|
|
World History Makeover: Engaging Students to Think Seriously about ValuesJames A. Diskant, Ph.D. |
|
In my first two columns, Engaging Students to Think Locally and Globally, (July 2006), and Engaging Students to Think Deeply about Political Choices, (November 2006), I argued that not only should the creation of community be at the center of any history class, but also that its central focus helps students understand political choices that people make to meet their community-based needs. At a deeper level, students need to consider what criteria affect these choices, namely the values that people hold which both helps students to understand themselves and others better. | 1 |
Undoubtedly
values influence everything we do. Whether we act consistently or inconsistently
with our stated values affects our behavior in multifaceted ways. We may
say one thing and do another; we may wish that we had acted in one way and
yet act in another; but throughout these actions we are affected by our
belief systems, parental influences, and what we have come to believe is
the correct way to act. Students frequently take such influences for granted
or fail to understand how they affect who we are and our behaviors in our
communities, in politics, or whatever we do. Three dictionary definitions
are useful places to start a historical definition: "the ideals, customs,
institutions, etc. of a society toward which the people of a group have
an affective regard" (http://dictionary.reference.com);
"The importance or worth of something to someone"; (http://cambridge.dictionary.org),
and "something as a principle or quality intrinsically desirable: (www.m.w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary).
Collectively values help define who we are and what we want; and while they
can be defined for us, it is our self-definition that matters. |
2 |
How do we, as teachers of history, make this subject interesting in a way that resonates with students who may either take "their" values for granted or they become confused with the nuances of what they perceive to be complicated values in the past or in other places that are different from their own? If we connect values to community and political choices of real people, like or unlike ourselves, students can come to grasp the inherent quality of values as on-going parts of ourselves. As I have argued in my previous columns, we need to make concepts come alive for our students in personalized, relevant, and appealing ways or the teenagers whom we teach will gain little understanding of what they need to understand about the world in the past and its effect on today's world. In so doing we can teach in a way that acknowledges the reality that some peoples' values for reasons that may have nothing to do with the values themselves dominate others and may it then harder for some perhaps even majorities of the population to express themselves freely.
|
3 |
Finally, we need to connect both personal and historical views so that our students can, as is frequently said, "put themselves in someone's else's shoes". First, we need to involve students though journal writing, role playing, and other student-centered activities with analyzing their values and those of their classmates. Second, using student-centered teaching methods, we need to bring these discussions back to the history we are studying so that students can understand the excitement or frustrations that real people had in achieving or failing to achieve their goals. | 4 |
This column will focus on 4 cases – all of
which allow students to engage with issues about peoples' values in
interactive and open-ended ways: 1.) the use of a close reading of primary sources in analyzing the evolution of a set of new values associated with the European Renaissance among the European middle classes in the 15th and 16th centuries, |
5 |
First, the use of the primary sources in looking at Renaissance Italy (see Addendum #1) allows students to see how powerful people articulated the new values that became popular among the popolo, the emerging middle class in Italian city-states. Once students understand these values and the ambiguity associated with them both in public and private spaces, the conflicts that emerged both at home in Florence and in other Italian city-states between the supporters and opponents of the new values become clearer. Then the focus shifts towards the effect that that people with these values had as they traveled and encountered people with different values in parts of Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Through the discussions of conflicting values, it become clear that decisions are being made for reasons associated with what people believed. | 6 |
Second, the skits about Confucianism (see Addendum #2) show the reaction to the to these new individualistic European, or Italian, values in 2 Asian countries, as government leaders developed ways to protect themselves from the introduction of those Renaissance values that upset the status quo in China and Japan. Student skits make the resourcefulness of Chinese and Japanese leaders come alive, and students are able to grasp the development of a new set of problems and a different way of solving them that focuses on how people think and not an arbitrary concept. | 7 |
Third, the witch trials in Europe (see Addendum #3), as well as those in Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, illustrate the tensions when dominant values clash with popular ones and when dominant values overcome popular views with brutality. At first students are limited by their assumptions that "these women are witches" and when we read a trial aloud, as we do with Suzanne Gaudry's trial, they begin to understand what she was actually accused of doing and why women like Gaudry were blamed for doing thing that they could not have done. It is a way to understand how difficult it is for those who are considered to be "different" from those in power to maintain their values in the face of changes out of their control. | 8 |
Fourth, a simulation (see Addenda #4 & 5) allows students to compare and contrast peoples' values from as many as nine different places including Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, Russia, and South Africa whether they are rulers, merchants, religious figures, intellectuals, workers, or peasants. It is superb activity that takes about two weeks during which students learn about similarities and difficulties of peoples' values cross culturally from places that were influenced by conquered or conquering people. I have tended to focus on five or six of these places which has been a more manageable way to have students investigate solutions to common problems that people faced in a "Peoples' Conference" in 1913 if they had been able to vote on the issues being faced due to the changes created through industrialization. | 9 |
In each of these four cases – Europe in the 15th century, Asia in the 17th century, North Atlantic in the 17th century, and different locales in the 19th century – peoples' values do not just meet any of the dictionary definitions presented above; they come alive. In this way the truly interesting consequence of understanding peoples' values – the choices, compromises, and conflicts – become clearer to students. After all in each of these cases, people cared deeply about their values, as they created them, protected them, or even died for them. It is essential that students be able to see that process is also important and that not all outcomes are predetermined. Students can also come to care about the outcomes, as they identify with some of the players involved, and they can make informed decisions about issues that are of importance to them. Then “real” value-based- education can happen as students learn from the past and from one another. | 10 |
Biographical
Note: James A. Diskant, Ph.D., teaches at the John D. O'Bryant
School of Mathematics and Science in Roxbury (Boston), Massachusetts, and
was a Program Associate at the former World History Center at Northeastern
University in Boston, from 1999 until it closed in 2003. He continues to
keep the Center's ideas alive through teaching, facilitating workshops,
and participating in a Book Group, and hopes that the Center will find a
new home in the Greater Boston area in the near future. He can be reached
at james.diskant@verizon.net
|
|
Addendum
#1
World and U.S. History I Classwork on New Values A Renaissance? As we read the excerpts from 14th century Italian merchants aloud, answer the following questions: 1.) What are the key elements of this new attitude towards business affairs?We will continue to explore the values of the new Renaissance middle class, the popolo, by looking at a number of primary sources. In each case, we will want to summarize key aspects of it, as well as to explain what it tells about the values of the popolo, others in Italian society, and the effect these values may have on others beyond Italy. 1.) Excerpt from Pico della Mirandella, Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1480's from Brian Tierney and Joan Scott, eds., Western Societies: A Documentary History, Volume I (NY: Alfred Knopf, 1984), p. 352. |
|
Addendum
#2
World and U.S. History I Chinese Merchants and Japanese Samurai: Confucian Skits In order to make the dilemmas for Chinese merchants and Japanese samurai (that is nobility), who were Confucian, come alive; today we will do some role playing so that we can answer the following question: "How would Chinese merchants and Japanese samurai in the 16th and 17th centuries behave both to make money and to meet their Confucian values?" |
|
Addendum
#3
World and U.S. History I Dr. Diskant Classwork: The Attack on European "Witches" Key questions to answer: "Why were poor women singled out as "witches" in 17th century European towns? What do these attacks tell us about political and social change there?" I. Initial Impressions 1.) Based on the case against Gaudry, what appears to be the purpose of these trials?II. Concluding Observations 1.) Are these phrases: "insider versus outsider" and "fear of the devil" only part of the past? Why or why not? (excerpt can be found in Alan C. Kors & Edward .Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-1700 (Phila: University of Pa., 1972), pp 266-275; additional materials on Salem trials can be found in "Women: Witchcraft in Salem Village" in Primary Sources in U.S. History: Colonization, 1521-1763 ed. By Jeanne M. Kish (Center for Learning, 2001), pp. 77ff. |
|
Addendum
#4
World History II Dr. Diskant Weekly Assignments #13 Due dates of culminating activities:
For Wednesday, December 7: Read over Student Manual to be ready to begin project in class.For Thursday, December 8: Assignment #2 on p. 2.For Friday, December 9: Finish Assignment #4 on p. 4.For Monday, December 12: 1.) Explain in a few detailed paragraphs the reasons why your character supports a particular National Delegation Resolution. |
|
Addendum #5
World History II Dr. Diskant Global Conference on the Social Classes: Quiz on the Results of the Delegates' Votes: (20 points) Using the results from the delegates' votes from your class (see reverse side), answer the following questions in complete sentences: 1.) Which social groups from which delegations won? Explain your answer. (6 points) |
|
|
|
Home | List Journal Issues | Table of Contents |
© 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois |
|