poor, and ignorant of his great accomplishment --> tragic end that adds a melodramatic interest -Truth: Columbus died well of and left his heirs well-endowed (with the title “Admiral of the Ocean Sea”) & his journal clearly shows that he knew he had reached a “new” continent. 4. Made the trip seem longer than it was 5. Textbooks describe Columbus’s ships as tiny and inefficient when they were actually fully suited to his purpose 6. Several textbooks exaggerate the crew’s complaints into a near-mutiny D. Overall Conclusions: -Our point isn’t idle. Words are VERY important (esp. words phrased in textbooks) b/c they can influence, and in some cases rationalize. -Perhaps worst of all, when textbooks paint simplistic portraits of heroic people like Columbus, they provide feel-good history that BORES everyone.

__**IV. Chapter 3: The Truth About the First Thanksgiving**__  A. Spanish Settlement 1. Starting the story of America’s settlement with the Pilgrims leaves out both the Indians and the Spanish 2. First non-native settlers in the U.S. were African slaves left in South Carolina by Spanish in 1526 3. 1565-1568: Spaniards explored the Carolinas and built forts that were burned by Indians 4. Late 1500s: Spanish Jews were the first pilgrims who settled in New Mexico to escape religious persecution

B. Disease 1. 1617: Pandemic spread in southern New England a. Could have been bubonic plague, viral hepatitis, smallpox, chicken pox, or influenza b. In three years, 90-96 percent of the population was wiped out 2. 93 epidemics among Native Americans 1520-1918 a. 41 eruptions of smallpox, 4 of bubonic plague, 15 of measles, 10 of influenza, 25 tuberculosis, diptheria, typhus, chloera, etc.

C. Pilgrims 1. Only numbered 35 out of 102 settlers on the Mayflower 2. The Mayflower Compact did not establish the world’s oldest republic (San Marino in 301 AD, Iceland in 930, and Switzerland in 1300) 3. Squanto learned English when an English captain stole him in 1605 a. Squanto returned to Massachusetts with help from Ferdinando Gorges b. 1614: slave raider sold him into slavery in Malaga, Spain c. Escaped from Spain and walked to England. d. 1619: talked Thomas Dermer into giving him a ride to Cape Cod e. Walked back to his village of Patuxet, but everyone died of epidemic