Sutherland’s “Americana” cartoons

August 13, 2006

I stumbled across Bibi’s Box, a blog that appears to be devoted to finding videos available on the internet. Bibi wrote about John Sutherland, a producer for Walt Disney who struck out on his own in 1944. He became famous, or infamous, for doing cartoons for hire that capitalist enterprises wanted to make available for schools.

Some of us Baby Boomers will recognize almost every one of these films. Film distribution was always problematic back then, before Federal Express or UPS and overnight air delivery to almost anywhere in the world, and back when 16-mm film projectors were often old, cranky monsters that defied the most tech-savvy teachers to make a film dance on a screen. Consequently, to increase the circulation, many of these films also ended up in the afternoon cartoon fests that local television stations ran for “kiddies.”

The images are rich. There are time-bound charicatures of middle-class Americans, and full use of other American iconography. In a 1948 film, “Make Mine Freedom,” Sutherland’s film shows a Member of Congress dressed as a southern politician (though without an accent), the labor representative in denim overalls, the capitalist factory boss with a cigar and morning coat with striped pants, and the farmer in stereotypical straw hat. In a later scene, some of the characters parade in a “Spirit of ’76” fashion, with drum, fife and flag, across the Lincoln Memorial.

Some of the images are corny, but they are rich mines for classroom use, where the images form powerful mnemonic devices for kids who don’t know the history of that era. I have used chunks of “Schoolhouse Rock” for individual study on specific areas — last year I required high school history students to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution, and the “Schoolhouse Rock” version helped enormously. Sutherland’s films could be as useful, in certain topics.

In any case, Bibi has links to more than a dozen of Sutherland’s cartoon films.

If you find a good use for one, please let me know.

2 Comments | Cold War, Curricula, Economics, Education, History, History video sources, Lesson plans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Berlin Wall’s 45th

August 13, 2006

August 13, 2006, is the 45th “anniversary” of the erection of the Berlin Wall, the totem of the Cold War that came down in 1989, pushing the end of the Cold War. Residents of Berlin awoke on this day in 1961 to find the communist government of East Germany erecting what would become a 96-mile wall around the “western quarters” of the city — not so much to lay siege to the westerners (that had been tried in 1948, frustrated by the Berlin Airlift) as to keep easterners from “defecting” to the West. The Brandenburg Gate was closed on August 14, and all crossing points were closed on August 26.

From 1961 through 1991 1989, teachers could use the Berlin wall as a simple and clear symbol for the differences between the communist Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union and her satellite states, and the free West, which included most of the land mass of Germany, England, France, Italy, the United States and other free-market nations — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries. I suspect most high school kids today know very little about the Wall, why it was there, and what its destruction meant, politically.

This era of history is generally neglected in high school. Many courses fail to go past World War II; in many courses the Cold War is in the curriculum sequenced after the ACT, SAT and state graduation examinations, so students and teachers have tuned out.

But the Wall certain had a sense of drama to it that should make for good lessons. When I visited the wall, in early 1988, late at night, there were eight fresh wreaths honoring eight people who had died trying to cross the Wall in the previous few weeks (in some places it was really a series of walls with space in between to make it easier for the East German guards to shoot people trying to escape) — it’s an image I never forget. Within a year after that, East Germans could travel through Hungary to visit the West, and many “forgot” to return. Within 18 months the wall itself was breached.

The Wall was a great backdrop for speeches, too — President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin in June 1963, and expressed his solidarity with the walled-in people of both West and East Berlin, with the memorable phrase, “Ich bin ein Berliner,“ which produced astounding cheers from the tens of thousands who came to hear him. There are a few German-to-English translators who argue that some of the reaction was due to the fact that “Berliner” is also an idiomatic phrase in Berlin for a bakery confection like a jelly doughnut — so Kennedy’s words were a double entendre that could mean either “I am a citizen of Berlin,” or “I am a jelly doughnut.”  [Be sure to see the comments below, from Vince Treacy (9/28/2010).]  Ronald Reagan went to the same place Kennedy spoke to the Berlin Wall, too, to the Brandenburg Gate, in his famous June 1987 speech which included a plea to the Soviet Union’s Premier Mikhail Gorbachev: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Construction of the Berlin Wall, photol collected by Corey S. Hatch

Construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 –photo from University of Utah, by Corey Hatch.

Update March 9, 2007: Berlin Airlift information and lesson plans are available from the Truman Library, here, here and here.

Update November 9, 2009: Notes on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall

Please share this post:

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

27 Comments | Cold War, Democracy, Economics, Famous quotes, Free market economics, Freedom - Political, Geography - Political, History | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Preserving history, for veterans

August 13, 2006

Subsunk over at Blackfive has a question he asks soldiers returning from Iraq. It’s a great question, one that should be asked of every returning soldier.

This is a reminder that history is not just what the academic historians say it is. History is the story of the people who were there, recorded by anyone. You can do your bit for history, too. Go read Blackfive’s post, and think seriously about asking others a similar question. Then record and publish the answer.

We know a lot more about Thomas Jefferson’s views on matters than George Washington, but not because reporters and historians covered Jefferson better. Jefferson wrote it all down, and preserved it, for future generations. Even much of the embarrassing stuff. Washington was much more reserved, often recording in his diary only the weather for the day.

Such recording is, ultimately, the beginning of real civilization. We have a duty to make records to preserve our own memories, and to provide lights for those who follow us — either lights on the path, or lighthouses warning of the rocks.

Blackfive’s question: “What did you do over there that you are proudest of?”

1 Comment | Current History, History, Iraq | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

God we trust, to Girard we owe

August 12, 2006

Steel engraving of Stephen Girard, with his signature, by Alonzo Chappel,

Steel engraving of Stephen Girard, the man who personally saved the United States, with his signature, by Alonzo Chappel,”National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans from original full length portraits by Alonzo Chappel” Vol I, New York: Johnson, Fry & Co. 1862 “The Cooper Collections” via Wikipedia

Irony strikes the White House.

I mean, you can’t really make stuff like this up.

To be sure, the humor is quite Santayanaesque — if you don’t know the history, you won’t see the irony.

President Bush issued a proclamation noting the 50th anniversary of one of our national mottoes, “In God We Trust.” No big deal, these presidential proclamations. Note the occasion, say it’s worth commemorating, urge citizens to commemorate it “appropriately.”

Somebody in the White House communications commissariat decided to dress it up a little, add some history — you know, pad the proclamation to please the partisan pundits. What better thing to mention than, say, the “Star-Spangled Banner,” our national anthem, which has a line in it, “in God is our trust?” Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | 4th of July, Accuracy, Current History, First Amendment, Freedom - Political, History, Public education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Better history books — tell the story!

August 10, 2006

One of my chief complaints about the history textbooks available in Texas is that they are, ultimately, dull. They don’t sing. The narrative quality suffers. To meet Texas standards publishers make sure to pack the chapters with facts and factoids. But students have a difficult time figuring out what the story is, why the story is important, and why they should care. One way I know things are working in my class is when kids tell me “that’s not in the book, and that’s cool” (even though, yes, it is in the book). If the kids think it’s a good story, they let me know — and it sticks with them.

History is where we tell our cultural myths, and I use the word “myth” in the sense that a rhetorician or rhetorical critic would: Those stories around which we build our lives.

I hope to be able to present the Texas State Board of Education with serious criticism of the textbooks in the next round of approvals, to urge them to let the publishers loose to really tell the stories that make up the story of America — knowing about the de Llome letter might be part of an interesting narrative of the Spanish-American War, but the narrative should be the focus, not the letter itself (if you don’t know what that letter is, you’re in good company; it’s an interesting factoid, but not really critical to understanding the war, or the times).

I look around the web to see what other teachers see and think, too. At a blog called In the Trenches of Public Ed., a veteran and probably very good teacher addresses the same issue. Go see.

History is not a collection of dates memorized. History’s value is in the stories, told parable-like, that warn us from future error, or call us to keep on a steady path. George Washington’s story is impressive, for example; it’s more impressive when we recognize and understand that he fashioned his life around that of his hero, Cincinnatus, the Roman general who, given the powers of dictator in 458 B.C., vanquished the threatening armies of the barbarians, and then resigned the dictatorship to return to his plow. That story is not in the textbooks. More the pity.

1 Comment | America's founding, Curricula, Education blogs, History, Public education, State school boards, Teaching, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Idaho grant to open college doors

August 10, 2006

Idaho’s state education board got an $18 million grant which the board will use chiefly to provide scholarships to college for graduates of high schools with predominantly low-income students. While about 80% of eligible kids graduate from high school in Idaho, only 40% go to college. Idaho is funding up to four years of scholarships to try to change those numbers. I found the story from KVFI TV, Channel 6, Pocatello-Blackfoot-Idaho Falls.

Leave a Comment » | History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

World War II – Stick to the facts

August 9, 2006

Today (August 9, 2006) is the 61st anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, by the United States. While we in the U.S. commemorate such events with full disclosure of information, sometimes to the discomfort of people who do not want a discussion on the use of such weapons, Japan itself is often reluctant to confront and acknowledge its actions in the war, actions which prompted President Truman to determine atomic bombs were the most humane solution to a quick end of the war.

High schools in Japan are using right-wing history textbooks that tend ot whitewash the role of Japan in World War II. Go see the brief article here, in China’s Peoples Daily On-Line.

Rational discourse and debate on the control of nuclear weapons in order to assure justice and peace depends on our understanding the truth about the use of nuclear weapons. Textbooks which distort the truth, either by omitting facts or selectively endorsing them, tend to keep us away from both justice and peace.

Also see this post, Atomic Anniversaries.

1 Comment | Atomic Bomb, History, Textbook Selection, Textbooks, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How about sexy history?

August 9, 2006

CNN carries the Associated Press report on the new study: Sexy music triggers teen sex.

According to AP:

Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

If only it were so easy! Shelly Batts at Retrospectacle points out the science error (which is actually noted in the AP story). (The original study is in Pediatrics; an abstract of the article is here, free of charge. I have not found a free source for the ful text.) Consider how we could use this research, were it accurate.

  1. The story related in the musical 1776! about how a conjugal visit from Martha Jefferson got Thomas off the dime to complete the Declaration of Independence would hold the rapt attention of kids who normally can’t tell the difference between the Declaration and the U.S.S. Independence.
  2. Woodrow Wilson’s romance after the death of his first wife would be a critical lead-in to a lesson about Wilson’s 14 Points, the Treaty of Versailles, the end of World War I and the setup for World War II.
  3. No student, knowing of the love Archduke Ferdinand had for Sophie, would ever forget the act that triggered World War I.
  4. Students would hide copies of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin with the good passages highlighted, to pass around. They’d want to go to London in their youth to work in a publishing house, and to Paris in their old age, to play chess with the ladies. Heck, they might even take up playing Franklin’s glass harmonica, and learn Mozart’s pieces written for the instrument, to see if it really drove ladies into fits of uncontrollable passion.
  5. Warm Springs, Georgia, might become a key Spring Break destination, to see if the warm waters would do for teenagers what it seemed to do for the libido of Franklin Roosevelt.
  6. Harry Truman would be devalued in the rankings of “better presidents.”
  7. Boys Nation of the American Legion would be overwhelmed with applicants trying to follow in the footsteps of Bill Clinton.

Oh, I’m sure we can find more. Richard Feynman’s stories of seduction would make the history of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project crackle to life, and boys would try to impress the girls with their understanding of the binding curve of energy. Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | 1776, Education, History, Pedagogy | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Atomic anniversaries

August 7, 2006

This week marks the 61st anniversaries of the U.S. dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9).

This is the only event that occasionally causes me to wish for school in early August. Marking the anniversaries in a U.S. history class could be a useful exercise. Texas’ TEKS require students to know a bit about President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bomb, and especially his reasoning behind the decision. To get there in an orderly fashion, and to keep kids captivated by this most interesting part of recent history, I think a class needs to lay the background with the end of the war in Europe (especially D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge) with troops hoping to go home to the U.S. and being diverted to the Pacific, the background of the U.S.’s “island-hopping” strategy, especially the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the carnage that was required to take the islands, and the background of the Manhattan Project, from Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt through the secret cities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Trinity Project at White Sands, the training of the bombers at Wells Wendover, Nevada, and the World War I service of Harry Truman himself. It’s a fascinating history that, the Texas tests show and my classroom experience confirms, students know very little about.

As with the misinformation on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which I reported earlier today, this history of atom bombs informs us of policy choices available and necessary in our current dealings with North Korea, Iran, Ukraine and Russia, among other nations.

Japanese foundations sponsor trips to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for U.S. reporters, and there used to be one for high school teachers, too. It’s a history I lived with for a decade trying to get a compensation bill for downwind victims of fallout from our atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada. I wish more people knew the stories.

5 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Curricula, Harry Truman, History, Nuclear weapons, Science, TAKS, Technology, TEKS, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bad history clouds our future

August 7, 2006

Wholly apart from the damaging effects of belief in things that are not accurate, how much should we worry that people really get bad history?

From the Associated Press on August 6, via Editor & Publisher:

NEW YORK Do you believe in Iraqi “WMD”? Did Saddam Hussein’s government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.

People tend to become “independent of reality” in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull. [emphasis added by this blog – E.D.]
The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.

Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents — up from 36 percent last year — said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.

This is a case where “enduring faith” can lead to bad policy, or disastrous policy.

The article notes that a recent news story could have skewed the poll. A report requested by two Republicans, a senator and a representative, both running for re-election, detailed the Pentagon’s information about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) found in Iraq. There were 500 pieces catalogued, very old, left over from Gulf War I in the early 1990s. There was no evidence of new weapons, nor of a program to make new weapons such as that used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bogus history, Current History, History, Hoaxes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

More on vouchers, history and creationism

August 7, 2006

Mark Olson is a veteran blogger on issues of concern to conservatives and to Christians, at Pseudo-Polymath. He’s responded to my earlier post on vouchers. Marks calls it ‘a bit of a quibble.’

His first complaint goes to history: I wrote that once we had a broad consensus on the value of education. Mark wrote:

In colonial (and I presume probably pre-Civil War Virginia) the Chesapeake bay/plantation folkway had a … hegemonic attitude toward education. In fact, while the plantation “masters” were 100% literate, the servants and other classes in the society (white) were some 70% illiterate. It was something of a point of pride that public education was not generally available. Literacy and education as well, was not emphasised in the backcountry as well (which continues (I think) today in Appalachia for example). So of the four folkways which made up our early nation, only two held that education was of value.

That official policy prevented education as a mark of oppression and/or racism only makes the point. Infamously, some states and localities at various times had laws against teaching slaves to read, or to educate slaves formally in other ways. Denying education is a traditional form of oppression. This does not change the consensus that education is valuable, but instead is a dramatic demonstration that the policy makers regarded education as valuable and as a political tool for change. At the same time that these governments forbade educating slaves, they established schools for other people. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | America's founding, Education, Freedom - Political, History, Public education, School vouchers, TAKS, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

News roundup

August 6, 2006

Huntsville Times (Alabama) on extensive summer workshops teachers take in order to keep current and keep teaching credentials: Who says teaches take summer off?

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) notes that some educators seem to fear teaching history for fear of saying something politically incorrect; Australia’s public school history courses are virtually non-existent, with the topic covered in other subjects: Schools ‘afraid of teaching history.’

An Associated Press story on a project that I think would work wonders in my high school classes: Pitt professor aims to help teach other subjects through music. A sample:

What do Woody Guthrie, Neil Young, James Brown, Dolly Parton, Irving Berlin and Bob Dylan have in common? They, among others, just may save music in American schools and put a powerful tool in the hands of teachers of all subjects.

A University of Pittsburgh music professor is disseminating a new approach to teaching history, English, social studies and other humanities by including music to be studied like any primary text. The results have been stunning for those teachers who have implemented his program in their curriculums.

More from Down Under: The Australian notes that several parts of Australian history face pressure from revisionists — and goes on to detail a challenge to the common notion that the Great Depression there featured a lot of evictions of renters into the rain — it was, instead, a tough time where Australians helped each other get by: The Myth of the Great Depression.

A press release from Pearson Scott Foresman details a new California history curriculum the company is selling, which is almost completely digital, and focused intensely on California standards.

A high school history teacher in Tibet got a 10-year prison sentence for writing a text on Tibetan history, government and geography that appears to have come too close to telling the facts, for Chinese authorities. He’s asked the United Nations to intervene.

One of America’s great local newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal, carried a report on the death of Henry E. Cheaney, a University of Kentucky professor who collected massive amounts of data on the state’s African American people, for in-depth history.

The Grand Rapids Press (Michigan) criticized proposed history standards from the Michigan State Board of Education. According to the newspaper:

A straight telling of the American story is what Michigan students need. State education bureaucrats should have been able to provide it.

Instead, they produced a truncated and ideologically tilted version that fully deserved the subsequent uproar and the decision of state Superintendent Michael Flanagan to send it back for remedial work.

Enjoy!

Leave a Comment » | America's founding, Education, Geography - Physical, History, Public education, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

U.S. history required – in college?

August 5, 2006

Third or fourth time is the charm, right?

In Arizona, where the legislature recently decreed a U.S. flag and a copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights will be displayed in all college classrooms, the debate now turns to whether the legislature should require the study of U.S. history by undergraduates. I appears the legislators do not find college kids have enough appreciation for our nation’s history.

I’ll reproduce the entire story out of the Arizona Republic below the fold (Dan Quayle’s family’s newspaper!).

Is it just me, or is it that these pseudo-patriots who don’t think our kids are well-enough indoctrinated always stamp the life out of history when they start these tirades? I have yet to find a law that mandates that history be interesting. Instead we get standards that provide great, boring, history-crushing, mind-and-butt-numbing lists. In short, these requirements tend to make history not worth the study.

And, as with those who celebrate Fillmore’s bringing the bathtub to the White House, the advocates almost always get history wrong. [Millard Fillmore himself, never attended college; he apprenticed first in the cloth business, and then in law.]

Barry Goldwater will be coming out of his grave to stop this silliness. Maybe literally. If such standards don’t make high school students history literate, what makes anyone think the failed methods would work on college students? If the standards do work to make high school kids knowledgeable in history, why would the college standards be necessary?

This controversy smells. It has the earmarks of being one more way to issue diatribes against “librul college professors.” It’s one more way of flogging public education, while refusing to give educators the tools to solve the problems.

Article below the fold; please comment. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | America's founding, Bill of Rights, Curricula, Education, Flag etiquette, History, History Revisionism, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival barking

August 3, 2006

Step right up!  Just one click of the mouse!

New Carnival of Education at This Week in Education — #78.

New, 40th Skeptics’ Circle, with a gracious pointer to a post here, at Daylight Atheism.

Enjoy.

Leave a Comment » | History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

1984: History of technology

August 3, 2006

A nicely-written blog, “I Had an Idea This Morning,” had a piece by Anne from Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, New York in the past week about just how far off the mark was George Orwell’s novel 1984 in its portrayal of the use of information devices, “1984 vs. the Blog: Orwell’s Big Blooper.” Instead of the government having a monopoly on the publication of news to be used to suppress the people, the people have fractured such distribution especially with the use of the internet. I find especially thought-provoking the last two paragraphs of Anne’s piece:

Looking back, it almost seems like the totalitarian regimes in Germany and the Soviet Union were the fruit of a never-to-be-repeated phase in the evolution of communications technology. For a brief, horrific period, governments had total control over powerful tools—television and radio—that they could use to communicate with their citizens. The internet, by design, makes such centralized control impossible.

But does that make us safe from groups of super evil mean crazy people? It’s been widely observed that new technologies—from gunpowder to nuclear fusion—have historically been harnessed to serve malevolent ends. Why should communications technology be any different? While mass communication technology helped enable the rise of totalitarian regimes that laid down the law, the internet is pretty good at empowering destructive entities that work outside the law—terrorists, for one. Just as the new technology has given us a billion little blogs and news sites and tv channels and video streams, it’s also giving us thousands of new, super organized hate-based groups to worry about.

The actual year 1984 is a generation gone, and we don’t see exactly the evils that Orwell wrote about. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Economics, History, Lesson plans, TAKS, Technology, TEKS | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »