Tales from the classroom.
The first day back from break is always a bit stressful. The students are busy catching up with their friends activities and in the case of Thanksgiving, describing how much they ate. Some are more focused on all the stuff they bought on Friday, while others remember they didn't look at any of their homework since leaving school on Wednesday.
Today in World History we looked at the chapter titled "Renaissance and Reformation." I did a time line activity with the class before I gave them another activity. I put the date 1517 on the line and asked if anybody was Lutheran. The first response was, "Why would that matter?" One student said she goes to a Lutheran church but doesn't really consider herself to be Lutheran. Next I asked if anyone had heard of Martin Luther. One student said, "He's that black guy, isn't he?" I told her she was thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. Another student blurted, "aren't they they same person?" I told them "no" and asked if anyone had any idea when Martin Luther King Jr. lived. Guesses were made from 1700 to 1950. From there we went back to the Reformation. I wrote the date 1525 on the board and asked if anyone knew why that might be important. Nobody seemed to know, so I wrote "Anabaptist's begin." The next question, from a Mennonite student, was "What's an Anabaptist?" followed by, "what does Anabaptist mean?" By the time we got through this there wasn't much time for the activity.
Next was U.S. History where we are finishing the Civil War and looking a bit at Reconstruction. The one group of students seemed mystified that many in the Union thought the Confederates had committed treason. I discovered part of the problem was they didn't know the meaning of the word, "treason." One well meaning young woman, summed it all up (at least for her) when she said, "Why couldn't they just have their own country?" It only got worse, but it did bring to mind what I read somewhere, "teaching history to 15-16 year olds is an unnatural act."
2 comments:
How do you not go home and cry every night? Were we really that ignorant in highschool?
I've been reading some interesting discussions lately about the Civil War and whether slavery was the cause of the war. Southerners like to act like the war was about state's rights but when you go back and read what they actually wrote in the declarations of secession, it becomes clear that it was all about slavery. I think what is remarkable though is how successful southern revisionists have been at inserting the "state's rights" nonsense into the discussion by repeating it over and over. No wonder people are confused.
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