Well, I picked the wrong time to read this one.  The Night Diary is about a time when Pakistan was breaking from India.  Set in 1947, a doctor and his children are forced to move from their current house, which will soon be Muslim-controlled Pakistan.  The trio, along with a grandmother, become refugees, fleeing to Hindu-dominated India - a dangerous time, when two religions refused to accomadate one another cordially.

Along the way, the children witness starvation, dehydration, attack, and murder.  The story is a dark telling of a tragic time where two groups are rioting - destroying property and lives and attacking each other rather than sitting down together and solving their problems and disagreements.  I have to tell you, it was hard to read this book during a time when I needed to breathe.  I needed relief from watching live riots in our own time, I rather needed some relief, and this book was not the way to get it.

The book was well-written, and I would have enjoyed reading it any other time.  I learned something about the history of the region that I had never studied.

The family took another trip to Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, last week.  While my daughter was meeting with her neurologist, my son and I made a visit to the nearby World War I Memorial.  Unfortunately, we still did not have the time to tour the museum inside, and we were there too early in the morning anyway, but we made sure we walked around the other side of the facility, after missing it when we were there last.

As long as we were "getting our steps in", we crossed the street for a visit to Union Station.  The facility was open and readying for business at its theaters, food venues, and museums, but again, it was too early in the morning to witness much activity.  Still, that's one of the best times to appreciate the structure itself.  Out front the T-Rex proudly sported its CVD19 mask to remind passersby that he's not going to ever be caught in another extinction event.

Returning to the car, still freely parks at the top of the memorial hill, we were intrigued by the handicapped tree that was using a "crutch" to hold up its deformed old arm.

This is definitely an area to consider returning to in the future, as there is too much that we have yet to see.  I count this as a followup to last year's teacher institute at Fort Ticonderoga in Upstate New York, where I was able to spend a week comparing and contrasting World War Zero (the French and Indian War) and World War One.

We'll use the Jamestown Rediscovery website to explore the site of our first colony.

Requiring students to recalling rote information is not the most inspiration of teaching goals.  These days, our youth need to be able to find information, discern the truth of sources, form opinions, and present information.  I wonder why teachers still insist on doling out constructed response exams expecting closed responses.  That's probably why we have students telling us the following myth:
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Or is it a myth?  It certainly is in our class.  That's because our focus is not on regurgitating information.  Here are my thoughts and suggestions.

• Focus more on the overarching ideas.  It is not important to have a knowledge of specific dates, but to be able to easily find those dates.  It is more important to have a good understanding of how events fit together.  Teach your students to follow a progression of events, both with a close view of events in an era, but also with a longer view of events across eras.  Likewise, specific names and places don't have to be memorized only to be forgotten after the test.  Students are better served by getting an idea for who the people were and what happened in the places in question.  They should know them well enough to recognize them in conversation.  They should be able to find the locations in a general area of a map, but there really is no need for them to label a blank map with a list of place names.  I know there could be some pushback on this from educators with different points of view, but I propose that the blending of events and ability to discern what really happened during historical events is the more relevant study.  If my students can understand the cause-and-effect of societal, governmental, and individual actions, they will become better citizens in the present and, hopefully, in the future.

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• Focus more on perspective - the timeline.  I've covered the concept of timeline in past mythbusting articles, but the subject fits below this myth, as well.  Events taught out of context are really pretty meaningless if they are not relevant to today (See below.).  In order to do that, the teacher must connect the dots between events.  That might mean we work backwards from the current 50 states.  We have statehood in 50 states because of Manifest Destiny, right?  But Manifest Destiny was only a dream at one time.  How do those dots get connected.  An educator might draw lines to gold rushes in California, Alaska, and Colorado.  He may draw more lines to westward trails to California, Oregon, and New Mexico.  Another line may trace a path to Utah with the Mormon migration.  Before all of that, however, came mountain men and other explorers including that Jefferson-sanctioned Corps of Discovery with Lewis and Clark, which resulted from the Louisiana Purchase.  The groundwork for which came through the Jefferson presidency as a product of Spanish and French ownership of the territory between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.  It could get quite complicated, but if you can put it on a timeline or describe the progression, students can better see the consequences and rewards of a series of actions.  Things don't just happen on that timeline:  people made them happen.  Every label on the timeline is the result of people's responses to prior actions over time, creating a smooth trend out of some very rough events along the way.

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• Focus more on growth mindset.  I saw an article about Auschwitz.  It explained that over 1.1 million Jews were slaughtered there, but that the place still stands today, because the Jews wanted it preserved, not as a salute to the Nazis, but as a reminder to never let such an evil happen again.  Growth Mindset is the idea that anyone can learn.  More importantly is the concept that we are going to make mistakes as we press forward, but that we should learn from those mistakes and not push them aside to forget them.  It is the idea that if you fall off of a horse six times, you have to stand back up seven times, that you don't give up.  But you also don't get stuck in a loop, futilely trying to do it the same wrong way every time.  I like to tweak my lessons from week to week and year to year.  I like reevaluating how I do things, fixing the things that didn't work and enhancing the things that did.  Can we get students to have that same mindset?  Will they ever see the value in studying the horrors of history in order to improve present and future?  Can they put themselves into the shoes of the people making such decisions in order to understand the complexities of change?  By doing so, perhaps they can see value in pondering monuments they don't understand.  Maybe they can appreciate opposing points of view and can better respect the reason a statue was erected, rather than try to erase its offensive presence.  Maybe, just maybe, they can see the reasons a person fought on the wrong side of a battle and see that a piece of stone or lump of bronze does not always indicate that we idolize the person in the effigy.

Sometimes, when we go to the movies or as we watch a show on TV, we are transported into the plot.  Directors understand that their selection of background music can change and enhance a scene.

Now it is time to turn it around.  This time, the music comes first.  Do not watch the video; instead, let the music lead your imagination.  As it plays, allow it to transport you into a scene that has yet to be written.  Then, write the scene.  Use all the visual imagery you can muster in your writing.  At the end, you will share your writing.  Will it stand on its own, without the music in the background?

I am not a fan of The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle.

I have several reasons for not enjoying this book, mostly based on my own morals, language and relationship preferences being most prominent.  I cringed every time the bullying boys called Mason and Calvin inappropriate, derogatory names.  Without getting into that here, the writing style missed the mark.  I never could get over the broken and incomplete sentences throughout every page.  I understand they are there to stylize and establish voice, but it really gets in the way with calculated intention.  In other words, it made me think about the author more than the characters in the story.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

    He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
    He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their     operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
    He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people        
        would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to
        tyrants only.
    He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of
        their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
    He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the
        rights of the people.
    He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative
        powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining
        in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
    He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for        
        Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the
        conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
    He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary
        powers.
    He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of
        their salaries.
    He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat
        out their substance.
    He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
    He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
    He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by
        our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
    For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
    For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the
        Inhabitants of these States:
    For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
    For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
    For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
    For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
    For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary
        government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for
        introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
    For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our
        Governments:
    For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all
        cases whatsoever.
    He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
    He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
    He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation
        and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous
        ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
     He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to
        become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
    He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our
        frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all
        ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Is this right?  Is this a list of things students do not learn in school?  If not, why not?  I think we do a pretty good job of addressing many of the things in this list:

The author of this list is unknown, but the list has been published online by a Christian-based publisher that I follow and read.  I can't be sure of the goal in publishing this list - probably something to encourage homeschooling - but I am happy to say that I try to cover these issues in our class each year. Along with soft skills and asserting your ideas respectfully, these are the kinds of things schools should be including in their social skills, civics, history, science, communication, and career readiness classes.  These make up at least part of a message about personal responsibility.

Perhaps there is a political message here, as well; I suppose that is possible.  Maybe someone is asserting in this list that you are not entitled to something that you do not deserve or earn.  I don't know if that is political or not.  We used to call this, if you didn't learn it early, the School of Hard Knocks.  It's probably best that you learn this now, and not wait until you expect something that you're not going to get.

Yes, be a child while you are a child - live in Neverland for a while longer - but realize that there will come a time when you have to step up to the plate, toe the line, and work hard.

Those statues getting knocked down?  They represent real people.  People who lived real lives.  People who experienced turmoil.  People who had to make decisions.  Every single one of those people, just as in our lives today, made choices that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.  Every one of them also - even the vilest of these people - made strong choices that affected others.

Learning history is important.  We see that as revelers knock down monuments to unlikely characters in our history in the name of racism and unfair treatment, labeling each of the characters as evil.  But that's why we utter the mantra, History is ugly.  There are reminders of the mantra all around us.  But that's the point.  We no longer believe that George Washington could not tell a lie.  We know that Thomas Jefferson had slaves.  We understand that Abraham Lincoln may not have set out to free the enslaved people.  And we know that the Civil Rights Movement was not always the peaceful protest we've heard about for years.

The myth we discuss below is one that we've heard many times as a major reason why students don't want to participate in history classes and why teachers choose to give history less and less time in the educational day.
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• First of all, those "dead people" were people.  Christopher Columbus had an interesting life.  Ulysses Grant did some interesting things.  Theodore Roosevelt had some great accomplishments.  Often, when we remember these and countless others for their positive aspects, but perhaps that is where we make our mistake.  By not also highlighting some of their more negative traits, we imply that they are somehow perfect.  We celebrate without pointing out that these people were human.  They weren't superheroes or gods, and never should we imply that they were by only looking at their successes (See the next bullets below.).  Plus, and this is important, they died.  That is more proof that they were human.  I'll tell my students these things and more.  I'll point out that George Washington pooped, because it humanizes him.  Every person on earth, at some point, has been cold or hot, hungry and satisfied, peppy and groggy.  Every person experiences life's roller coaster of depression and joy, anger and love, greed and benevolence, and more.  So did those characters we remember as notable.

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• ​History is about what those dead people did - good and bad - when they were alive.  Washington is, perhaps, the best example of this.  During his early experience in the British Army, leading troops through the Ohio Valley, sneaking up on a group of French soldiers, probably counts as the most heinous mistake of his life.  George was pretentious, jumping in against orders, and became responsible for a terrible loss of life.  In that relatively small skirmish compared with today's battles, George Washington started what some refer to as World War Zero - the French and Indian War.  The fight at Jumonville is one of which most people are unaware.  It is even recalled in the Hamilton musical as Washington sings, "History Has Its Eyes on You.  I'll let them know that even though Thomas Jefferson wrote about all men being created equal, he owned slaves (In fact, he hid them from visitors to his house at Monticello.).  I will teach that William Clark gave his slave York a vote during the Corps of Discovery, but mistreated him sometime after returning home.  I can't leave those things by the side of the road to promote a particular point of view or to spin a story to "our side" or against "their side"; I must instead present history as it happened, the good, the bad, and especially, the ugly.

• ​The mistakes are important, too.  At the risk of being repetitive, teaching the imperfections are also important as we realize our belief of a Growth Mindset.  The struggle of being a human is worthy of study. Frankly, the people we study had lives full of struggle, full of poor choices, and in spite of all they went through, they did something worthy of our learning from them.  I want my students to know that they can overcome the harshest of situations, too - that we are not guided by unfortunate systemic rules or a generational struggles, that we do not have to remain restrained by the ropes of poverty or the chains of hereditary sin. We, too, can live through hungry times and violent times and still leave positive legacies on the earth.  If you, as an educator, are not trying to get students to overcome adversity, you're efforts to teach spelling patterns and multiplication tables are just wheels spinning in the mud.  How much richer do we all become when we look back at the crags and the swamps in our lives and realize that we conquered!

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• Some add race to the statement to say, History is about dead, white people.  It is about so much more. Unfortunately, the written records often focus on the white people.  The circumstances of many past eras tell us that the "privileged" were the ones making headlines.  It makes sense that less is written about minorities because the opportunities for minorities to make news were few and far between.  Because of this, it also makes sense that when those minorities make noise and rise up against an unfair system, that's the kind of press they receive.  The pattern, then, creates a perception that minorities are troublemakers, and the response is to "put them down" or "put them in their places".  It is a vicious cycle that has been interrupted only rarely by major events.  But that's all the more reason why we, educators, must seek more positive history-makers among our friends in minority communities.  It's all the more reason why we should bring minorities out of the shadows of history and bring them into our classrooms.  Vibrant and robust histories still exist for people of color as they interacted with one another and as they delved into the lives of the majority.  If we're not showing our children these things - also at times with bad results - we do them a disservice of believing that only the white folks deserve statues.

 

• We often add gender to the statement, making it say, History is about dead, white men.  It is not.  While the men were culturally-approved to lead in government in our past, with the women culturally-accepted as homemakers and gardeners, there are still examples of great, powerful women who contributed to our history.  I focus on United States history as my curriculum, so my examples come from that background, but we can easily find other women to study - queens, prime ministers, princesses, and martyrs.  In our own nation, we admire Martha Washington for being right alongside her husband during every winter of the Revolution.  We see Abigail Adams counseling her husband, giving him advice and information during the days of the Continental Congresses.  We hear the voices of Molly Pitchers taking up positions on the fields of battle, firing cannon alongside male counterparts.  We look in as women spied, created art, entertained, wrote, and supported or protested the events of the day.  Of course, just as with the men, the women were not perfect, so we must not run the risk of overcompensating, sending the message that the men were flawed, but the women were not. Whether Pocahontas, Cleopatra, Dolley Madison, Queen Victoria, Sacagawea, Sandra Day O'Conner, Margaret Thatcher, or Emmeline Pankhurst, historic women in history were also human who made errors in judgment, but are worthy of remembering.

For more exercises like this one, find our Tomorrow's Technology Today page.