Good history teaching is not just the teaching of names, facts, and dates - the whos, whats, wheres, and whens. Good history teaching is all about teaching the whys, prodding students to make connections and to build understandings of why the whos, whats, whens, and wheres occurred. It's also a matter of teaching the things that make history a social science. Yes, who, whats, whens, and wheres, are often concrete and immutable - incapable of being changed - just like scientific observations and facts are unchanging. Sodium and chlorine will combine to make salt, for example, never sugar. However, history will always be about the interpretation - the whys - and these interpretations are forever evolving, changing, and, sometimes, being manipulated to fit a certain agenda. That's why good history teaching should also incorporate historiography, the study of writing history. As students study primary documents and secondary interpretations, they should be taught not only to discern the whos, whats, whens, and wheres, but also to dig deeper into the whys, the biases and prejudices of the participants and/or the interpreter, the factors leading up to an event, the results of an event, and the all-important context. That's a major reason why I loved teaching Advanced Placement history courses, because they are designed to promote that kind of teaching and learning.
I've read a few good books lately that go beyond the historic events and challenge the way that the story, whatever it is, has been presented over the decades and centuries. They raise excellent questions about how and why history is written, and what consumers of history should be aware of.
The Five: We all know the story of Jack the Ripper, right? In the late 1800s, a still-unknown madman killed five prostitutes in the Whitechapel district of London's East End, perhaps catching or luring his victims as they walked the streets. Right? All wrong according to Hallie Rubenhold. In The Five, Rubenhold reveals the lives of the Ripper's victims before they became part of crime lore and perhaps the greatest unsolved mystery of all time. As it turns out, according to Rubenhold, none of the five victims were actively working as prostitutes at the time of their murder, although two had been in their past. In fact, the five women had, at least at some point in their lives, been lower middle class or upper lower class, economically speaking. More than one had at least one relatively stable marriage for at least a short time. They also had more education and were more literate than most women of their class and place. They had other commonalities as well. Before they were victims of the Ripper, they were victims of their society, treated as second-class citizens or even as property, and they were physically and emotionally abused, spent parts of their lives homeless or in poorhouses, and fell victim to crime, conmen, and alcohol. Oh, and what about the "catching or luring" part? Turns out that medical evidence indicates that the victims were most likely asleep when killed. So, where did the prostitutes story come from? It came from the police and the press who found it much easier and "sexier" to tell that story; it didn't cause panic among "respectable folks, and it sold papers. The investigators went in with the mindset that all women who were poor, alcoholic, and living on the streets were prostitutes. In coroner's inquests and hearings, witnesses who knew the women steadfastly declared that they were not prostitutes, but the officials purposely ignored their testimony to make their conclusions fit the narrative. And, over a century later, those myths continued to be passed down, unchallenged.
The Bounty: Another story we are all familiar with is the Mutiny on the Bounty, the subject of several movies and even lampooned by Bugs Bunny and the Simpsons. Evil, tyrannical ship's captain (actual title was Lieutenant, not captain, but he was the ship's master) William Bligh pushes his crew to the extremes with his unending cruelty and erratic behavior. Finally fed up, master's mate Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny, and Bligh is forced off the ship onto a lifeboat, and the men stay in Polynesia, living idyllic lives. Again, author Caroline Alexander challenges our perceptions. She makes an exhaustive review of primary sources, reports, journals, and court proceedings to paint a different picture. According to Alexander, Bligh is not nearly as cruel as he has been portrayed, and Christian is not as heroic as he has been portrayed. The mutineers also found that their lives weren't going to be as idyllic as they dreamed. Why have we been deceived for centuries? Alexander shows that the story handed down to us was concocted by two rich and powerful English families in order to cover up the truth, forever tarnishing Bligh's legacy and reputation forever.
Murder at the Mission: Murder at the Mission is the story of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, among the first white Americans who settled in Oregon with the intent of Christianizing the Indians of the Northwest. Their efforts ended in disaster as both were killed, along with eleven others, and five Cayuse Indians were hanged for the murders. However, their fellow missionary, Henry Spalding, knew that the real story could not be told, or else the missionary efforts of his organization would come to an end, and white settlement in the Oregon territory would come to a halt. Instead, Spalding made up his mind to make martyrs of the Whitmans and to demonize the Indians. It worked. Even late into the 20th century, the Whitmans were lionized and honored as Oregon's heroic and flawless "founders."
Imperfect Union: Imperfect Union is the story of one the first great celebrity couples in American history, John and Jessie Fremont. John became famous as an explorer, nicknamed "the Pathfinder," and a hero of the Mexican War. He later became the first Republican presidential candidate, in 1856, just a couple of years after the party was founded. While John was traversing the west, his wife Jessie was at home, serving as his own personal agent, promoter, and spin doctor. She co-wrote his autobiographies and journals of his explorations. She wrote letters to the editor and articles about her husband's exploits that were published in newspapers and magazines across the country. She kept her eyes on all the press written about John and immediately went into action if came across any negativity. She very purposely and methodically made her husband, with all of his faults and failures, into a great American hero.
The Name of War: The Name of War was written by Jill Lepore, who is becoming one of my favorite historians, a few years ago, and it is a history of King Philip's war in 1675-1676 New England. In proportion to population, King Philip's War was the bloodiest war in American history. It also marked the last real organized Indian resistance in New England, destroying tribe and forcing others to move westward. Both sides committed horrible atrocities, killing women and children, torturing captives, and mutilating the dead. Lepore tells the story of the war in brutal detail, but she also explains how the war was an important in crafting a new American identity.
Taken from the Amazon.com book description: "The war's brutality compelled the colonists to defend themselves against accusations that they had become savages. But Jill Lepore makes clear that it was after the war - and because of it - that the boundaries between cultures, hitherto blurred, turned into rigid ones. King Philip's War became one of the most written-about wars in our history, and Lepore argues that the words strengthened and hardened feelings that, in turn, strengthened and hardened the enmity between Indians and Anglos. She shows how, as late as the 19th century, memories of the war were instrumental in justifying Indian removals - and how in our own century that same war has inspired Indian attempts to preserve "Indianness" as fiercely as the early settlers once struggled to preserve their Englishness."
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