Category Archives: history

Musing About History

Education, history, thinking out loud, William and Mary

I have been doing more blogging over at In One Place, my mostly about reading blog. I’m participating in the 75-book-challenge at LibraryThing so I’ve been reading a lot in varied areas. Two recent books made comments that struck me as connected to ideas about education. These are not fleshed out ideas, but rather gut reactions: thinking out loud. Here’s the first one…

The Age of Chivalryis a National Geographic Book about the middle ages, moving from 300 to 1450 AD. The last essay in the book focuses on the Hanseatic League, which I certainly don’t remember from my history courses. Thank goodness for Wikipedia! There is a photo of the Cologne cathedral, which took nearly 600 years to complete (1248 – 1880) with a 300-year break in the work. I was struck by the sense of history, of shared community over time that led people to finish the work of their ancestors. I was reminded that each day I walk on a 300-year-old campus, literally in the steps of American giants. I’m not sure my beloved institution is joining the 21st century as quickly as I would like but they may feel a responsibility for defending those three centuries of tradition.

And that may not be a completely terrible thing. I don’t think our contemporary culture values the lessons of history or the connections created by shared traditions enough. Instead, we see them as outdated, old fashioned even. The builders in Cologne didn’t tear down the medieval cathedral; instead, they added to it, following the original plans but using updated building techniques. Even into the 21st century, Cologne is preserving history, deciding in 2005 to ban development around the cathedral. I know that some people see it as a monument to an oppressive, unappealing past and would be happy to leave it behind, but tradition and history still has something to offer, including beautiful monuments to the beliefs of our ancestors.

Dumbed Down History?

history

I should preface this post by saying that I am not a professional historian. I am an amateur history buff, however, mostly interested in early English history from the Norman Conquest through the Elizabethan era. Right now, I’m also dabbling in American history, specifically the Revolutionary War and its aftermath. I am happy to learn about this history through a variety of medium: mostly books and movies. They can be fiction or nonfiction but they must tell a good story. I think we do a real disservice to historical times by trying to summarize them in textbooks. When I watched the John Adams series with my parents, my mother commented that if she had learned about history in this way, through telling it as a good story, she probably would have found it much more interesting than all the name and date memorizing to which she was subjected. And, at least two of my dissertation study participants who were history teachers complained that the history standards tend to be fact-based and thus seem to sap all the energy and excitement out of what should be very good stories.

As part of my fascination with English history, I’ve been watching the Showtime series, The Tudors. I’ve written about it before on my personal blog, labeling it as a guilty pleasure that plays a bit fast and loose with the historical record. The show’s producers do not deny this and, in fact, encourage viewers to identify those inaccuracies and post them to a wiki. The wiki also has a page devoted to Tudor historians and their impressions of the show, most of which are very bad. They call it entertaining fluff, spiced up with lots of sex, and a dumbed down version of history specifically designed to appeal to ignorant Americans. I would agree with the first two (lots and lots of sex, folks, so be warned) but I’m not sure I agree with the last one.

Henry VIII ArmorThe series does take liberties–Henry, played by the very attractive Jonathan Rys Meyers–never seems to age even though he would have been close to 50 when he married Katherine Howard. In addition, they made the choice not to have Henry get fat, which he certainly did, weighing possibly 300 pounds. Characters are combined together or even made up. There are anachronisms in terms of language and costumes and the sex is mostly gratuitous but this is television after all. However, for a professional historian, I’m sure it’s problematic.

But the essential facts are there: Henry married six wives in his quest for an heir. He had no qualms about ridding himself of advisers like Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell when their views differed from him or he otherwise perceived that they had failed him. He reigned over the English Reformation and began the Church of England. The series spends some time on the development of the Six Articles, which, as Cromwell points out, affirm Catholic ideas such as transubstantiation. Henry brutally put down the uprisings in the North related to his dissolution of the monasteries, something which is also covered in the series. I don’t see any dumbing down there.

Which gets back to my original point…the series tells the very intriguing and exciting story of the reign of Henry VIII. It is interesting enough that it may appeal to people who have otherwise found history to be a dry recitation of facts. And that may lead them to doing some of their own investigating. Luckily, the web is filled with great resources which I’ll share in another post. Does historical accuracy matter so much? After all, in may cases, historians themselves do not agree on the facts as they are relying on sources that may themselves be suspect depending on the point of view and political agenda of the writer. Here’s where good research skills become essential along with the lesson that we cannot always believe everything we hear, see or read.

Morning Musings

Education, history, New Media, reading, technology, thinking out loud, Twitter

I usually reserve morning blogging for my personal blog, but I have a few tidbits to share.

Netvibes Universe: Finally, Netvibes has created a way to make a public page. Here’s mine. It was fairly simple to move whole tabs between my personal and my public Netvibes.

Twitter Troubles: I follow several blogs by librarians. Remember, I like anything that combines books and the web, and librarians are all about books. Of course, now they are also about all forms of media, but I will always associate them with the big brick building on Duke Street in that housed the Lancaster County Public Library, my first library. I was surprised to find this post from Steven Cohen at Library Stuff about taking a Twitter break after evidently offending someone with his Twitter posts last week. It is a reminder that Twitter is different from bantering with our friends at the bar. It is public and we may not always know all our followers. But, does that mean we have to worry about offending them? If you aren’t happy with my tweets, stop following me. Hmm…another one of those dilemmas of social networking that I think we will each have to work out in our own way. But, at the least, we should be having conversations with our kids about how to use these tools to build stronger relationships.

More Books on the Web: Chris O’Neal and I posted a blog about books and social networking software over at Spiral Notebook. Of course, if you know me, you know that I wrote about LibraryThing. Last evening, I stayed up late to work on planning a trip to England. I was mostly working on the London bit: don’t want to miss any of the famous literary sites like Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey. In poking around, I found a great website called “Get London Reading.” The goal of the program, which began in 2006, is to get Londoners to connect to the literary past of their own city. They produced a lively, well-written “Rough Guide” to the London literary life. It includes information about the authors that have called the city home and also highlights books that have drawn their settings from London. I spent a very fruitful few hours reading it, wishing I had more time to read, and putting markers on my London map. I also wished, just for a moment, that I was back in the high school English classroom where I could incorporate Google Maps into our study of English literature.

Here’s the map so far:


View Larger Map

American Revolution Media Literacy

21st Century Skills, history, Media Literacy

Just a quick post as I’m out the door for a digital storytelling workshop.  Watched John Adams last night and enjoyed it.  It opens with the Boston Massacre and I was reminded of a media literacy lesson that I did with middle schoolers.  We took a look at Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the “massacre.”  Rather than an historically accurate depiction, it is a propaganda piece, designed to further rile up the mobs against the British.  Here’s a good description of the inaccuracies of the picture.

Celebrating the American West

Education, history, technology

Just finished reading The American West by Dee Brown, who is probably best known for Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the classic history of Native Americans. The American West is a collection of short historical pieces roughly organized in chronological order. It reviews much of the Native American history but also covers railroads, cowboys, and the rise and fall of Western towns. I really enjoyed it, despite having a pretty solid knowledge of much that it covers. My husband and I have explored a good bit of the territory that Brown describes, mostly during our Lewis and Clark trip in 1998.

Part of what made The American West so good was the extensive use of photographs and maps. I think history is often a dull subject to students because it the materials tend to text-based, and unless you’ve got an engaging writer like Brown, the endless dates, names and locations can be overwhelming.  For me,  history lives in the stories that Brown tells and those photographs and maps helped flesh out the story for me.

This morning, I sat down to add the book the my LibraryThing catalog and then started poking around the Library of Congress website. What a treasure trove of visual representations! The site covers not just items in the LOC collection but also links to other sites, such as the University of Washington’s online exhibit about the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest. These repositories offer a wealth of materials for the teacher to use but also for digital storytelling projects as well.

I searched the Google maps directory and was surprised that I couldn’t find an overlay about Native Americans or even western history.  What a great project that would be for students who are studying history.  It helps make the link between geography and history.  For instance, the National Park Service has an interactive map for the Battle of Little Bighorn that can be used with Google maps satellite view to better understand the terrain and the battle itself.   I was never very good at deciphering battles from text descriptions so this offers some new understanding.