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David Hilton

History Classes Collaboration Project - 105 views

They're probably a bit young Ginger to interact with the high school history students on the network. It might be a worry if there were misunderstanding or other problems given the age gap. Eventu...

collaboration projects classes ning networks

started by David Hilton on 25 Sep 09 19 follow-ups, last by David Hilton on 27 Oct 09
HistoryGrl14 .

Internet History Sourcebooks - 5 views

www.fordham.edu/...1542newlawsindies.asp

primary source primary sources exploration world history

shared by HistoryGrl14 . on 20 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • HistoryGrl14 . on 20 Oct 13
     
    "The New Laws of the Indies, 1542 The Laws and ordinances newly made by His Majesty for the government of the Indies and good treatment and preservation of the Indians created a set of pro-Indian laws - so pro-Indian that they some had to be revoked in Mexico and in Peru due to settler opposition. where the viceroy was killed when he attempted to enforce them. The conflict was between "feudalists" who favored the encomienda system because it maintained society as in the Old World, and the more centralizing "regalists" who wanted to preserve royal power in Spain;s new Empire. Eventually the encomienda was allowed to continue. Charles by the divine clemency Emperor ever august, King of Germany. . . . To the Most Illustrious Prince Don Philip our very dear and very beloved grandson and son, and to the Infantes our grandsons and sons, and to the President, and those of our Council of the Indies, and to our Viceroys, Presidents and Auditors of our Audiencias and royal Chanceries of our said Indies, Islands and Continent of the Ocean Sea; to our Governors, Alcaldes mayores and our other Authorities thereof, and to all the Councils, magistrates, regidores, knights, esquires, officers, and commoners of all the cities, towns, and villages of our said Indies, Islands, and Tierra-firme of the Ocean Sea, discovered and to be discovered; and to any other persons, captains, discoverers, settlers, and inhabitants dwelling in and being natives thereof, of whatever state, quality, condition and pre-eminence they may be. . . . Know ye, That having for many years had will and intention as leisure to occupy ourselves with the affairs of the Indies, on account of their great importance, as well in that touching the service of God our Lord and increase of his holy Catholic faith, as in the preservation of the natives of those parts, and the good government and preservation of their persons; and although we have endeavoured
Lisa M Lane

A People's History of the United States - 5 views

historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html

historyteaching books

shared by Lisa M Lane on 26 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Lisa M Lane on 26 Oct 09
     
    This great book should really be read by everyone. It is difficult to describe why it so great because it both teaches and inspires. You really just have to read it. We think it is so good that it demands to be as accessible as possible. Once you've finished it, we're sure you'll agree. In fact, years ago, we would offer people twenty dollars if they read the book and didn't think it was completely worth their time. Of all the people who took us up on it, no one collected.
David Hilton

Is History history? - 35 views

I am creating a site you and your students might enjoy and perhaps add to. ahaafoundation.org is an online course in the history of art around the world. You can jump in anywhere. I would love to f...

history philosophy pedagogy teaching education social studies

started by David Hilton on 23 Dec 09 8 follow-ups, last by David Hilton on 13 Jan 10
Ed Webb

Modern art was CIA 'weapon' - World, News - The Independent - 6 views

www.independent.co.uk/...rt-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

CIA ColdWar history art politics US USA UK

shared by Ed Webb on 23 Nov 10 - Cached
  • The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
  • in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.
  • The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled "Advancing American Art", with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: "I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash." The tour had to be cancelled.
  • This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy's hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s.
  • If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.
  • Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another
  • As president of what he called "Mummy's museum", Rockefeller was one of the biggest backers of Abstract Expressionism (which he called "free enterprise painting"). His museum was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to organise and curate most of its important art shows. The museum was also linked to the CIA by several other bridges. William Paley, the president of CBS broadcasting and a founding father of the CIA, sat on the members' board of the museum's International Programme. John Hay Whitney, who had served in the agency's wartime predecessor, the OSS, was its chairman. And Tom Braden, first chief of the CIA's International Organisations Division, was executive secretary of the museum in 1949.
  • "It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do - send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That's one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."
  • Would Abstract Expressionism have been the dominant art movement of the post-war years without this patronage? The answer is probably yes. Equally, it would be wrong to suggest that when you look at an Abstract Expressionist painting you are being duped by the CIA. But look where this art ended up: in the marble halls of banks, in airports, in city halls, boardrooms and great galleries. For the Cold Warriors who promoted them, these paintings were a logo, a signature for their culture and system which they wanted to display everywhere that counted. They succeeded.
Ed Webb

How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today | openDemocracy - 6 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...ber-them-the-1914-18-war-today

war memory Europe UK history WW1

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • After the war, however, the problem of reintegrating into society both those who had served and those who had lost, and finding a narrative that could contain both, found one answer by an emphasis on the universality of heroism. A British society that has since the 1960s grown increasingly distant from the realities of military service - whilst remaining dedicated to it as a location for fantasy - has been unable to move on from this rhetorical standpoint
  • The war's portrayal has always been shaped by contemporary cultural mores, and commemorative documentaries demonstrate just how much the relationship between the creators and consumers of popular culture has changed over the last fifty years. For the fiftieth anniversary of 1914, the BBC commissioned the twenty-six part series The Great War, based around archive footage and featuring interviews with veterans. There was an authoritative narrative voice, but no presenters. For the eightieth anniversary, it collaborated with an American television company on a six-part series littered with academic talking-heads. For the ninetieth anniversary, it has had a range of TV presenter-celebrities - among them Michael Palin, Dan Snow, Natalie Cassidy and Eamonn Holmes - on a journey of discovery of their families' military connections. These invariably culminate next to graves and memorials in a display of the right kind of televisual emotion at the moment the formula demands and the audience has come to expect.   The focus of these programmes - family history as a means of understanding the past - is worthy of note in itself. It is indicative of the dramatic growth of family history as a leisure interest, perhaps in response to the sense of dislocation inherent in modernity
  • The search for family history is usually shaped by modern preconceptions, and as such it seldom results by itself in a deeper understanding of the past. The modern experience of finding someone who shares your surname on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, taking a day trip to France and finding his grave (perhaps with a cathartic tear or few) might increase a person's or family's sense of emotional connection to the war, and may bring other satisfactions. Insofar as it is led not by a direct connection with a loved one, however, but by what television has "taught" as right conduct, it can seldom encourage a more profound appreciation of what the war meant for those who fought it, why they kept fighting, or why they died.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Projects such as The Great War Archive, which combine popular interest in the war with specialist expertise, and which recognise that an archive is different from a tribute or a memorial, suggest that it is possible to create high-quality content based on user submissions.
  • the exploitation of popular enthusiasm to encourage thought, rather than to enforce the "correct" opinion
  • It is certainly true that the 1914-18 war is popularly seen as the "bad war" and 1939-45 as the "good war." I think the one view is sustained in order to support the other. Although no expert, it seems to me that in reality the two world wars were marked more by their similarities than their differences (Europe-wide military/imperial rivalry causes collapse of inadequate alliance system > Germany invades everywhere > everywhere invades Germany). However, there is an extreme reluctance in Britain to admit that WW2 was anything other than a Manichean struggle between the elves and the orcs, so WW1 becomes a kind of dumping-ground for a lot of suppressed anxiety and guilt which might otherwise accrue to our role in WW2 - just as it might in any war. So we make a donkey out of Haig in order to sustain hagiographic views of Churchill. "Remembrance" of both wars continues to be a central feature of British public consciousness to an extraordinary, almost religious degree, and I think this has a nostalgic angle as well: if "we" squint a bit "we" can still tell ourselves that it was "our" last gasp as a global power. Personally I think it's all incredibly dodgy. "Remembrance," it seems to me, is always carried out in a spirit of tacit acceptance that the "remembered" war was a good thing. Like practically all of the media representation of the current war, Remembrance Day is a show of "sympathy" for the troops which is actually about preventing objective views of particular wars (and war in general) from finding purchase in the public consciousness. It works because it's a highly politicised ritual which is presented as being above politics and therefore above criticism. All these things are ways of manipulating the suffering of service personnel past and present as a means of emotionally blackmailing critics of government into silence. I reckon anyway.
HistoryGrl14 .

Internet History Sourcebooks - 8 views

www.fordham.edu/...aztecs1.asp

primary source primary sources exploration world history

shared by HistoryGrl14 . on 20 Oct 13 - No Cached
David Hilton liked it
  • HistoryGrl14 . on 20 Oct 13
     
    "A Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico In 1519 Hernan Cortés sailed from Cuba, landed in Mexico and made his way to the Aztec capital. Miguel Leon­Portilla, a Mexican anthropologist, gathered accounts by the Aztecs, some of which were written shortly after the conquest. Speeches of Motecuhzoma and Cortés When Motecuhzoma [Montezuma] had given necklaces to each one, Cortés asked him: "Are you Motecuhzoma? Are you the king? Is it true that you are the king Motecuhzoma?" And the king said: "Yes, I am Motecuhzoma." Then he stood up to welcome Cortés; he came forward, bowed his head low and addressed him in these words: "Our lord, you are weary. The journey has tired you, but now you have arrived on the earth. You have come to your city, Mexico. You have come here to sit on your throne, to sit under its canopy. "The kings who have gone before, your representatives, guarded it and preserved it for your coming. The kings Itzcoatl, Motecuhzoma the Elder, Axayacatl, Tizoc and Ahuitzol ruled for you in the City of Mexico. The people were protected by their swords and sheltered by their shields. "Do the kings know the destiny of those they left behind, their posterity? If only they are watching! If only they can see what I see! "No, it is not a dream. I am not walking in my sleep. I am not seeing you in my dreams.... I have seen you at last! I have met you face to face! I was in agony for five days, for ten days, with my eyes fixed on the Region of the Mystery. And now you have come out of the clouds and mists to sit on your throne again. "This was foretold by the kings who governed your city, and now it has taken place. You have come back to us; you have come down from the sky. Rest now, and take possession of your royal houses. Welcome to your land, my lords! " When Motecuhzoma had finished, La Malinche translated his address into Spanish so that the Captain could understand it. Cortés replied in his str
Kay Cunningham

Digital publishing: Google's big book case | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...displaystory.cfm

Google_books e-books digital_collections digitization

shared by Kay Cunningham on 05 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Kay Cunningham on 05 Sep 09
     
    'Google has a big economic incentive to ensure that its online library is widely available: it makes most of its money from search advertising, so the more people that use its services, including the online book archive, the better. It also has a legal incentive to watch its step. The agreement stipulates that institutional subscription prices must be low enough to ensure that the public has "broad access" to digital books, while at the same time earning market rates for copyright owners. So if lots of libraries refuse to sign up for Google's service because it is too costly, the company could be slapped with a lawsuit.'
HistoryGrl14 .

Story of Stuff, Full Version; How Things Work, About Stuff - YouTube - 10 views

www.youtube.com/watch

environment story of stuff AP Human Geography APHG

shared by HistoryGrl14 . on 12 Oct 11 - Cached
David Hilton liked it
  • HistoryGrl14 . on 12 Oct 11
     
    VERY COOL video - one of my students actually shared it with me! I plan to use this with my AP Human Geography students! In my case I may use it as an opener to the class as to what types of things we will cover and the connectedness of everything. Also great for Industrialization, Globalization, etc!
  • wilnbroc on 16 Oct 11
     
    I would like to encourage you to view or research some critiques of this material. After I viewed your post, I did some research and it looks like there is good criticism out there of this video that it portrays a one sided argument. I don't believe the video is wholly inaccurate. However, the video does present information that is easily questionable due to inaccurate and impartial interpretations. Part of our duty as great teachers it to present all facts and allow young citizens to use their own questioning to make informed decisions.
  • HistoryGrl14 . on 17 Oct 11
     
    I don't disagree with you. You don't have to 'encourage me to research critiques'. Maybe I should have written more when I posted it, but I was in a rush and just bookmarked it typed quick comments. I actually had seen the critiques. However, the way in which it is made, and things included are great for use as discussion starters and prompts for fact finding. I didn't include my lesson plan or the way I personally plan to use it, as I felt that was not relevant. I think each person can decide on their own how to use it. I agree great teachers do have a job to teach studnets to critically question and analyze - something I do all the time with my students. It helps when there is compelling items like this video to garner their interest. One of the things my students look at during our time together is motivation, and bias. So when I show it, my students will also be looking at who funded the video, and follow that trail back to look at biases that the group/companies involved might have. Also, with the different portions, as you mention, it is one sided in areas, so again, part of my personal lesson plan with this is that as we reach various portions of class that correlate with the video, my studnets will be viewing that portion and doing their own addition of the other side of the story. And I use a strategy called "philosophical chairs" and portions of this video along iwth well constructed starter questions are great for utilization in that situation.
Mr Maher

Illuminating Reno's Divorce Industry | Reno Divorce History - 2 views

renodivorcehistory.org

US History II USII Unit 5: Great Depression digitization

shared by Mr Maher on 02 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Mr Maher on 02 Jan 17
     
    Our students know that divorce is part of life, yet it is not a part of their history courses, it is rarely, if ever mentioned. Divorce has a history all of it's own, and many, many American's lives were shaped by it. In the early 1900s, the ability to obtain a legal divorce was difficult and in some instances, required relocation to a jurisdiction that offered liberal divorce laws. Although Las Vegas, Nevada might be known for quick marriages, it was in Reno, Nevada that legal divorces were available to residents who there for only six weeks. This online exhibit organized by Special Collections at the University of Nevada, Reno, Libraries, presents documents from the city's heyday as the divorce capital of the United States.
  • Mr Maher on 02 Jan 17
     
    Our students know that divorce is part of life, yet it is not a part of their history courses, it is rarely, if ever mentioned. Divorce has a history all of it's own, and many, many American's lives were shaped by it. In the early 1900s, the ability to obtain a legal divorce was difficult and in some instances, required relocation to a jurisdiction that offered liberal divorce laws. Although Las Vegas, Nevada might be known for quick marriages, it was in Reno, Nevada that legal divorces were available to residents who there for only six weeks. This online exhibit organized by Special Collections at the University of Nevada, Reno, Libraries, presents documents from the city's heyday as the divorce capital of the United States.
Lisa M Lane

Beach-Side Thoughts on History, to My Students at Beyond School - 4 views

beyond-school.org/...ghts-on-history-to-my-students

historyteaching

shared by Lisa M Lane on 06 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Lisa M Lane on 06 Jan 10
     
    And the issue, to put it in a nutshell, is this: Knowing all this stuff is worthless, if all you've done is learn it. You seem to think that we're teaching you Western Civilization because gee, it's a great civilization. It's not. Like all civilizations, it has it's strengths and it has its flaws. Just because it's part of the dominant culture today doesn't make it good. Maybe the dominant culture today would be much better if certain aspects of Western Civilization were different - or even non-existent. Most of your essays saddened me because they were so full of cheer-leading for the West. Civilizations, Western or Eastern, Northern or Southern, don't need cheerleaders. They need critics.
Matt Esterman

National Curriculum - 38 views

In Year 11 students have to complete a research assignment that is mandated by the syllabus, however at our school we basically gave them the list of personalities they could study. I was pushing f...

national curriculum history study research

started by Matt Esterman on 30 May 09 6 follow-ups, last by Matt Esterman on 05 Jul 09
HistoryGrl14 .

▶ Inspiring Motivational Video: Cross the Line® (schools) - YouTube - 16 views

www.youtube.com/watch

motivational cross the line AP Human Geography

shared by HistoryGrl14 . on 24 Jan 14 - No Cached
David Hilton liked it
  • HistoryGrl14 . on 24 Jan 14
     
    I've used this during this school year to motivate and inspire my AP students, then I replay it every now and then to bring the motivation back. Kids really like it!!! I even made a bulletin board with the slogan on it and am having kids write on it what they are doing to "cross the line" to make it interactive!
Aaron Palm

Herbert Aptheker's Distortions by C.L.R. James 1949 - 2 views

www.marxists.org/...aptheker.htm

aptheker herbert revisionist history African American communism Stalin america modern

shared by Aaron Palm on 11 Jul 10 - Cached
David Hilton liked it
    • Aaron Palm
      Aaron Palm on 11 Jul 10
       
      CLR James in 1949 acknowledges that Aptheker was a toll of Stalinism and there are many flaws in his African American History.  
  • “It was the development of increased agitation on the part of non-slaveholding whites prior to the Civil War for the realization of the American creed that played a major part in provoking the desperation that led the slaveholders to take up arms.” (p.41) Upon the flimsiest scraps of evidence, the theory is elaborated that it was the withholding of democracy from non-slaveholding whites that pushed the South to the Civil War. “In terms of practice, as concerns the mass of the white people of the South, this anti-democratic philosophy was everywhere implemented. The property qualifications for voting and office-holding, the weighing of the legislature to favor slaveholding against non-slaveholding counties, the inequitable taxation system falling most heavily on mechanics’ tools and least heavily on slaves, the whole system of economic, social and educational preferment for the possessors of slaves, and the organized, energetic, and partially successful struggles carried on against this system by the non-slaveholding whites form – outside of the response of the Negroes to enslavement – the actual content of the South’s internal history for the generation preceding the Civil War.”
  • Stalinist Sleight of Hand Stalinism tries to manipulate history as a sleight-of-hand man manipulates cards. But unlike the conjurer, a stern logic pushes Stalinism in an ever more reactionary direction. For five years Aptheker covered up his anti-Negro concepts with constant broad statements about the “decisive character” of slave insurrections, Negro agitators etc. in the Civil War and the period preceding it. In 1946, however, in The Negro People in America, Aptheker broke new ground. He put forward a new theory that at one stroke made a wreck of all that he had said before. Let his own words speak:
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • t is clear that only at the last minute Aptheker remembered the slaves and threw in the phrase about their “response.” Historically this is a crime. The non-slaveholding whites who supposedly pushed the South into the Civil War were not in any way democrats. They were small planters and city people who formed a rebellious but reactionary social force, hostile to the big planters, the slaves and the democratically minded farmers in the non-plantation regions. What particular purpose this new development is to serve does not concern us here. What is important, however, is its logical identity with the hostility to Negro radicalism and independent Negro politics which has appeared in Aptheker’s work from the very beginning to this climax-pushing the Negroes aside for the sake of non slaveholding whites in the South. However fair may be the outside of Stalinist history and politics, however skillful may be the means by which its internal corruption is disguised, inevitably its real significance appears. There is no excuse today for those who allow themselves to be deceived by it. For all interested in this sphere, it is a common duty, whatever differences may exist between us, to see to it that the whole Stalinist fakery on Negro history be thoroughly exposed for what it really is.
Jeremy Greene

World History Connected: EJournal of Learning and Teaching - 6 views

worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/index.html

world history connected journal e-journal learning teaching

shared by Jeremy Greene on 14 Jan 10 - Cached
  • David Hilton on 14 Jan 10
     
    Has articles and some source material links related to World History. The site (run out of University of Illinois, by the looks) has a strong focus on 'big history.' I hadn't encountered this term before; it seems to mean looking at history not through civilisations but rather periods or regions. If that description is wrong and someone could provide more accuracy on 'big history' that would be cool.
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Jeremy Greene on 16 Nov 10
     
    World History Connected: The EJournal of Learning and Teaching [www.worldhistoryconnected.org] World history poses extraordinary demands upon those who teach it, challenging the talent of experienced instructors as well as to those new to the field. World History Connected is designed for everyone who wants to deepen the engagement and understanding of world history: students, college instructors, high school teachers, leaders of teacher education programs, social studies coordinators, research historians, and librarians. For all these readers, WHC presents innovative classroom-ready scholarship, keeps readers up to date on the latest research and debates, presents the best in learning and teaching methods and practices, offers readers rich teaching resources, and reports on exemplary teaching. WHC is free worldwide. It is published by the University of Illinois Press, and its institutional home is Washington State University. Editors: Heather Streets, Washington State University and Tom Laichas, Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences. Associate Editor: Tim Weston, University of Colorado. Funding for World History Connected, Inc. has been provided by The College Board and private donations. Should you wish to contribute, please contact Heidi Roupp, Executive Director [Heidiroupp@aol.com]
  • Jeremy Greene on 16 Nov 10
     
    Check out past issues by using the index key. The home page is always the current issue.
  • Jeremy Greene on 16 Nov 10
     
    The journal focuses on the New World History (looking at the world at a global scale across time) as opposed to the one civilization at a time approach. See the World History AP course description for an example of what this means: http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/ap/students/worldhistory/ap-cd-worldhist-0708.pdf David, as an Australian you are at Ground Zero of Big History since its leader is an Australian = David Christian. Christian's _Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History_ is the one book to read on the subject. This article well covers it: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/whc/3.1/christian.html Google David Christian, Big History for more
  • Jeremy Greene on 16 Nov 10
     
    Again, the journal is not specifically focused on Big History but on the New World History, but it did have one issue on Big History as its forum: http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/ More links than you probably want here about Big History: http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/maunu2.html This month's forum is on Latin America. Other forums range the gamut of world history.
  • David Hilton on 18 Nov 10
     
    Thanks very much Jeremy. I'll check it out!
David Hilton

Historical Text Archive: Electronic History Resources, online since 1990 - 0 views

www.historicaltextarchive.com

ancient medieval modern america europe asia africa ebooks articles documents images photos sources primary sources

shared by David Hilton on 11 Jul 09 - Cached
  • David Hilton on 11 Jul 09
     
    "The HTA publishes high quality articles, books, essays, documents, historical photos, and links, screened for content, for a broad range of historical subjects. It was founded in 1990 in Mississippi and is one of the oldest history sites on the Internet. This site is dynamic with regular additions to its contents and its link collection." That's what they say.
  • David Hilton on 11 Jul 09
     
    The HTA publishes high quality articles, books, essays, documents, historical photos, and links, screened for content, for a broad range of historical subjects. It was founded in 1990 in Mississippi and is one of the oldest history sites on the Internet. This site is dynamic with regular additions to its contents and its link collection.
Javier E

A Teacher Made a Hitler Joke in the Classroom. It Tore the School Apart. - The New York... - 4 views

www.nytimes.com/...ol-ben-frisch-hitler-joke.html

Quaker joke teacher firing trigger anti-sleep anti-Semitism

shared by Javier E on 17 Sep 18 - No Cached
  • The concepts of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” hotly debated on college campuses for years, are now reaching high schools too
  • the question of what high school students should be exposed to, and protected from, feels murkier in 2018. Today’s high school students are more precocious, more politically engaged, more tuned in to their gender identities and nascent sexuality. They are already flooded with uncensored, unedited information, 24 hours a day: What would a safe space even look like for a 16-year-old with an iPhone?
  • At exclusive private schools like Friends, the question is further complicated by the involvement of wealthy parents. As these schools have grown more expensive — Friends costs nearly $50,000 a year — administrators have found themselves trying to balance their own institutional values with the demands of parents who are in a sense high-paying customers. Teachers are increasingly caught between the two.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The job of high school teachers is to impart knowledge and deliver measurable results, which requires finding a way to reach, and ideally even inspire, their students.
  • “How would you keep the attention of 15 teenagers and bond with them?” one Friends teacher texted me, insisting on anonymity because of a school policy that discourages teachers from speaking to the media without permission. “You MUST joke and be yourself and connect with them on their terms. It’s the only way to be good at this.”
  • Any teacher who spends three decades in the classroom, speaking extemporaneously for hours on end to a roomful of teenagers, is going to have awkward moments. Frisch might have had more of them, and they may have been a bit more awkward. But that was how he connected, and it was perhaps a way of connecting that is no longer possible. “Everybody knew this guy was off — weird behavior, quirky,” said one parent who, fearing retribution against her child, insisted on anonymity. “Maybe in the ’70s that would have been O.K., but not when you’re paying $45,000 a year in tuition.”
  • There aren’t enough seats in the historically more desirable uptown institutions — Spence, Dalton, Trinity — to meet demand; and for families who live in neighborhoods like the Village, TriBeCa or Battery Park, Friends is a much more convenient option. Friends now sees itself as a competitor to these schools, and in some respects, it has become indistinguishable from them.
  • Even before Frisch’s termination, there was a feeling among some in the Friends community — parents, teachers and especially alumni — that in its race to keep pace with a changing city, the school was losing touch with the Quaker ethos that had long distinguished it.
  • The school’s Quaker identity calls for it to be faithful to its progressive tradition, but in the new age of identity politics, it is not always easy to know what the right stance on a particular issue should be. Just a few months before the Frisch incident, some 20 parents had raised questions about the scheduled speaking engagement of a visiting scholar, Dave Zirin, a sportswriter for the Nation magazine and a Friends alumnus who had been critical of Israel in his writings. In 2012, there were heated objections to a musical performance in the meetinghouse by Gilad Atzmon, an Israel-born saxophonist and self-described “proud, self-hating Jew” who has written that Palestinians were “brutally ethnically cleansed” and suggested that if Israel starts a nuclear war with Iran, “some may be bold enough to argue that Hitler might have been right after all.” The Harvard Law School professor emeritus and noted gadfly Alan Dershowitz publicly criticized Friends — and Lauder personally — for refusing to cancel the appearance.
  • Lauder did not consider the “Heil Hitler” episode a close call. “Personally, I was appalled,” he told me. “I couldn’t imagine, even as a joke — and I grew up watching ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ — that in a class that had nothing to do with history or World War II or Nazism or teaching German language that an incident like that could happen.” I asked Lauder why he felt he needed to go so far as to fire Frisch. “One of our pledges is to make all of our students feel safe,” he replied. “And that is something that I take very, very seriously.”
  • That no one has accused Frisch of being an anti-Semite was beside the point: His invocation of the Nazi salute in a classroom full of high school students, regardless of his intentions, was enough to end his career. On today’s campus, words and symbols can be seen as a form of violence; to many people, engaging in a public debate about the nuances of their power is to tolerate their use.
  • Frisch, who first learned about the claims after his termination, denied ever having told a student to kill himself and said that he had no memory of the inappropriate touching that had been described.
  • we spoke at length about the “Heil Hitler.” Frisch said he was embarrassed, both by the fact that he had made the gesture in the first place and by his subsequent failure to recognize the seriousness of such a lapse in judgment. But he was also surprised by the school’s reaction to it. “I trusted while I was at Friends that because of my long-term commitment to the school, that as I need to change to meet the changing dynamics of the classroom, the school would help me learn and provide the support I needed to make those changes,” he told me.
  • The dynamics of the classroom are changing. These changes are partly specific to the hothouse environment of the campus in 2018. But they also connect to something much bigger. High schools have become genuinely unsafe: The “Heil Hitler” salute happened on the very same day as the Parkland massacre. And beyond the confines of the campus, a crude, violent bigotry that had long seemed part of the distant past has suddenly resurfaced, with neo-Nazis literally marching in the streets. The question now is what do we want our response to this new world to be
  • During the 12 days that he spent in limbo between his suspension and termination, Frisch, in the spirit of the Quaker commitment to reconciliation, drafted a letter of apology to his students that he was never allowed to send. Among other things, he planned to say that he was worried about the rise of anti-Semitism and that he was still learning lessons from his mistake. “You think about things like Charlottesville,” he told me. “Now, we don’t make jokes like this.”
tcornett

MOOC | Eric Foner - The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1861 | Sections 1 through 10... - 0 views

www.youtube.com/playlist

Civil War youtube TEKS Eric Foner History Social Studies MOOC

shared by tcornett on 05 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • tcornett on 05 Apr 16
     
    Youtube Playlist The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1850 -1861 Discover how the issue of slavery came to dominate American politics, and how political leaders struggled and failed to resolve the growing crisis in the nation. A House Divided: The Road to Civil War, 1850-1861 is a course that begins by examining how generations of historians have explained the crisis of the Union. After discussing the institution of slavery and its central role in the southern and national economies, it turns to an account of the political and social history of the 1850s. It traces how the issue of the expansion of slavery came to dominate national politics, and how political leaders struggled, unsuccessfully, to resolve the growing crisis. We will examine the impact of key events such as Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and end with the dissolution of the Union in the winter of 1860-61. This course is part of the series, The Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation - the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. The series will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. One theme throughout the series is what might be called the politics of history - how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present. Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor o
Tom McHale

We talk a lot about civic education. Here's how to get kids really engaged in it. - The... - 3 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-get-kids-really-engaged-in-it

civics

shared by Tom McHale on 12 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Tom McHale on 12 Nov 16
     
    "We talk a lot about civic education, usually about how little of it too many students get in school. In this charged election season, the subject has rarely, if ever, been more relevant. But here's a different kind of discussion: how kids are actually being engaged in it. Below are several examples that could be used in any school. All of the authors are working in Illinois, where a law was recently passed requiring high schools to provide a semester-long civics course that includes community action of some kind. It says, "Civics course content shall focus on government institutions, the discussion of current and controversial issues, service learning, and simulations of the democratic process." But what they say can apply across the country."
Annabel Astbury

School history gets the TV treatment | Education | The Guardian - 10 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...school-history-gove-schama-tv

innovation sources education history

shared by Annabel Astbury on 16 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • His key episodes are based not around a grand organising narrative but a series of vignettes that make compelling stories.
  • If history is popular on TV, it can be made popular at school.
  • Teachers developed new methods, shifting away from chronology and narrative to topics and themes, where the emphasis was placed on "skills" of analysis over the regurgitation of facts.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • . History in schools, they argue
  • without providing any connecting narrative thread that explains their relationship with each other. The solution is a return to narrative history, to a big story that will organise and make sense of historical experience.
  • Nonetheless, it remains an announcement that tells us more about the contradictions of government thinking and its reductive view of the humanities and social sciences than it does about the state of history teaching in our schools.
  • I agree with Schama that the real public value of history-teaching in schools (as in universities) lies in its capacity to re-animate our civil society and produce an engaged and capable citizenry. I disagree that good story-telling will get you there
  • History provides us with a set of analytical skills that are indispensable for citizens who want to understand our present conditions
  • We want students who aren't just entertained, but who can think critically and effectively about the world they live in.
  • For the creative and innovative teacher it may have been something of a constraint, but most now agree it led to a ‘golden age’ of history teaching in primary schools in the 1990s and ensured every child covered a coherent history syllabus from 11-14 without repeating topics. It also spawned a generation of excellent and accessible teaching materials and encouraged heritage organisations to provide for a standard history curriculum
  • Regardless this return to grand narrative and national myth goes against the very progress we as academic historians have made. History is more to do with how we think and evaluate things, the tools we use to come to conclusions than about dates and conveniently accessible stories self legitimatising the status quo.
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