Cantu Chapter 8

R. G. Collingwood believes that history is a type of science because it involves interpretations- in our case, of the past. I agree with this because we put a lot of faith on our accepted truths of the past in order to come up with a cohesive (ish) history of the world. This chapter in Cantu discusses the social studies curriculum as being complex and large- indeed, it is a lot to take in as a teacher. Social studies education aims, on many levels, at creating good U.S. citizens. Does this then limit the way we look at nations abroad? As a future teacher I plan on incorporating numerous lenses through which my students will look at moments in the past. I think that by avoiding traditional frameworks, my students will get a more well-rounded look at the past, while still gaining knowledge on how to be an active participant as a citizen of the United States.

One aspect of this chapter which I found to be rather interesting was the mention of contrasting historical events to their movie counterparts. The example given was The Titanic. I think that adding things like this into class is a great way to link popular culture with significant moments in history. By showing clips of a well-liked film alongside a formal documentary, students can connect things that they like and understand with their history lessons. This is also a helpful way to help teach students how to sift through historical data and pull out only the truth as opposed to the Hollywood fantasy. In a similar vein, I believe that the most important of the National History Standards is the student ability to conduct research. Discovering on our own has always been an effective tool at keeping somebody interesting in something, and to be able to do it correctly can only help.

An example of using media as a link to history: The Great Gatsby and life in the 20s in America
The Great Gatsby

One final aspect worth noting from this chapter is the opening discussion on the order in which we teach history. Because history includes thinking chronologically, it seems that it is critical that we choose proper order for teaching our students about the past. I like that history starts out at the family level and slowly works its way outwards to state and nation and world history. This definitely will help me in creating lesson plans because even with my high schoolers, it will be important to start off  hooking students with something that they can personally relate to before we jump into the big picture.

The Big Question: how do we get students to view history through an almost scientific lens?