Goin’ to Gettysburg

About a month and a half ago I was extremely honored to be have been selected as a participant in a national conference arranged by Gettysburg College and Gettysburg National Military Park entitled “The Future of Civil War History: Looking Beyond the 150th.” The conference will run from March 14-16 and is going to be possibly one of the greatest conglomerations of Civil War historians and educators that we’ll see during the Civil War sesquicentennial, if not all time. I’m not joking. My jaw drops every time I look at this program and see the names that are going to be there. I will be participating in a working group entitled “Teaching the Civil War: Challenges, Opportunities, and New Strategies for the Classroom.” As the term “working group” suggests, our group has been tasked with discussing this extremely important topic of classroom education and offering suggestions for improving the ways in which we connect with our students, even as the ongoing challenges of standardization limit our creative abilities and force us to work with a model that many of us do not agree with.

Earlier this month the participants, including myself, were assigned to write a brief 2-3 page “position paper” in which we were to reflect on how our educational experiences have shaped our perceptions about Civil War education. To be sure, my experiences in the classroom have been limited, probably more so than any other participant in the working group. I taught for a year and a half at the Orchard Farm School District in St. Charles, Missouri, before moving on to graduate studies at IUPUI, and almost all that time was dedicated towards teaching twentieth century World and American history (when I was teaching History, mind you. As a teaching assistant for the 2011-2012 year I helped students in all subjects). However, this experience was valuable, and I think some of the problems I encountered are undoubtedly the same ones Civil War educators have had to deal with. Furthermore, my work with the National Park Service included educational interactions with thousands of people of all ages across the world that covered topics such as slavery, the U.S. Constitution, and the Civil War, so I think that counts for something as well.

I just received the position papers of the other participants in my working group and am in the process of reading over them and preparing comments. We are all going to be discussing our papers online for the next month and a half until the conference commences in March. In the meantime, I would like to share my position paper with my readers and see what they have to say about it. Here are four questions that I had to address when writing my paper:

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Here was my response. Readers will note that some of the ideas in it reflect earlier posts on this blog. Others I have yet to talk about. I hope to expand on all of them in the near future:

“As the commemoration of the Civil War sesquicentennial continues across the United States, history educators find themselves at a crossroads. On one end, lawmakers and education specialists have successfully advocated for an increased emphasis on standardized testing and common core standards as tools for measuring proficiency in history and social studies. For example, a 2006 law passed in Florida stated that “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, [and] shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable.” Under this educational model, the results will lead to positive results for both teachers and students, ostensibly. History teachers will be able to collaborate with each other to create uniform measurements of assessment; students will use their textbooks to understand and demonstrate their knowledge of the “facts” of history. The Civil War started with the firing of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861; the Battle of Gettysburg was fought on July 1-3, 1863; the thirteenth amendment abolished slavery in the United States.

A glance at the other end, however, shows that the results of such changes in the education curriculum are mixed at best. An unintended consequence of the increased emphasis on standardized testing–along with the economic troubles of recent years–has been a decrease in opportunities for schools to take their students on field trips to learn about and experience history in person. Furthermore, standardization has led to a wider range of topics being introduced in the history classroom so that students can score higher on all aspects of their tests, which means that complex topics such as the Civil War receive limited attention in the classroom. In sum, history teachers are “teaching to the textbook” in order to succeed in a system that values an “outcome-based education.”

Stanford University Professor Sam Wineburg has pointed out the shortcomings of this approach. He argues that textbooks used from Kindergarten to 12th grade convey information in a way that is bland and devoid of primary sources (if primary sources exist, they are “set off in ‘sidebars,’ so as not to interfere with the main text”). The “corporate authors” of such textbooks speak in the passive voice and reinforce the false notion that “the way things are told is simply the way things were.” In response, many students–even ones who excel in school–no longer read their textbooks. For them, the endless array of “facts” promulgated in textbooks are meaningless, not worth reading until the night before the big test. Considering the rising costs of such textbooks for schools across the country, there must certainly be an educational method that can get students reading about and appreciating the past.

A solution that provides exciting opportunities for the future of Civil War education is the integration of digital history in classroom. Knowing that the present generation of students process and understand information differently than older generations, we must utilize methods that best suit their learning needs. By using digital technology in the classroom, history teachers can bring the power of primary sources into the classroom. By incorporating digital resources offered by museums and archival institutions around the country into the classroom, students are empowered to learn about history through the millions of online documents available at their fingertips. Furthermore, teachers will be able to use their history textbooks as a resource that the primary sources offered by museums and archival institutions, rather than being the source in which students learn about history.

Examples of excellent digital resources are prevalent. The Library of Congress’s “American Memory” page is a “digital record of American history and creativity” that allows students the ability to study photos, letters, maps, and many other sources, while their “Chronicling America” website gives students access to more than five million pages of historic newspapers. The IUPUI University Library of Digital Scholarship has digitized all of Indiana Governor Oliver Morton’s telegrams during the Civil War. Edward L. Ayers’s “Valley of the Shadow” website shows how two communities, one northern and one southern, were affected by the Civil War. These primary sources can be utilized by students of all ages and are waiting to be uncovered and studied in classrooms all over the United States.

History educators cannot cultivate a preservation ethic in their students if they don’t understand why the artifacts of history they study are worth preserving. The current model of teaching, although slowly moving towards the digital model, has continued to struggle in answering the question that so often accompanies the study of history: Digital history is unique because it challenges students to understand history as a method of critical thinking and asking questions of the past, not just a passive recitation of content. Students can use digital technology to create their own active interpretations of the past through collaborative projects such as creating a Word Press website for a walking tour of a Civil War battle field, a blog that collects and discusses the importance of Civil War letters in maintaining communication during a time of war, or the use of primary source newspapers to help strengthen a student’s argument in their research paper.

Students want to know that what they are learning in school is relevant to their lives and their future. Civil War history has the power to demonstrate to these students how the past affects the present and how the problems of contemporary society dictate the questions we ask of the past. Digital history brings this past to life and provides new ways for understanding it. Let us push forward in creating exciting learning opportunities for our students in the history classroom.”

What do you think? Any sort of constructive criticism is welcomed.