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History headaches.

We have a few weeks left in our 18-week literature-based unit study of the Civil War:  up ahead are two weeks on Reconstruction, and two weeks I called "Aftermath" which should take us through Plessy v. Ferguson and lay the groundwork, I hope, for grasping the Civil Rights movement when we study it next year.

 I started out very stressed that I hadn't worked out an exact week-by-week schedule of readings, but as I went on, planning just one or two weeks ahead from a master list I had prepared before the beginning of the year, I relaxed into a routine.  I am definitely getting better at flexibility.  And I am finding that it's far better to pick a few good, lengthy books that go into details, than to try to cram EVERYTHING in.   

 For example, we spent two weeks on one gem of a book about the Monitor and the Merrimack, and two weeks on another book about nothing but Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox -- and let me tell you, I always thought of that latter event as being worthy of one or two paragraphs, as it had appeared in all the American History texts I'd ever read before.  How amazing to read it all fleshed out into a 180-page book -- a gripping read, really.  Notes passed back and forth between the two generals; the constant threat of a deadly skirmish breaking out just as the surrender deal was about to go through; the drama of the negotiation of the terms of surrender; striking and contrasting portraits of the two very different men who met that day; the comical, frantic bidding for souvenirs from Mr. McLean's sitting room after the surrendering was over.

I'm surprising myself.  I always thought I would be the sort to insist on memorization of key dates and things.  Instead, I'm hitting my stride with an approach of "bringing the era to life," the best I can, through good stories and biographies.  The children are really, really interested in it.  History is, after all, a collection of stories, and who doesn't like a good story?   

This leaves me 18 weeks to "do," um, the rest of the 19th century in America.  WOW was it hard to make decisions about that.  Finally I just laid a printout of my book list on the table and moved eighteen pennies around on the pages until it seemed I'd distributed the best books evenly.  So:

• 3 weeks on pre-Civil War leadership and foreign policy.
• 4 weeks on expansion of the United States.
• 3 weeks on immigration, urbanization, and social change.
• 3 weeks on daily life, art, and entertainment.
• 2 weeks on technology and economics.
• 2 weeks on innovations in transportation and communication.
• 1 week on post-Civil War leadership and foreign policy.

The reference spine is Joy Hakim's A History of US.  I plan to anchor the century in biographies, choosing them mostly for the quality of the writing, which leaves me with the lives of Andrew Jackson, Crazy Horse, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Luther Burbank, the Wright brothers, John Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt.   (How's that for a survey?)*   A handful of other really good books should round it out, covering topics like the Monroe Doctrine, stagecoaches, railroads, captains of industry, labor unions, the Edison-Westinghouse rivalry, settlers in southwestern Ohio, one-room schoolhouses, and European waves of immigration.   Whew.  Even with all this work done, I'm still sort of making it up as I go along... but it's actually working, I think.

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*Don't forget we did spend the first half of the year on the Civil War, which gave us the opportunity to read biographies of Dred and Harriet Scott, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Lee and Grant, and  Abraham Lincoln ... and coming up we have bios of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. 

History and today.

I've started thinking already about next year's literature-based American History study.  Last year we did "prehistorical North America through the War of 1812."  This year we're doing "19th century" -- really, "war of 1812 through U.S. entry into WWI," with half the year spent on Civil War and related topics.  Next year we'll wrap it up with "Twentieth-Century America" -- which is really going to be "World War I through 9/11/01," I think.

When I prepared the book lists for the first two-thirds, I started by picking up a couple of good high-school history textbooks and reading through them to get an idea of which topics to cover.  I think this time around, though, I am not going to do that.  That approach forces you to start in the past and look forward.  It's also an approach in which everything is important -- in which it's hard to make priority choices, given the limited time we have to spend.  But I need a way to decide which topics we must cover and which must be set aside.   So I think maybe the best approach is to start in the present and look back.  I want to ask myself, "Where are we now?  And how did we get here?"

It's not that I want to focus heavily on current events with the kids I'm teaching, who will be two fifth-grade boys and one seventh-grade girl next year (plus whichever younger kids "tag along" with the subject from day to day).   I don't think they are old enough to really dig into the complexities of modern-day politics, domestic and global.  

But I do want to supply them with the basic historical background they will need to understand today's United States and its place in the world.  I want to steep them at least a bit in the past, so that when it comes time to understand a complicated present, they'll have some idea that it didn't come out of nowhere.  And so when I select topics, I want to do it with an eye toward setting the stage for today.  That, I think, will be my primary organizing principle, since I can't cover everything.  Does this topic help us understand where we are today?  Here in the U. S.?

I think it has a way of focusing how to teach about things.  It's so easy to think of the twentieth century as a string of "eras:"  the World War I era, the Depression era, the WWII era, the Cold War era, the era of the Civil Rights Movement, and so on.  I was tempted to break it up like that myself.  But there are other ways to think about all these pieces, less as discrete time blocks than... phenomena maybe?   The end of American isolationism and the beginnings of intensive global involvement, for better or worse.  The great migrations from rural areas to cities, and from south to north.   U.S. involvement in the Mideast.

Let's talk presidents.  I'd rather cover a few in depth than all of them superficially.  In the 19th century I planned to cover biographies of only three presidents, the most interesting ones:  Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt.  In the twentieth century, whose full biographies to cover?  It strikes me that two are no-brainers:  FDR and Reagan.  They make interesting counterpoints, if nothing else.  When I was talking it over with Hannah I also ticked off "and Kennedy," but when I mentioned that to Mark he said "No way.  Kennedy's only interesting because he was assassinated.  You want an interesting character study, you want to do Lyndon Johnson."   

"Nixon maybe?"

"Well, sure, he's a character too, but a lot of interesting things happened under Johnson.  Think about it."  And I am thinking about it -- he has a point.

Anyway, I am a long way from committing anything to paper, but I will definitely have food for thought over the next few weeks.

Details, details.

Having less time to spare has forced me to learn to be more flexible.  Last year, for instance, I had planned out every book we were going to read for our literature-based American History study down to which chapters we'd read which weeks, all in advance, for the entire school year.  I felt sure I'd fall behind or miss something if I didn't.

This year (19th century, with half the time spent on the Civil War) I managed to make a list of books I wanted to use, and to divide them roughly up into topical chunks lasting two to six weeks long, but I didn't get around to figuring out exactly which ones, and which pages of which ones, I would have time to cover in two hours' reading and discussion per week.

To my surprise, the world has not stopped turning, and the children seem to be getting some decent history education.  

This is what I am doing now:  A couple of weeks in advance I request the dozen or so books I need for the next several-week chunk.  Then, the morning that we're doing American History -- Tuesdays with Hannah -- I frantically flip through the books and find some decent excerpts that add up to the number of pages I can reasonably cover in the allotted time.  Then, I read them to the kids and we talk about them.

There's a lot of stuff we never get to.  Especially, there are many books that I would love to read in their entirety, but can only afford the time to read half, or a couple of chapters.  

For instance, a few weeks ago, I read about half of a wonderful old book by Fletcher Pratt called The Monitor and the Merrimac.  Fantastic.  Yeah, it covered the Battle of Hampton Roads.  But it also contained biographical information about Ericsson, the engineer who developed so many original innovations that became part of the Monitor; a lot of really interesting (to me anyway) technical information about the process of working out the kinks in the boat; detailed explanation of the North's strategy of naval blockade against the Confederacy, including discussions of the implications for international relations, blockade running, and the like; and it gave us the opportunity to discuss the concept of an "arms race" with the fourth graders.  But the whole book is 180 pages long; I got as far as the end of the actual battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac itself, and really didn't have time to go on to the second half which went into the rest of the naval campaigns of the war.

Still, it was a great choice.  The boys loved it.  So did I!

Today was another example.  I cobbled together a lesson from:

• 1 picture book, the text of which was the Gettysburg Address, to use with the younger children as their history lesson
• One section of a children's book about the Battle of Gettysburg, for the background leading up to the battle
• A few pages of 1 book for young people called "The Military History Of Civil War Land Battles" written by a military historian, for covering the actual battle, and using its maps to discuss troop movements
• Parts of two chapters from a book about women in the Civil War, for covering hospital work and bread riots
• Part of Daugherty's biography of Abraham Lincoln to cover NYC draft riots, Lincoln's many pardons of army deserters, the famous letter to Mrs. Bixby, and the Gettysburg Address again in more detail.

The whole lesson wound up being surprisingly cohesive, since the chapters about women and the civil war (A Separate Battle by Chang) centered around the time period near Gettysburg.  

Next week we begin the wrap-up; all I know is that we'll read one book about Sherman's march to the sea and we'll read part of a book about Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox -- a book that is itself 180 pages long.  The next week we'll read more of that book and also a book about Lincoln's assassination.  Then we cover Reconstruction.

Anyway, my point is that I am learning to wing it.  "You call that winging it?!?" says Hannah incredulously, knowing that I have already put a lot of work into selecting the list of books to read from -- even if the list is too long and I still have to pick and choose and excerpt the morning before a lesson.  Believe me though, this amount of flexibility is new to me.  It's giving me so much more confidence that things will go all right, the children will still learn, even when I don't have a super-detailed plan.

Medium-detailed, though, I'm clinging to as long as I can.

Why have I been spending so much money on packaged cookies?

Per Oscar's Civil War history activity, the children are joyfully gobbling up homemade hardtack for their afternoon snack.

It didn't even cost me any labor, since Oscar made the stuff.

I am pretty sure that a cup and a half of flour, a teaspoon of salt, and a half cup of water costs less than fifteen Oreos.  I think it maybe even makes less mess.  Even if you consider the tablespoon of molasses I gave each child to dip their hardtack in.

Hmph.

(mix flour, salt, and water in bowl, knead in bowl, roll out to 1/2 inch thickness on ungreased cookie sheet, cut into squares, poke holes with skewer, bake 25 minutes at 375 degrees.)

Okay, they're asking for gummy bears now.  Seems a little bit more normal.

"Imperial history of the Middle East."

I may have pointed to this before, but I wanted to recommend again this animated map of the imperial history of the Middle East.  A very cool survey of 3000 years in 90 seconds. 

We used it today with the 4th-grade boys to accompany Chapter Eight of Story of the World: Early Modern, which contains a too-exhausting-to-remember survey of the history leading up to the Ottoman Empire.  The animation worked a lot better.

History and poetry.

In honor of yesterday's Feast of the Holy Rosary (née Our Lady of Victory), Donald McClarey of The American Catholic reposts part of Chesterton's classic poem Lepanto and links to a book review (by Victor Davis Hansen) of a one-volume history of that October 7, 1571 battle.  

Why not celebrate a feast day by reading history, and dabbling in poetry?  Sounds appropriate to me.

As I noted in the comments on McClarey's post, I first encountered Lepanto in the form of these four lines:

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath


(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)


And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,


Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain...

which were printed as part of the foreword of a paperback edition of Don Quixote that I read at age 14.  I didn't remember who wrote them, and I didn't know who Don John was, but they stuck in my memory and years later I was delighted to discover that Chesterton was the author, and with that discovery the rest of the poem.  I am a sucker for anything written in such a steady meter, I suppose.

Classic (not classical) economics, and the value of an anecdote.

A Facebook friend* linked to this 1945 paper I'd never read before:  The Economic Organisation of a POW Camp, by R. A. Radford.  I saved it to read to Mark during our 5-hour drive from Cincinnati to Nashville, because I knew he'd really be interested in it. 

We reached a transit camp in Italy about a fortnight after capture and received 1/4 of a Red Cross food parcel each a week later. At once exchanges, already established, multiplied in volume. Starting with simple direct barter, such as a non-smoker giving a smoker friend his cigarette issue in exchange for a chocolate ration, more complex exchanges soon became an accepted custom. Stories circulated of a padre who started off round the camp with a tin of cheese and five cigarettes and returned to his bed with a complete parcel in addition to his original cheese and cigarettes; the market was not yet perfect. Within a week or two, as the volume of trade grew, rough scales of exchange values came into existence. Sikhs, who had at first exchanged tinned beef for practically any other foodstuff, began to insist on jam and margarine. It was realized that a tin of jam was worth 1/2 lb. of margarine plus something else; that a cigarette issue was worth several chocolates issues, and a tin of diced carrots was worth practically nothing.

Radford goes on to describe the development of a trading and barter economy complete with currency, price fixing, a futures market, middlemen, entrepreneurs, a service industry, and a robust internal debate about economic policy.  It's really worth a read even if you think you're not very interested in economics.

I guess it's a "classic" paper, and I'm not surprised.  The writing is crisp and detailed, well-organized and a good balance between the personal experience and the interested (though probably not objective) observer; it was easy to imagine Radford the economist-turned-prisoner-of-war, or maybe he was a POW-turned-amateur economist, watching the little economy rise and fall (and sharing in its fortunes) and thinking, "I'm going to get a paper published about this when I get out of here."

Radford's paper struck me as an excellent example of engaging science writing, even if the observations are anecdotes and the science a social rather than a hard science.  I think there is a place for narrative-style, rather than data-driven, reports about observed phenomena.   As long as you are careful not to draw stronger conclusions from the described experience than its narrow scope permits, and as long as you remain open to considering narratives from other observers that may offer counter-evidence to your own conclusions, this kind of anecdotal and personal report has great value.  If nothing else such reports suggest avenues for further exploration, and they stimulate interest in the subject for lay and technical readers alike.

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*I am new to Facebook**, and I'm not sure yet of the etiquette of hat-tipping people for Facebook links when they blog under a pseudonym.  Somebody fill me in when they get a chance.

** Unless we're close in real life or have corresponded for quite some time, if you try to friend me I probably won't confirm it, at least not yet.  I'm still not sure how I want to use FB.  Don't take it personally.

Civil War battlefields.

Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic is blogging a family trip to Virginia, where he visited several Civil War battlefields.  We are starting our unit on the Civil War this week, and plan to visit Stones River (TN) in a month or so as a side trip from a family wedding; so the posts are timely for us , and very well written too.  Check them out.

I.  Petersburg

For me, it was all history through the veil, yet again. I felt robbed of something--like I couldn't see Petersburg, the way I might see Pearl Harbor, that I was more like a Jew surveying the cemetery at Normandy. The group asked questions, mostly concerned with tactics and strategic errors, which the ranger dutifully answered. It was like listening to a doctor discuss with great interest and curiosity, your grandmother's cancerous tumors. This is why I can never be a Civil War buff. I am not fascinated. I am compelled. I would turn away, if I could.

II.  Richmond

What you see above is the train of Rebels fleeing the city, as the Union troops enter from the other side. I was thinking about the Richmond yesterday, and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." For those who are unfamiliar, the song is a mournful ballad about the fall of Richmond and Petersburg. I'm told that it's a great song, and I don't so much doubt this, as I doubt my own magnanimity. 

I'm reminded of one of my father's favorite quotes, "The African's right to be wrong is sacred." Or Aaron McGruder's line, "I reserve the right to be a nigger." I can no more marvel at The Band then a Sioux can marvel at the cinematography of The Died With Their Boots On. I wouldn't fault the man who could, but it's not me My empathy is a resource to be rationed like all others. My right to be wrong is sacred. My right to be a nigger is reserved. 

I started to play the song yesterday, and stopped myself. Again, I was angry. Again, another story about the blues of Pharaoh, and the people are invisible. The people are always invisible. "These motherfuckers," I mumbled to myself. Kenyatta came in from work and caught me rambling. This is just what you want to hear after coming off the late-shift--your past-drunk spouse ranting about some group you've never heard of. 

III.   Shirley on the James

Inside we got the grand-tour and at every stop the kids riddled our guide with questions. I had that love-hate thing again--deep admiration for the family who'd preserved the place for 11 generations, and the heir who still lived in the house. And then anger for the slaves, and anger for the Native Americans. 

IV.  The Wilderness

I love the lore of the Wilderness. Early in the fight the Union had pushed the Confederates all the way back to Lee's headquarters. Lee stood up, about to lead the counter-charge himself, until a division of Texans held him down, "Go back General Lee!" they yelled. I think that is so beautiful, the complete disregard for logic, and personal safety. Still I see it through a cracked glass. It's like reading a lush love story about a man and a woman, who do not like you.

Five books that explain the 20th century.

I love posts in which commenters are challenged to name a handful of books and/or movies that meet some specific criteria.  (Here's a previous post along the same lines)  If anything else they often add to my lists of must-sees and must-reads.  

There's a great one going on over at Volokh Conspiracy:

Name in the comments the five works of fiction that you believe best explain - not define or symbolize or exemplify, precisely - but in some way explain the past century to (in Brecht's phrase) 'those who come after.'

Lots of suggestions there already, including many that I've never read.  I don't know if I'd keep the list down to five, but among the suggestions that I agree do explain the parts of the 20th century I lived through are Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons and  Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.   I'm almost embarrassed to find myself agreeing, too, with another Wolfe work, The Bonfire of the Vanities.   Wolfe's a stylistic and journalistic genius and it translated to his novels.  

As for the others listed, mostly what's been produced is a catalogue of novels that have palpable senses of place and time.  The Great Gatsby.  Catch-22.  To Kill a Mockingbird.  Lolita (which may seem like an odd choice to explain the 20th century, if you've never actually read it).  1984 is a strange choice in some ways, but in others it is not.  Did the events come to pass or did they not?  I think I'd defer to the judgment of a citizen who actually lived under a real 20th century totalitarian regime, when deciding whether 1984 turned out to be an accurate portrayal.

Love the list -- I'm going to have to read some of the suggestions.

A lot of people wondered what it means to "explain" a century.  I would say it means a novel which has a strong sense of the time and place, so that the reader of the future can understand the answers to some of the questions of "How could people have lived that way?  How could so many have made the choices they did?  What were they thinking?  Why did history take the turns it did?  How did the choices and beliefs of individuals come together to create the conflicts and movements that shaped history during those years?"

Why so gloomy, everyone?

I watched the inauguration, with my kids, and I enjoyed it.   *gasp*

I figure these things:

(1) Even though I don't love our new president's politics, I do love our country, and I love the Constitution and respect for it, and I love pageantry, and I love the peaceful transfer of power.   So what if Dianne Feinstein was in charge?  I can deal.  

(2) My kids know I didn't vote for the guy. They know I hoped he wouldn't win. I want them to see that I respect the President of the United States, and in general, people I disagree with.   I just cannot hold anger or resentment in my heart towards the masses of people who are truly overcome with joy about this election.  I want to be happy for them, and hopeful for the country.

(3) I've gotta pray for this man daily -- for his conversion, mainly, and also for wisdom, and that's gonna be a whole lot easier if I can nurture some real, not pasted-on, good will.  

(4) I know there are some possibilities coming up which are very threatening to the cause of life. He has said he will do some things we don't want him to do. However, he has not done them yet. There is time yet to hope and pray, and I think there are some signs of hope.   Let's keep them coming.

(5) God's ways are not our ways. At least one good thing for the cause of life has already come out of this election, and quite possibly specifically because Mr. Obama was on the ticket. Remember Prop 8? 

(6)  One last thing --  I am sure Aretha Franklin can wear any hat she wants.  

Oh, and here's a link that, if you ask me, sets the right tone:  A thoughtful pre-Inauguration reflection, from a pro-life Democrat -- here at American Catholic.  There are a few comments, worth reading.