Today's day of the History Grant was, as usual, mind-melting. Headache began about 1:30 and I had to take 3 Advil to get it under control. My brain has been laying wasted all summer, and what a jerk back to reality today was! Today's deep thoughts:
Democracy, being an experiment, needs to be constantly tested. The Founding Fathers, knowing their history, knew that a republic will eventually decay; see Rome, et.al. Time is the enemy of a democracy.
The way to analyze a democracy - whether it is "good" or "bad" - is to study what kind of culture it produces. What does it do for an individual person? Does it develop or prevent the full potential of a person?
Finally, some discussion on character (under the auspices of Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter"). In today's society, one professor argued, we are more interested in personality than character; that is, we build ourselves from the outside in, instead of the inside out. To fight the decay of a democracy we must continue to have character and historical consciousness; understanding the character of our ancestors, how our country navigated through "tests" previously, and how we should continue to strive to build character. Another professor argued that we are, as a society, on the cusp of a great decay - the obsession with glam and glitter and the personality of vapid celebrities is rapidly overtaking a concern for character.
Interesting things to think about. We then talked about how history is approached in different ways, depending on the age and the surrounding politics and social issues of the time, and how to navigate prior social research keeping those biases in mind. Specifically, the study of art and literature - what did a particular piece mean to people when it was created, and what does it mean to us now?
In small-group news, we decided on an essential question: "What events in the American Revolution tested loyalty?" and worked out the guiding questions which I won't go into here. We also started mapping out the concepts we want kids to get out of the book My Brother Sam Is Dead. After we figure out the rest of the mini-unit and how many days we want it to take, we're going to tackle coming up with a DBQ (document-based question) to replace the final assessment of the unit, and throw that together. Making kids learn how to think, that's our goal!
Democracy, being an experiment, needs to be constantly tested. The Founding Fathers, knowing their history, knew that a republic will eventually decay; see Rome, et.al. Time is the enemy of a democracy.
The way to analyze a democracy - whether it is "good" or "bad" - is to study what kind of culture it produces. What does it do for an individual person? Does it develop or prevent the full potential of a person?
Finally, some discussion on character (under the auspices of Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter"). In today's society, one professor argued, we are more interested in personality than character; that is, we build ourselves from the outside in, instead of the inside out. To fight the decay of a democracy we must continue to have character and historical consciousness; understanding the character of our ancestors, how our country navigated through "tests" previously, and how we should continue to strive to build character. Another professor argued that we are, as a society, on the cusp of a great decay - the obsession with glam and glitter and the personality of vapid celebrities is rapidly overtaking a concern for character.
Interesting things to think about. We then talked about how history is approached in different ways, depending on the age and the surrounding politics and social issues of the time, and how to navigate prior social research keeping those biases in mind. Specifically, the study of art and literature - what did a particular piece mean to people when it was created, and what does it mean to us now?
In small-group news, we decided on an essential question: "What events in the American Revolution tested loyalty?" and worked out the guiding questions which I won't go into here. We also started mapping out the concepts we want kids to get out of the book My Brother Sam Is Dead. After we figure out the rest of the mini-unit and how many days we want it to take, we're going to tackle coming up with a DBQ (document-based question) to replace the final assessment of the unit, and throw that together. Making kids learn how to think, that's our goal!
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