December 12, 2007
Our friends and benefactors at the Bill of Rights Institute put up a great branch of their site, Founders Online. A grant from the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation made the project possible.
Check it out:
John Adams | Samuel Adams | Alexander Hamilton | Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson | James Madison | GeorgeMason | Gouverneur Morris
James Otis | Thomas Paine | George Washington | John Witherspoon
This page should be a first stop for your students doing biographies on any of these people, and it should be a test review feature for your classes that they can do on the internet at home, or in class if you’re lucky enough to have access in your classroom.
Good on-line sources are still too rare. This is stuff you can trust to be accurate and appropriate for your students. Send a note of thanks to the Bill of Rights Institute, and send your students to the site.
Just in time for Bill of Rights Day, December 15 . . .
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1787, 1789, Accuracy, Ben Franklin, Civil Rights, Classroom technology, Declaration of Independence, Education, Famous quotes, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, George Washington, Heroes, Historic documents, History, James Madison, John Adams, On-line education, On-line learning, Student projects, Technology in the classroom, Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: Bill of Rights, Constitution, Education, founders, History, Lesson plans, Politics | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
December 10, 2007
December 15th is Bill of Rights Day, a tradition since Franklin Roosevelt first declared it in 1941.
It falls on Saturday this year — which means teachers can choose whether to commemorate it Friday, or next Monday, or on both days. It marks the date of the approval of the Bill of Rights, in 1790.
Texas requires social studies teachers to spend a day on the Constitution. The law isn’t well enforced, but Bill of Rights Day might be a good time to fill the legal duty in your classrooms.
The Bill of Rights Institute offers lesson plans and supporting materials (see “Instructional Materials” in the left column). Below the fold I copy a list from the Institute’s webpage on Bill of Rights Day.
More material here, and the National Archives material can be reached here.
_____________
* The ides is merely the middle of the month. Of course you thought of Shakespeare’s witch warning Julius Caesar to “beware the ides of March.” In this case, we can celebrate the ides of December — Hanukkah mostly gone, Christmas, Eid and KWANZAA on the way.
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3 Comments | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, Historic documents, Human Rights, Lesson plans, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, History, Law, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
November 22, 2007
Thanksgiving? Texas had it first. No kidding (unless you count the Vinlanders, who probably were grateful to be out of Greenland, but left no records that they ever actually had a feast to say so — but see the comments in the posts linked at various places).
Mrs. Bathtub is in the hospital. Nothing major, but it appears the staff who should have signed her out yesterday all headed off for Turkey Day and may not return until mid-December, so Mrs. Bathtub languishes at the expense of the insurance companies because security is tight and there are only enough sheets to get her down two stories, and she’s on the third floor (and the people-with-unknown-fathers at the hospital have sealed the door to the balcony anyway — that’s got to get you thinking). So Mr. Bathtub is frantically reading the back of the Libby’s Pumpkin can, and you can imagine what antics are up in the kitchen today. Blogging will be sparse.
So it’s reprise post stuff, mostly, today. If you need more, go here:
Here’s the main reprise post, text below (there were some good comments last year); Margaritas and nachos do sound good, don’t they?
___________________________
Patricia Burroughs has the story — you New Englanders are way, way behind.
Palo Duro Canyon during inversion, Winter 2001, site in 1541 of the first Thanksgiving celebration in what would become the United States. Go here: www.visitamarillotx.com/Gallery/index3.html, and here: www.tpwd.state.tx.us/park/paloduro/
Update, 11/27/2006: Great post here, “Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving.”
_______________________
Resources for 2007:
- The Butcher Carves a Turkey, video from the New York Times
- History.com ignores Texas, giving a good rundown of the old shibboleths about Pilgrims, etc., with some regard for accuracy (See the “Top 10 Myths” post above, from History News Network, too)
- Dates for Thanksgiving in the U.S. through 2013
- Canadians, claiming to have beaten the Plymouth Colony to Thanksgiving by 43 years, hold their Thanksgiving feast in October, to get all the good turkeys, I suppose, or at least the drumsticks (Canada’s Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October)
- Rachel Carson is often blamed for it, but she had nothing to do with the U.S. Department of Agriculture ban on cranberries in 1959 (Carson’s Silent Spring wasn’t published for another three years) [regular readers know why this is noted here]
- Cranberries are loaded with antioxidants, and other stuff from The Cranberry Institute
- ABC’s Good Morning America 2007 story on harvesting cranberrys
- The Food Network on stuffing
- Post explaining the real, legal and historical meaning of the Mayflower Compact — no, it doesn’t mean the U.S. is a Christian Nation.
- George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, from the Library of Congress
- Smithsonian Institution says the Cherokees beat Texas to it, and Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t proclaim it
- James Madison issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation in April 1815, as the War of 1812 was winding down — this was the last such proclamation until 1862
- Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation
- Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving up a week, for economic (“shopping”) reasons: 1939, the Year of Two Thanksgivings — from the Marist Institute, with images of original documents
- Who was first between Plymouth and Jamestown? No, the pilgrims did not tie their ship to Plymouth Rock; no, the Prudential logo is the Rock of Gibraltar, not Plymouth . . . and more travel stuff, from today’s New York Times.
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1 Comment | Abraham Lincoln, DBQ sources, Fly your flag today, Food history, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Historic documents, History, James Madison, Rachel Carson, Separation of church and state, Texas history, Thomas Jefferson, Travel | Tagged: food, Historic documents, History, Thanksgiving, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
November 12, 2007
Your classes are gearing up for the competition, no?
Alfie Kohn might not like the idea of competition in history. In a state famous for competition in almost everything, but most famous for athletic competitions to the detriment of academics, I find great appeal in a contest that requires kids to find, analyze and write history.
Then the students get together to present and discuss history — and usually about 60 Texas kids go on to the National History Day festival. (Details here from the Texas State Historical Association)
Q. What is Texas History Day?
A. Texas History Day, a part of the National History Day program, is a yearlong education program that culminates in an annual state-level history fair for students in grades six through twelve. It provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate their interest in, and knowledge of, history through creative and original papers, performances, documentaries, individual interpretive web sites, or three-dimensional exhibits.
Over the course of the school year, students research and produce a History Day entry, the results of which are presented at a regional competition in early spring. From there, some students advance to the state fair in May, or even to the national contest held each June at the University of Maryland at College Park. At each level of competition, outstanding achievement may be recognized through certificates, medals, trophies, or monetary awards. The most important rewards are the skills and insight that students acquire as they move through the History Day program.
As many as 33,000 young Texans are involved in the program at the regional and state level each year. More than 900 students participate in Texas History Day, and approximately 60 students represent Texas at National History Day each year.
The 2008 National History Day Theme is “Conflict and Compromise in History.”
Texas has 23 regions for preliminary rounds. Details here. A list of sample topics for Texas students should give lots of good ideas.
The topics and the papers promise a lot. These projects could make good lesson plans. (Who publishes the winning entries? I have not found that yet.)
Don’t forget the Texas History Day T-shirt Design Contest — entries are due by December 14, 2007.
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3 Comments | Capturing history, Education, Historic documents, History, Lesson plans, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Texas history | Tagged: Education, History, National History Day, Teaching, Texas history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
November 7, 2007
Mario Capecchi’s story of his mother’s arrest by the Gestapo, and his life on the streets of Italy as a young boy, only piqued interest in the story of his winning a Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, earlier this year.
It is such a great story, people set out to write it down in detail. Some of the details discovered, however, don’t quite square with historical records.
A group of reporters with the Associated Press uncovered the discrepancies. Realizing that the story comes from the memory of a very young child, so far the headlines and the stories have been corrective, but gently and adoringly so.
The story Capecchi has told repeatedly over the years in speeches and interviews begins when he is 3 and the Gestapo, Adolf Hitler’s secret police, snatch his mother before his very eyes and dispatch her to Dachau concentration camp. The peasant family that takes him in abandons him and he spends four years wandering about northern Italy – a street urchin, alone and begging for food.
At war’s end – on the boy’s ninth birthday – mother and son are reunited in the hospital ward where he is being treated for malnutrition and typhoid. They set sail for America where he flourishes, embarks on a brilliant research career – and goes on to win the Nobel Prize for medicine.
But The Associated Press, which set out to chronicle his extraordinary story in greater detail, has uncovered several inconsistencies and unanswered questions, chief among them whether his mother was in Dachau, and whether he really was for a long time a homeless street child.
You can read the full story at The Salt Lake Tribune.
This is a classic case. Memory differs from the facts. Human minds fill in details that would otherwise leave a mystery, and the details filled in differ from the details that can be corroborated.
This is part of what keeps history lively.
We see here also a demonstration that there is much we can never really know for sure. Historians work from imperfect records in the best of circumstances.
The director of the Dachau Memorial, Barbara Distel, said women weren’t imprisoned at Dachau until September 1943 – more than two years after Capecchi says his mother was arrested. She also said only Jewish women from eastern Europe were held in Dachau’s satellite camps.
”I do remember – I remember the Gestapo coming to the Wolfsgruben chalet,” Capecchi told AP in the interview, conducted days after his Nobel Prize was announced. ”It’s sort of like a photograph. I can tell you how many people were in the room, which ones were in uniform and which ones weren’t. Just boom. It’s there.”
Pressed to explain how he could be certain he was just 3 1/2 at the time and remember it so clearly, he stood by his account.
The big question we want answered here is this: How can we get more great people like Mario Capecchi? Can we get a few Nobelists out of the current generation of children?
No one proposes revisiting war to make kids great, so the fascination with Capecchi’s childhood is more academic, if still for inspiration.
In the end, we have a mystery. How did Capecchi get to be such a great man? There remains that great chapter near the end of the book; early chapters are missing.
Perhaps AP could put a team of reporters on a story to explain exactly how Capecchi’ s research explains what it does, and what it means down the road. That’s a story that needs to be told, too.
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2 Comments | Accuracy, Capturing history, Heroes, Historic documents, History, Research, Science, World War II | Tagged: Biography, History, Mario Capecchi, Nobel Prize in Medicine, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
October 31, 2007
Chris Rodda has a bee in her bonnet about wacky claims about early U.S. government and Christianity — same bee I get on occasion (hence the famous phrase, “busy bee”).
At Talk to Action, Chris dissects one of the more odd and arcane claims of people like the late D. James Kennedy, that Thomas Jefferson tried to import a group of Calvinist seminarians to make the University of Virginia a religious institution. Kennedy’s claim is voodoo history at its most voodoo.
There are two things wrong with Kennedy’s claim. The first is the time frame. Jefferson did consider a proposal to move the Geneva Academy to the United States, but this was in 1794 and 1795, thirty years before the University of Virginia opened. The second is that, although the Geneva Academy was originally founded by John Calvin in 1559 as theological seminary, by the late 1700s it had been transformed into an academy of science. The plan considered by Jefferson was not to import a religious school. It was to import a group of Europe’s top science professors.
This one is so obscure I have heard it only a couple of times. I’m not sure if that’s because it is so far outside the world of reality that even most victims of these hoaxes recognize it, or if it just hasn’t gotten traction yet.
Jefferson’s relationship with religious instruction in higher education really never varied. When he was a member of the governing board of the College of William and Mary, the board of visitors, he successfully campaigned to rid the college of preachers in teaching positions, and with the money saved, he got lawyers hired to instruct in other topics instead. In his design for the University of Virginia, he most carefully left out religious instruction from the curriculum, and from the space of the university. Since he shared this view of religion in education with James Madison, Madison followed through on keeping the University of Virginia as an institution of learning and not religious indoctrination.
So, how could someone with the research chops claimed by the late Rev. Kennedy get this stuff so exactly wrong? He relied on an old hoaxer, Mark A. Beliles. Why could a scholar like Kennedy could be sucked in by such a clear and blatant hoax? Bogus history seemed to attract him like seagulls to and overturned hot dog cart.
Read it, and gain enlightenment on the facts, if not on the motivations of Rev. Kennedy.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
September 21, 2007
Go to the University of Florida Smathers Library site, and admire the beauty of these old maps of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. (While I think fair use would cover it, I’m holding back on posting an image until copyright permission comes through — you’re licensed to use them in the classroom, however.)
What else would you expect from a library named after Sen. George A. Smathers, who was part of that legendary 1950 Senate campaign in Florida?
The maps featured on the first page include Spanish, Dutch, English, Belgian, French and Italian maps of the early explorers, suitable certainly for Texas history courses, and also for Florida, Louisiana and U.S. history units on European exploration.
This site is quite Florida-centric, but it’s links also provide some interesting and valuable resources, such as the link to satellite imagery of the areas, like the NOAA map, below.
Tip of the old scrub brush to A Cracker Boy Looks at Florida
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Posted by Ed Darrell
September 14, 2007
Are you ready for it, teachers?
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Leave a Comment » | 1789, Curricula, Historic documents, History, Lesson plans, TEKS, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 9, 2007
Get ready.
Constitution Day is September 17, 2007. It’s the anniversary of the day in 1787 when 39 men signed their names to the proposed Constitution of the United States of America, to send it off to the Continental Congress, who was asked to send it to specially convened meetings of citizens of the 13 states for ratification. When and if nine of the former colonies ratified it, it would become the document that created a federal government for those nine and any of the other four who joined.
For Texas, the requirement to commemorate the Constitution was changed to “Celebrate Freedom Week” effective 2003. This week is expected to coincide with the week that includes national Veterans Day, November 11. School trustees may change to a different week. (See § 74.33 of the Texas Education Code) Texas does require students to recite a section from the Declaration of Indpendence. (Recitation is highlighted below the fold.)
Knowledge of the Constitution is abysmal, according to most surveys. Students are eager to learn the material, I find, especially when it comes presented in interesting ways, in context of cases that interest the students. The trick is to find those things that make the Constitution interesting, and develop the lesson plans. Some classes will be entertained by Schoolhouse Rock segments; some classes will dive into Supreme Court cases or other serious issues, say the legality of torture of “enemy combatants” or warrantless domestic surveillance. Some classes will like both approaches, on the same day.
Texas teachers have two months to get ready for Celebrate Freedom Week. Constitution Day is just a week away for anyone who wants to do something on September 17.
Sources you should check out:
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4 Comments | 1787, 1789, Bill of Rights, Government, Historic documents, History, Icons of history, James Madison, Lesson plans, Supreme Court cases, TAKS, TEKS, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 4, 2007
Irony sometimes means happy surprises. Cuneiform on the world wide web?
The University of California system is working hard to deliver important information to scholars on the web. One of these projects is the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). Here is the official desription:
The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) represents the efforts of an international group of Assyriologists, museum curators and historians of science to make available through the internet the form and content of cuneiform tablets dating from the beginning of writing, ca. 3350 BC, until the end of the pre-Christian era. We estimate the number of these documents currently kept in public and private collections to exceed 500,000 exemplars, of which now more than 200,000 have been catalogued in electronic form by the CDLI.
Some of the photos demonstrate the beauty of everyday history and archaeology. These are instructional photos, but some are works of art. Examples of drawings of the writing are available, which can be used in the classroom to show students what the writing looks like.
The image here is described: The tablet . . . (Cornell 78)
contains an inscription of the Old Babylonian king Sinkashid of Warka/Erech (ca. 1800 BC). (copyright by Cornell University Library)
Translated:
| Obv. |
| |
1 |
{d}suen-ga-szi-id |
“Sinkashid, |
| |
2 |
nita kal-ga |
strong man, |
| |
3 |
lugal unu{ki}-ga |
king of Uruk, |
| |
4 |
lugal am-na-nu-um |
king of Amnanum, |
| Rev. |
| |
|
e2-gal |
his palace |
| |
|
nam-lugal-la-ka-ni |
of kingship |
| |
|
mu-du3 |
did build.” |
Some sites in CDLI allow searches by topic. Students, consider these school tablets, and thank your lucky stars, inventors and the trees for paper and ink. Can you imagine lugging these things in a backpack?
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Posted by Ed Darrell
September 2, 2007
Barbara Jordan’s voice was distinctive, and commanding. “The voice of God,” Molly Ivins called it. After Jordan’s death, Francis X. Cline wrote what might be an even higher tribute, saying her voice was “as though Winston Churchill had been reincarnated as a black woman from Texas.” She spoke in complete paragraphs, usually, with words that seemed selected carefully to fit exactly the ideas she presented.
How delightful, then, to read (and perhaps to actually hear) Barbara Jordan describe her fear of stammering in her first meeting with President Lyndon Johnson. The LBJ Library in Austin has a series of oral histories, including this one:
I went up to what I now know was the Cabinet Room. There were other people assembled, people who were active in the civil rights movement. We sat and waited around a table for the President and the Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, to arrive. Well, as I sat there really at the far end of the table, I still said to myself, “Now, Lyndon Johnson probably doesn’t know who I am or what I am about, and my name probably just slipped in somehow and got into that [list].” So the President came in, everybody stood up. He sat down, we all sat down, and we started to discuss this legislation, fair housing legislation. And the conversation was going around the table. The President would call on first one person for a reaction and then another person for a reaction. Then he stopped and he looked at my end of the table, he said, “Barbara, what do you think?” Well, I just . . . in the first place, I’m telling you, I didn’t know the President knew me, and here he’s looking down here saying “Barbara” and then saying, “What do you think?” So that was my first exchange with Lyndon Johnson. I’m startled. I got myself organized, of course, not so that I wouldn’t stammer, since it is not my habit to stammer when talking, and I gave a response and then this conversation ensued.
That was my first contact personally with Lyndon Johnson.
The glories of oral histories. How can you use this in the classroom?
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9 Comments | Barbara Jordan, Capturing history, DBQ sources, Heroes, Historic documents, History, History audio sources, History museums, Lyndon B. Johnson | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 27, 2007
[This post has been edited to correct links to go to their new URLs, I hope. Please note in comments any links that don’t work.]
Some are Boojums is back — that’s good news for truth seekers, science error debunkers and historians who care about accuracy.
Masthead photo for Jim Easter’s blog, Some Are Boojums
Some are Boojums author Jim Easter guts the anti-Rachel Carson case in his relaunch post.
Pay particular attention to what Jim writes in conclusion:
That’s right. The 1972 DDT ban did nothing to restrict the chemical’s use against malaria, but had the effect of eliminating the single most intense source of selection pressure for insecticide resistance in mosquitoes. As the rest of the world followed suit in restricting agricultural use of DDT, the spread of resistance was slowed dramatically or stopped. By this single action, William Ruckelshaus — and, credit where it’s due, Rachel Carson — may well have saved millions of lives.
Steven Milloy is invited to add that to the DDT FAQ any time it’s convenient.
Particularly notable is Jim’s work to make available the much miscited administrative law ruling by Judge Edmund M. Sweeney. It is now available on-line, so the critics can now provide accurate citations to the decision, if their intent were to inform the public, instead of maligning the truth and misleading the public.
Mr. Easter’s applied history work in this effort is notable. The internet misses much of near-recent history, especially from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Much of today’s political discussion could benefit from information that would be available in libraries, had libraries not suffered from great budget and priorities cuts in the last 20 years. Jim Easter’s contribution to making a more complete record of the history of DDT and the history of the EPA deserves applause.
Save
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4 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Bogus history, Conservation, DDT, Environmental protection, Historic documents, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Bogus history, DBQ, DDT, EPA, Historic documents, Jim Easter, Judge Edmund Sweeney, Rachel Carson, Some Are Boojums | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 25, 2007
Jim Easter at Some Are Boojums wondered what it would look like if we assumed in history what creationists claim about biology, geology, paleontology, archaeology and astronomy — “No one alive today was there, so no one can say what happened.”
His detailing of the “10 Questions to Ask Your History Teacher” is a parody of Jonathan Wells’ attempt to get kids to tell biology teachers that biology is hoakum. It’s worth a read again, since the issue heats up again at the Texas State Board of Education.
Get ready, history teachers: Here come the kids with the questions!
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1 Comment | Creationism, Darwin, Ethics, George Washington, Historic documents, History, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 18, 2007
American Presidents, which is a great blog for history and economics teachers and students anyway, hosts the Military History Carnival.
Got a lot of carnival catch up to do. This one should help you focus on polishing lesson plans and getting ideas for student projets.
◊ Tenth century soap opera? It’s a true story. Great background — is this the sort of story that might interest women more?
◊ Waterberg – the first genocide of the 20th century. “Trail of bones.” Largely forgotten — or unknown — history of war in Africa in 1904. I’ll wager you didn’t know about it. It’s not in your world history book.
◊ What do you know about African troops fighting in Europe in World War I? This post, “Forgotten soldiers of the Great War,” is guaranteed to make World War I more relevant to your African-related students.
◊ Are you really prepared to explain the significance of the Battle of Shiloh?
◊ The school’s network went down and took your PowerPoint presentation on the Spanish Armada. What to do? Here’s some help — the PowerPoint slides you’re missing, perhaps.
◊ History is Elementary is represented by a great post about camouflage in war, particularly World War I. This is a wonderful foundation for a lesson plan that deals with non-electronic technology — and as a sidelight, this is the sort of topic where the hunters among your students will be able to provide five or six examples of modern versions, with detailed explanations about the best places to use them. (You should read the post even if it’s out of your area; it’s a fascinating mashup of art, modern art, botany, zoology, psychology and war.)
There is a magnanimous link to the Bathtub’s post on panoramic photos of World War II sites.
And a lot more. Go see.
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3 Comments | 1861-1865, 1914-1918, 1941-1945, Capturing history, Civil War, Famous Battles, Geography - Physical, Heroes, Historic documents, History, War, War of 1812, World War I, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 15, 2007
August 15, 1945, was VJ Day — the day that World War II ended in the Pacific Theatre. VJ is an acronym for Victory Japan. Victory in Europe, VE Day, was declared the previous April.
VJ Day is affiliated with a series of images that students of U.S. history should recognize; these images tell much of the story of the day and the events of the weeks leading up to it.
The most famous image is Alfred Eisenstadt’s photograph of an exuberant sailor kissing a swept-off-her-feet- for-the-moment nurse in Times Square, New York City. This is one of the most famous photographs from the most famous photographer from Life Magazine:
Eisenstadt coolly titled his photo “VJ Day, Times Square.” It came to be known as The Smack Seen ‘Round the World. It was fitting that the photo would be taken by Eisenstadt, since his work came to be a symbol of Henry Luce’s Life Magazine in a pre-television era when photography magazines like Life and Look were key news organs for the nation.
In a fun and continuing mystery, several people have claimed to be the sailor, or the nurse, through the years.
Before the victory celebration, there had to be a victory. Japan asked for conditional surrender discussions, but the Allied forces insisted on unconditional surrender. Japanese military officials were rather certain that, if the Soviet Union entered the Pacific War, Allied victory would be assured. Japan hoped to either get a conditional surrender agreement, according to some sources, or inflict heavy losses on Allied forces to get better surrender conditions, but before Russia entered the war. Russia and Japan had long-standing grudges against one another dating from before their earlier war in the first decade of the 20th century.
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12 Comments | 1941-1945, Atomic Bomb, Historic documents, History, History audio sources, Lesson plans, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 