I have to say that I am sort of proud to have an article included in a book slammed on Fox News.
The essays in Teaching American History (all originally published in the Journal of American History) showcase different ways that scholars and teachers approach the teaching of college level history courses. As editors Gary Kornblith and Carol Lasser note in their introduction to the book, the essays are designed to help those who teach U.S. history think about ways to help students understand how history is envisioned and constructed by scholars--in other words just what does it mean to think historically. "To practice--and to study--history means grappling with the balance of choice, chance and inevitability in any casual sequence. It means reveling in the myriad of possibilities for explanation."
My own essay in the collection discusses how students in a lower division U.S. history course created a public exhibit about the history of what became Fort Ord, the former incarnation of much of the CSUMB campus. It focuses on how we created the project, including challenges of interpreting what students discovered in their research. This is just what historians have to do and what I wanted students to understand. History has never been (as the Fox News folks suggest) "just the facts"; rather it has always been about making sense of what you find and contextualizing that research in time, place, situation and context.
Meanwhile, if you are interested, here is the Fox News segment. Enjoy! :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Wow, the Fox News segment really is a slam isn't it? Do you think it is fear that leads people to scoff or make fun of a different point of view such as a different perspective on history (thinking and teaching outside the box)? It is such a difficult thing for me when I watch news segments and think to myself..."for some reason, this is probably taken out of contect". On the one hand it is troublesome but on the other I become more skeptical and it ends up encouraging me in the long run to discover the truth for myself.
Post a Comment