Teaching About Children and Young People in History by Dr. Marybeth Farrell, University of Southern Mississippi
One of the most daunting challenges facing history teachers is to make students care. Most kids will do what they need to do to earn a passing grade on a test, or to complete a project. However, how does one instill an appreciation of the significance of the past? Often, we are met with skepticism, apathy, or outright rejection when we try to convince young people the study of history holds meaning for them.
Part of the problem, I think, is that we expect present-minded children and teenagers to identify with the problems and concerns of people in the past. Often, they simply don’t see how the problems of, let’s say, the American home front in World War II has anything to do with anything that they have experienced.
There are many ways to combat what I would call historical apathy. Use of primary sources such as documents and photographs can awaken interest in a historical topic; use of historical fiction and film can also pique young people’s curiosity about the past. Role-play, cooperative learning, hands-on projects, and field trips are all effective. The method that I would like to focus on in this short article, however, is the incorporation of the history of children and young people in U.S. history lessons. Inclusion of content and resources that allow your students to see a historical event through the eyes of young people of that era can do a great deal to awaken your students’ interest.
When teaching about the colonial period, for instance, one can include details that help students visualize the world of young people in that era. What was it like for a child in a city like Philadelphia or Boston? On a tobacco plantation? How did the lives of poor children differ from those of the wealthy, or of free children from slave? Which young people received an education and what was it like? What kind of music did they listen to? What did they read? What did they do for fun? Even a small amount of time devoted to helping your students realize what life would have likely been like for them can make a huge difference in their interest level and receptiveness to the other content taught in the unit. See the Colonial Williamsburg Web site for both content and ideas.
When teaching about the U.S. Civil War, incorporate photographs of children caught in the conflict. (You can readily find these on the Library of Congress Web site as well as many Civil War sites.) It is one thing to talk about the thousands of teenagers who enlisted on both sides of the conflict; it is another thing entirely to look into their eyes through reproductions of daguerreotypes and tintypes. The bravado of a young Confederate recruit in 1861, the eagerness of a young contraband boy posing in a Union camp, or the calm gaze of a Union drummer boy still have the power to speak to students across time. Firsthand accounts of young prisoners in hell holes such as Andersonville, letters from young soldiers to their parents, and of young girls who worked as nurses or who fled from the ravages of war bring life and depth to the story of the Civil War. Slave narratives, available on-line through the Library of Congress, give a rich insight into how slavery and emancipation were experienced by children and young people, although recounted for WPA interviewers at a much later date.
One of the richest sources of information about young people in a more recent historical era can be found on the New Deal Network, the educational Web site for the FDR Presidential Library. When teaching about the New Deal, students’ eyes often begin glaze over as we teach about law after law, agency after agency. However, when presented with letters written by children and teenagers to Eleanor Roosevelt, or to read accounts of what happened to homeless children who “rode the rails,” or to view photographs of Dust Bowl families taken by WPA photographers, both the Depression and the work of the “Alphabet Agencies” take on a greater meaning. A book such as Studs Terkel’s Hard Times, which is highly readable for high school students, includes many interviews of individuals who were children or teenagers during the Depression. Of course, 20th century topics such as the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War give teachers opportunities to incorporate local history through oral history interviews.
Although I have only made a few suggestions here, I encourage teachers to explore ways to incorporate your students historical “peers” into your lessons. It is a great way to not only encourage empathy for people in the past, but to help your students develop an understanding of how historical change affects everyone in a society.