美国历史-lecture 2

LECTURE 1: Introduction to History (please read this before joining Discussion Board 1) Welcome to online history class at Saddleback College. My name is Timothy Braatz. I think that the first thing a student should do—in any class—is ask the teacher about his or her qualifications and academic background. As a student, you have to figure out if this is a teacher worth listening to, a person whose judgment you can trust, so it helps to know what sort of studying and research your instructor has done. (If a teacher doesn’t volunteer this information, don’t be afraid to ask. If a teacher dismisses or avoids your question, that might tell you something important.)

With that in mind, here is my academic background. I earned a BA in religion and philosophy from California Lutheran University, an MA in Latin American studies from UC Santa Barbara, and a PhD in history from Arizona State University. In a history PhD program, a student chooses “areas of study,” and my areas were US history, Native American history, and Latin American history. My PhD dissertation was a history of the Yavapai Indians of Arizona. This is now a book published as Surviving Conquest. More recently, I’ve been studying nonviolence and the history of nonviolent movements, and I’ve just finished writing a book called Peace Lessons. I have also written a book called From Ghetto to Death Camp: A Memoir of Privilege and Luck, which is the story of my friend who survived the Holocaust in World War II. He told me his stories, I put them into a readable format, and the book has been published in English, German, and Polish.

ADVERTISEMENT: You can find these books and e-books on https://www.360docs.net/doc/935490044.html,. All proceeds go to a fine cause. For more on my work, visit my webpage : https://https://www.360docs.net/doc/935490044.html,/tbraatz

As for my teaching background, I’ve taught classes at Arizona State University and Southern Utah University, and I’ve been teaching at Saddleback for over fifteen years. Mostly I teach US history (Hist 22 and 17 at Saddleback) and Peace Studies (Hist 11), but I’ve also taught Native American history and Latin American history.

What does all of this mean? It doesn’t mean I’m smarter than you. It doesn’t mean I know what you need to kn ow. It does mean I’ve spent a lot of time reading, writing, thinking about, and talking about history. However, I’m not what people call a “history buff.” I’m not interested in the trivia of history. For example, I don’t know about all the battles of t he Civil War, the names of the generals, the types of guns that were fired, and so forth. I’m interested in what I consider bigger issues: for example, regarding the Civil War, why did US citizens from the North and South start killing each other, and how does that affect our lives today? In other words, I don’t study history as a curiosity or entertainment. I’m more interested in looking forward rather than backward. I think that, as citizens and humans, we have an obligation to make our society and world a better place, and to fix problems it often helps to know how we got into the current situation. We look to the past to understand human behavior, and then we can use that knowledge to improve our future. That’s why I study history.

So what exactly is history? We use that word to mean different things. History is what happened in the past. History is also the study of what happened in the past. But not just any past. In history class, we don’t look at past events in outer space and we don’t loo k at past events that occurred among the dinosaurs. That would be prehistory (as in prehistoric). For our purposes in this class, history is the human-recorded memory of the past. Historians look at the way humans recorded past events, either through written records or in oral stories. Put another way, historians look at the past through the words of people who were there. When I was writing my friend’s Holocaust story, I was r ecording his oral story. This included his recollections of what he experienced and also stories that other survivors told him. I also looked at some written records, like the day-to-day diary of someone who, like my friend, was in the Jewish ghetto in Lodz during the war. Then I tried to tell a story that was true to those sources of information. I didn’t just make up stuff.

If you want to read something I just made up, try one of these:

Back to history. So far, what I’ve said seems straightforward enough: a historian looks at written and oral accounts of the past and tries to make sense of it, tries to present a story that other people can read and learn from.

So why do people argue about history, get upset about history, and get mad at historians?

History is controversial for one simple reason: historians have to make choices. They have to choose what to include and what to leave out of their writing. They cannot include everything. They have to decide what is important, what is interesting, and what is reliable. That means they have a bias. People tend to think bias is necessarily a bad thing, but we’re all biased. Being biased simply means we have interests. For example, when I wrote a history of the Yavapai peoples of Arizona, I was interested in their experiences, in what they said about the past, in how they viewed their world. Inevitably, I was sympathetic to their experience. A big part of Yavapai life in the late nineteenth century was the experience of being attacked by white soldiers and civilians who wanted to take Yavapai lands. I didn’t tell the story from the perspective of the white invaders. I told it from the perspective of the Yavapais. That was my interest; that was my bias.

NOTE: I’m told that online students have short attention spans. I’m told that online students cannot be expected to sit and read a long lecture unless they have some sort of “exercise” or “self-evaluation” to keep them interested and engaged. Feel free to take a break right now, do some sort of exercise (jumping jacks are invigorating) or self-evaluation (maybe check your hair in the mirror), or send a text message to your fifty closest friends telling them they should sign up for this hot class. [If you’re reading thi s while driving, stop before you hurt someone.]

Speaking of car crashes, y ou’ve probably heard the phrase “two sides to every story.” With regard to history, that’s simplistic, which means too simple. With regard to history, there are an infinite number of perspectives. This is important to understand. (It will be on the test!)

So imagine a car crash. No, imagine you are the insurance agent or police officer or a newspaper reporter who has to figure out how a car crash occurred. Let’s say you locate twenty eyewitnesses. Twenty people saw the car crash, and you interview each one. How many different versions of that accident do you think you’ll get? If it’s two sides, some witnesses will say Car A was at fault and some will put the blame on Car B. But you need to know more than just who to blame. You want to know what happened, and you will probably hear twenty different versions. Right?

That’s what history is like. For every event, there are a multitude of perspectives, and historians must choose which perspectives to include in their accounts of the past. They make those choices based on what their interested in, which is to say…their bias.

History is always told with a bias. (This will also be on the test!)

Here’s a big-picture example: Until recently, say before 1975, the teaching and writing of US history has been dominated by one particular demographic, one particular group. Can you guess what that group looked like?

It was mostly white males with financial security. They were the ones with access to higher education, to college teaching positions, to leisure time, and to the publishing industry. Women and minorities were largely excluded, either by tradition or by law. White men wrote the history. When these historians went to write history, guess whose stories they thought were most important? I’ll give you a hint: they didn’t try to figure out what life was like for poor black slave women. No, they were interested in presidents, generals, and heads of corporations. In other words, other wealthy white men, people like themselves. Historians thought those were the people that mattered. So if you took a US history class, you would learn about George Washington and Andrew Jackson and John D. Rockefeller, but you wouldn’t learn about the slave women owned by Washington and the Indian families attacked by Jackson and the poor workers exploited by Rockefeller. This was history as viewed by the people at the top.

Do I still have your attention?

At this point, you may be thinking, “This teacher hates white people.” (Or maybe pink ones!) That’s not true, of course, but, like many history instructors, I a m critical of the way history has been traditionally taught.

Here’s a quick history lesson: In the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement (like Martin Luther King Jr.) taught people how to protest nonviolently to demand more rights and opportunities. Out of the Civil Rights Movement came the student movement, the women’s rights movement, Chicano movement, gay rights movement, Native rights movement. This era (1954-1974) was a time of protest in the United States, and one result was that members of these groups gained greater access to colleges and universities—it became easier than before for women and minority groups to become college students—and they didn’t want to hear only stories about rich white males. But if they took history classes, they were told

white male history. If you took literature classes, you read white male literature. So activists demanded women’s studies programs and African American studies programs and Latin American studies programs, and so forth, so that more voices could be heard. Some of those students studied history and some of them became professors, which is why history classes today (as compared to forty years ago) tell a richer story about different groups of people.

But it also means we tell a different type of history. We look at history differently. To keep things simple for the moment, let’s consider two types: celebratory history and critical history. Within the United States, celebratory history means using stories about the past to convey a message of how “great” our society is. Rich white males liked celebratory history because they were on top, they had privileges, they had something to celebrate. One example of celebratory history is the way Abraham Lincoln has been portrayed. He has a holiday, he has schools and towns and counties named after him, he has positive nicknames: Honest Abe and The Great Emancipator. The immediate message is that Lincoln was a president worth honoring and celebrating. Why? If you ask someone who knows a little history, she might tell you that President Lincoln held the country together and signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves. Sounds good!

Critical history means asking questions about the past that cut through the celebration. It means wanting to know the whole story, not just the “happy history.” It means challenging the traditional version. It means being skeptical about …everything. Who do you think was attracted to critical history? You got it—people not on the top of society. They wanted to challenge society, not celebrate it. Here are some critical questions we might ask about Lincoln: Why did he sign the Emancipation Proclamation? (Answer: He wasn’t winning the war and decided that he needed Southern blacks on his side.) What took him so long? (Answer: He was afraid of angering slave owners in Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland—states that h adn’t seceded from the Union.) Did the Proclamation outlaw slavery? (Answer: No, that was the 13th Amendment.) What did Lincoln think of blacks? (Answer: They should have the same rights as whites but they are inferior to whites and will never live “on equal footing” with whites and maybe should be sent to live elsewhere.) How do we know this? (Answer: That’s wh at he said in his speeches.)

Now comes the big question: Why do historians and politicians and filmmakers make such a big deal about Lincoln (and also Washington, Jefferson, and Kennedy, and other presidents)? Traditional US history is often Great Man History, meaning the stories of “great” men who solved “our” problems. It goes like this: “We” had a problem with the British in 1776, but George Washington solved it. “We” had a problem with slavery, but Lincoln fixed it. “We” had a problem with racism, but Martin Luther King Jr. ended it. You get the idea.

Think about that for a moment. The message of Great Man History is that some “great man” will solve our big problems, and that you, as an ordinary citizen, should do nothing but wait for the “great man” to fix things. This encourages you to be passive. It encourages you to accept society as it is, rather than try to improve it. It doesn’t encourage you to be an active, engaged, critical citizen. It doesn’t empower you.

You see, history has a message. It has lots of messages. It has small messages (historical facts) and it has big messages (current meanings). In the traditional, celebratory history of Lincoln, the small message is that he “freed the slaves” (historical fact), and the big mes sage (a lesson for you to learn) is that presidents are great men who do great things and you should respect them and celebrate them and let them take care of things. In other words, say “Thank You” and shut up.

Do you see how this works? Whoever writes and teaches the history gets to say what happened, gets to say what and who is important, and, in doing so, sends a message, teaches a lesson.

In my experience, most history teachers just tell you “what happened.” They say this happened and then this happened and then this happened.

History is just one damn thing after another. And you’re supposed to remember what happened, and when it happened, and write it on the test. Multiple choice, true and false, identifying terms—sound familiar?

1) Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863—true or false?

2) Identify the following term: Emancipation Proclamation

3) Choose the best answer: Abraham Lincoln was a great president because:

a. He won the Civil War.

b. He never told a lie.

c. Because the teacher said so.

d. All of the abov

e.

Which is why many students find history class boring. This happened, and then that happened, but I don’t care, Mr. History Teacher, that old stuff has nothing to do with my life.

In this class, we’re going to look at some historical events that seem to be important, that we’ve been told are important, but we’re also going to ask about the bigger messages, the deeper lessons, and we’re going to ask critical questions, not just celebrate famous men.

NOTE: Are you getting tired of reading? Remember: this is a history class, there’s a lot of reading, so you’re going to have to train your brain to read. If you want to be a successful runner, you have to train your legs and lungs to run long distances. If you want to be a successful surfer, you have to train your arms to paddle out over and over again. If you want to be a successful painter, you have to train your eyes to see color and your hand to hold a steady brush. If you want to succeed in history class, you have to train your brain to read. And there’s only one way to train your brain to read: READ! Put away the distractions and read. (Along the way, you might learn something valuable—like how to think critically.)

But maybe you need a break right now, so here’s another picture:

But first, a pop quiz:

1)In history, are there are two sides to every story? (See, I told you it was on the test!)

Answer: No, there are an infinite number of perspectives about every story.

2) Are historians unbiased?

Answer: No, history is always told with a bias. That doesn’t mean it’s untrue, it

just means that historians (like all humans) have interests and make

choices based on those interests.

So imagine you are a critical thinker. You know there are many different ways to look at an event. You pick up a newspaper or visit a news website and you see this story:

OLD OAK KNOCKED OVER

A beautiful old oak tree was severely damaged yesterday when a seventeen-year-old punk in a pickup truck ran a red light. The truck rear-ended a car driven by a nice old woman, causing her to smash into the tree and knock it down. This is a sad ending for a tree that had lived through numerous earthquakes and was home to a robin’s nest, eighteen ladybugs, and one squirrel. Hopefully, the oak will be replaced right away.

If you are a critical thinker, what questions should you be asking about the Oak article? (This is the discussion question for Discussion Board 1.)

Next Assignment: Head on over to Discussion Board 1 where we will be discussing the question I just asked. (You may want to reread this lecture to prepare for the discussion.) We can also discuss any questions you might have about this lecture. See you there!

Next Next Assignment: After posting on the Discussion Board, please read Chapter 1 in Zinn, A People’s Histor y of the United States. Then write answers to the two assigned questions and submit your answers via Blackboard. (Your two answers combined should be at least 800 words. For some of you, that’s a lot of writing, I know, but you can do it, it just takes practice.)

But before you go, review the instructions below:

Rules for DISCUSSION BOARDS

-Be polite.

-Use proper grammar, including complete sentences and accurate spelling.

-Use black “ink” and a font that is easily readable (for example, not cursive).

Instructions for DISCUSSION BOARDS

-Go to DISCUSSION BOARD.

-To post a reading response, select CREATE THREAD.

-Type a subject and message, then click SUBMIT.

-T o respond to someone else’s post, select their thread and click REPLY.

-To promote a good discussion, let’s try to have a few threads with lots of posts on each thread rather than lots of threads with a few posts on each. In other words, let’s get everybody involved a few main conversations. It will be easier to follow.

-Your involvement in the DISCUSSION BOARD will be graded. However, Blackboard won’t allow grading until you post at least twice, so that’s the bare minimum: 2 posts. For a decent grade, you’ll have to post more than twice. The instructor expects you to read lots of threads and write lots of posts. That means returning to the Discussion Board throughout the week to participate in the ongoing discussions. (Showing up for 20 minutes on Sunday night is insufficient participation.)

-The instructor is also looking for evidence that you have read the lecture and evidence that you are thinking about the topic, so make references to what you have read for this class.

-The instructor is also looking for thoughtful questions (the best way to learn is to ask questions), so ASK QUESTIONS about the issues and ideas under discussion. Asking a good question is better than just making up a silly response—the first will help you learn, the second is just trying to complete the assignment

-Try to make clear arguments. For example, don’t simply say “I agree” or “I disagree.” Explain why you agree or disagree. The instructor is looking for evidence of thought, not just simple participation.

See you there!