Studying the Past to Understand the Present
This edition of Margin Notes is guest written by History Department teachers Gabe Ashman, Brian Plane and Pete Weiss
“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” —Thomas Jefferson
Developing boys' ability to become the educated citizenry our democracy needs falls partially to those of us who teach history. We know that study in the field is not static, and that historians continue to learn new facts about events that happened hundreds of years ago. It would be malpractice not to include that understanding of history as a living discipline in our analysis and examination of how we teach it. As we look at the scope and sequence of our curriculum in middle and upper school, we want students to approach the subject with the fullest understanding of past events in a way that is developmentally appropriate and that will spark their desire to learn more and their ability to think critically about what they are being taught.
A good example of this approach is the two-year study of American history in Grades 7 and 8. Currently, Grade 7 is taught by Mr. Weiss, who also taught these students history last year, and Grade 8 is taught by Mr. Plane. These courses, while still focusing on the founding of the nation in Grade 7 and more recent American history in Grade 8, will now include an examination of the Atlantic World, so that the boys can be exposed to a more expansive history of what would become the United States. This view of history, which first gained prominence in the 1950s, seeks to break down a siloed impression of individual nations and present a fuller view of the interconnectedness of world events.
An example of how this enters these middle school history classrooms at Browning might be discussions of the 19th amendment and interactions between British suffragists and American women, or the impact that the Haitan Revolution had on the development of the United States. Helping students make these connections can spark active inquiry and help them recognize that history is so much more than a recitation of facts about events that happened long ago. It's the ability to engage with history through exploration in our classrooms that will make boys see that history is very much alive and that the narrative about how the world we live in came to be is one that is constantly changing as scholars learn more.
At the same time, we can't (and won’t!) ignore civics, as developing an understanding of how the United States government works is absolutely essential at a time when politics dominates the news cycle. What are the branches of government? How often are representatives elected? These are the "bread and butter" civics lessons through which students gain the knowledge they will need to actually make sense of elections, which they will study during even-numbered, national election years. During odd-numbered years students will study how the United States government functions.
“We want the boys to love history and want to learn more of it, which we think can best be accomplished when they understand that it’s so much more than words in a textbook, and that there’s more to be discovered, perhaps even by them.”
The challenge of teaching history to middle school boys is drawing them in and keeping them engaged. They are, after all, young teens and we do know that we can't only teach facts that they could easily find on the internet. The value of teachers is that while teaching facts we explain them and how they relate to what students are experiencing in the present day. We also give boys tools to be able to evaluate the sources from which they are seeking information, and skills to be able to grapple with why the information that they are learning about the past is important. For example, we want boys to see that learning about the colonies and states' rights can help them better understand the debates that are occurring around social issues like abortion or gun rights today.
We want students in our middle school classrooms to think deeply and critically about U.S. history and the reverberations of past events on the present day. As students are developmentally able to think more abstractly than ever before, they can begin to understand that there are many different ways to look at the same event. We want the boys to love history and want to learn more of it, which we think can best be accomplished when they understand that it's so much more than words in a textbook, and that there's more to be discovered, perhaps even by them.