Perspectives is a place for educators to speak their mind and share ideas. Please peruse the published articles, commentary, and various points of view regarding historical content or issues related to teaching historical content created by our historians and master teachers. All articles are open for comments and the authors welcome a chance to engage in constructive discussions on their work. At Franklin’s Opus, our goal is to promote an environment of idea sharing as well as constructive criticism and alternative viewpoints. Please feel free to submit an article for consideration to Perspectives@franklinsOpus.org.
US Foreign Policy in Post-SOFA Iraq
By Eric Davis
Eric Davis (davis@polisci.rutgers.edu) is professor of political science at Rutgers University and former director of Rutgers’ Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of
Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq
(University of California Press, 2005) and the forthcoming
Taking Democracy Seriously in Iraq (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
The end of 2011 will mark a watershed in U.S.-Iraqi relations. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that the United Statesand Iraq signed in December 2008 calls for all American forces to leave Iraq by December 31, 2011. While it is still unclear
whether U.S. troops will remain in Iraq beyond this year, there is little doubt that U.S.-Iraqi relations will undergo significant
change. What will that change look like? (more…)
Ethnohistory and Historical Perspectives
by Dr. Ray Miles
McNeese State University
In times past, when researching and writing about American Indians, one of the great mistakes made by historians was limiting their research materials to the kinds customarily used by those in the profession. After thoroughly scouring libraries, archives, and manuscript repositories, historians would use the traditional primary and secondary sources: monographs, diaries, government documents, newspapers, personal papers, etc. (more…)
Critical Analysis Exercise
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SOURCES by Dr. Ray Miles, McNeese State University
Historians often have at their disposal in the writing of history a wide of array of source materials. These sources fall broadly into the categories “primary” and “secondary.” Once sources are located, the historian must subject them to critical analysis to determine their accuracy and usefulness.
Why must we do this? British historian Herbert Butterfield (The Whig Interpretation of History) once wrote:
[The historian]…is neither judge nor jury; he is in the position of a man called upon to give evidence; and even so he may abuse his office and he requires the closest cross-examination, for he is one of those >expert witnesses= who persist in offering opinions concealed within their evidence. Perhaps all history books hold a danger for those who do not know a great deal of history already. In any case, it is never safe to forget the truth which really underlies historical research: the truth that all history perpetually requires to be corrected by more history….History is all things to all men. She is at the service of good causes and bad. In other words she is a harlot and a hireling, and for this reason she best serves those who suspect her most.
To minimize the dangers of such pitfalls, historians, and those who Ado history,@ must subject all evidence to critical analysis. There are two types of criticism= external and internal.
External criticism is the process of determining the authenticity of the document. Is it what it is purported to be? Who is the author? Can you identify the genre of the document or writing, i.e., is it a diary, private letter, public letter, speech, business letter, government document, etc.?
Internal criticism is the process of determining the value and accuracy of the information contained in the document. In order to do this, the historian must pose several questions: What was the author’s intent? Why was this written? For whom was it written? What role did the author have in the event? Is this hearsay? If so, how reliable is it? What sorts of bias might the author have? Can the factual evidence be corroborated by other sources?
Depending on the answers to the questions posed above, the historian must then determine to what extent the source is actually useful to the research project at hand. How can this evidence be used? What questions can be asked of the source in pursuing the topic under consideration? Can the evidence be used in some creative way to reach conclusions other than those intended by the author? Does the evidence provide leads that might suggest other lines of inquiry?
A practical exercise in critical analysis:
Many years ago I had the good fortune to engage in a research project that eventually led to my publication of King of the Wildcatters: The Life and Times of Tom Slick, 1883-1930,College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996. One of the difficult aspects of writing this monograph was that the subject, Tom Slick, left few personal materials upon which to learn anything of his early life. He was a shy and taciturn man. Newspapers, oil trade journals, court records, and other sources provided a fair amount of information on his business activities; however, his early life remained largely unknown. As I conducted research I stumbled across a speech that his son, Tom, Jr., delivered in 1952 at the Cushing Petroleum Festival to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the discovery of the Cushing oil field in northeasternOklahoma. Slick’s discovery of this field in 1912 was a pivotal moment in his life and career. The speech was printed as a pamphlet and the copy I found was in the Cushing Public Library. The full title of the pamphlet is “Some Comments on The Life of Tom Slick, Sr. By His Son.” The portion of greatest interest for my research related enticing information on Slick’s childhood and adolescent years.
“My father started life as a poor boy back in 1883 in Clarion,Pennsylvania, right in the region where the oil industry was born. His father [Johnson M. Slick] before him had some connection with the early days of the oil industry as a drilling contractor, but he died in South America when my father was but eleven years old, leaving him as the oldest of three children, and a widowed wife who knew nothing of earning a living.
“My father left school and was able from that age on to support his family by such devices as selling newspapers and stove polish, buying chickens wholesale from the farmers, dressing them and then selling them retail to customers.
“By the time he was eighteen, he went to work as a ‘roustabout’ in the oil fields in West Virginia, and by the time he was twenty, he moved out to the very early days of the oil industry in Oklahoma—having been promoted, by that time, to cable tool dresser.
External criticism: The document was fairly easy to authenticate from newspaper accounts that contained quotes of some of the same information as related in the speech, plus the document was donated by someone who attended the event.
Internal criticism: This proved to be far more problematic….Some cursory genealogical information supplied by the family listed Johnson Slick’s death as 1912. This meant that Tom, born in 1883, could not have been eleven years old; instead he was twenty-nine years old. Also, Tom was the middle child of three, not the oldest. After obtaining an official copy of Johnson Slick’s death certificate I learned that he died on April 16, 1912 inPittsburgh,PA, not inSouth America. Interestingly, Tom Slick provided his father’s personal information contained on the death certificate, and he had signed it!
As for the information in the speech about Slick’s early years as a roustabout (common oilfield laborer) and his promotion to cable tool dresser (someone who prepares drilling tools for use in the well), Tom Slick himself gave the most direct refutation. In 1929, after many years of refusing to provide any personal information to the media, he finally gave an interview to a newspaper reporter.
Excerpt from: “Why Tom Slick, Who ‘Sold Out’ for 35 Million Dollars in Cash, Cannot Retire From Business” by A.B. MacDonald in the Kansas City Star, May 5, 1929.
“’The newspapers have printed many things about me,’ said Slick. ‘They have said that when I was struggling along in the early days I was so poor I was often hungry, and that I was a mule driver and tool dresser and so on. I was poor enough, God knows, but I was never starving. I always had sense enough to rustle a meal,’ and he laughed.
“’I never drove a mule in my life, nor dressed a drill. I would have done those things if I had had to, but I just didn’t. I am not ashamed of work. I’ve done my share of it. My whole life has been work, work, work, the hardest kind of work, but not manual labor, except six months in an oil supply store in Chanute, Kan., just after I came west from Clarion, Pa., where I was born among the oil derricks….’
by Dr. Ray Miles, McNeese State University
Critical analysis of the source, therefore, revealed that with these pieces of evidence in direct contradiction to the personal information related in the speech, it could not be used. As tempting as it may have been to cite its detail about Slick’s youthful entrepreneurial and enterprising spirit, the source was simply too flawed to use. (more…)
Teaching About Children & Young People in History
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. (more…)
In Praise of Bias
By Dr. Nathaniel Knight, Seton Hall University
In the retinue of best practices in history teaching, use of primary sources ranks high. Teachers from elementary school on up are expected not just to recount history but to expose students directly to voices, ideas and images from the past. Yet it is often not clear what students are supposed to derive from this experience. What should students be looking for in a historical document, and how are they to build from these artifacts an image of the past?
The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension
by Jason Caros
The Big Idea
Reading comprehension and overall academic achievement can be greatly improved, and learning gaps closed, by systematically increasing the amount of academic background knowledge students learn beginning in the elementary grades.
Teachers have been hard at work for decades aiming to improve student reading using the latest research in student literacy, cutting edge teaching resources, and barrels of educational funding. What has been the result? Elementary student reading scores have been rising since the 1970s, and this has been due, in large measure, to a growing understanding about the best early instruction in how to read. Unfortunately, reading scores for middle school students have improved only slightly, and scores for students in high school have remained relatively unchanged for the past 40 years.
Click here to read Jason’s full article.
Source: US DOE NAEP Long-Term Reading Assessments
Was Lincoln Left Off the Ballot in 1860 in the South?
By Dr. John Sacher, University of Central Florida
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” So goes the cliché. As we embark on the commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, it might be wise to reexamine some of these “lies.” In this case, “lie” is too harsh, so I will instead examine, “A misunderstanding that has been told often enough to become the truth.” This misunderstanding is the traditional view that “In the presidential election of 1860, Lincoln was not on the ballot in the South.” (more…)
American History as World History
By Dr. Nathaniel Knight, Seton Hall University
History is told, more often than not, as a story of nations. The emergence of the historical profession in the nineteenth century coincided with the rise of the nation-state, and historians found their first calling in the quest to create for the nation a useable past. More recent historians have moved away from the grand narratives of their 19th century predecessors, vast multi-volume epics tracing the life of the nation from time immemorial, but even when delving into more specialized topics or engaging historical traditions other than their own, they have still tended to confine their studies within the framework of the nation-state. (more…)
Sleepy Hollow
Dr. Tom Connors
As something of a cemetery expert, I am sometimes asked what my favorite cemetery is. That’s a hard question and it depends on where I’ve been recently and what’s struck my fancy. But there’s one I always come back to and that I’ve published an article on, so I generally point to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, just north of Tarrytown, NY. Last year, I had the fantastic opportunity to lead a group of teachers in the Ft. Lee TAH grant through the cemetery grounds and I now want to explain a little why I think it provides the perfect tour for an understanding of the American cemetery.
Time on Task
Dr. Jack Conklin
Some teachers are just better at their craft than others, in this series of essays I will attempt to identify the characteristics, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of those teachers. I will use research on what works, personal experience (having observed over 1000 teacher lessons) and established understandings in this series of articles. Because I have done so, I believe that all teachers can change their behaviors or attitudes in ways that will help them become better and better at their craft. That is both the purpose and goal of these essays.