what happened then matters now - scheuernet.com

WHAT HAPPENED THEN MATTERS NOW

CONCEPTS TO THINK BY

HISTORICAL THINKING

The 6 Benchmarks of Historical Thinking

To think historically, you need to be able to:

1. Establish historical significance.

2. Use primary source evidence.

3. Identify continuity and change.


4. Analyze cause and consequence.

5. Take historical perspectives.

6. Understand the ethical dimension of historical interpretations.

Historical Thinking = Historical Literacy

Taken together, these concepts tie “historical thinking” to competencies in “historical literacy.”

“Historical literacy” means gaining a deep understanding of historical events through active engagement with historical texts.

Historical Literacy

Historically literate citizens can assess claims that there was no Holocaust, that slavery wasn't so bad for African-Americans, that Aboriginal rights have a historical basis, and that the Russian experience in Afghanistan serves as a warning to our previous mission there.

Historical Literacy

Such students/citizens have thoughtful ways to tackle these debates.

They can assess historical sources.

They know that a historical film can look "realistic" without being accurate.

They understand the value of a footnote.


In short, they can detect the differences between the uses and abuses of history.

“Historical thinking” only becomes possible in relation to substantive content.


These concepts are not abstract “skills.”

Rather, they provide the structure that shapes the practice of history and the understanding of history.


Taken together, these concepts tie “historical thinking” to competencies in “historical literacy.”

“Historical literacy” means gaining a deep understanding of historical events through active engagement with historical texts.

Historical Literacy

Historically literate students/citizens can assess claims that there was no Holocaust, that slavery wasn't so bad for African-Americans, that Aboriginal rights have a historical basis, and that the Russian experience in Afghanistan serves as a warning to our previous mission there.

Historical Literacy

Such students/citizens have thoughtful ways to tackle these debates.

They can assess historical sources.

They know that a historical film can look "realistic" without being accurate.

They understand the value of a footnote.


In short, they can detect the differences between the uses and abuses of history.

“Historical thinking” only becomes possible in relation to substantive content.


These concepts are not abstract “skills.”

Rather, they provide the structure that shapes the practice of history and the understanding of history.

SO HOW DO WE DECIDE WHAT IS WORTH REMEMBERING ABOUT THE PAST?

1. Historical Significance

We can’t remember, learn, or cover everything that ever happened.

What is important historically speaking?

Who or what should be remembered, researched, taught, and learned?


There is much too much history to remember all of it.

So we tend to highlight significant events.

Significant events are those that resulted in great change over long periods of time for large numbers of people.


Significance depends upon one’s perspective and purpose.

A historical person, event, or development can acquire significance if we can link it to larger trends and stories that reveal something important for us in history and contemporary life.


For example, the story of an individual worker in Winnipeg in 1918, however insignificant in the post-World War II sense, may become significant if it is recounted in a way that makes it a part of a larger history of workers’ struggles, economic development, or post-war adjustment and discontent.


Watch: Historical Significance Explanatory Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62wYq1RGBNg

7:14 mins

Source: The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62wYq1RGBNg

Guideposts to Historical Significance Review

1. Events, people, or developments have historical significance if they resulted in change. That is, they had deep consequences, for many people, over a long period of time.


2. Events, people or developments have historical significance if they are revealing. That is, they shed light on enduring or emerging issues in history or contemporary life.


3. Historical significance is constructed. That is, events, people, and developments meet the criteria for historical significance only when they are shown to occupy a meaningful place in a narrative.


4. Historical significance varies over time and from group to group.

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE PAST?

2. Evidence

How do we know what we know about the past?

Asks us to consider:

1. How reliable is the evidence?

2. What other evidence exists?

3. What other interpretations are possible?

2. Evidence

Primary sources are the litter of history —letters, documents, records, diaries, drawings, newspaper accounts and other bits and pieces left behind by those who have passed on — are treasures to us.

2. Primary Source Evidence

A history textbook is generally used more like a phone book: it is a place to look up information.

Primary sources must be read differently – like a clue in a murder.

To use them well, we need to set them in their historical contexts and make inferences from them to help us understand more about what was going on when they were created.

Guidepost to Evidence

1. History is interpretation based on inferencesmade from primary sources. Primary sources can be accounts, but they can also be traces, relics, or records.


2. Asking good questions about a source can turn it into evidence.


3. Sourcing often begins before a source is read, with questions about who created it and when it was created. It involves inferring from the source the author’s or creator’s purposes, values, and worldview either conscious or unconscious.


4. A source should be analyzed in relation to the context of its historical setting: the conditions and worldviews prevalent at the time in question.


5. Inferences made from a source can never stand alone. They should always be corroborated -checked against other sources (primary and secondary).

2. Evidence + Interpretation

Watch: Evidence and Interpretation Explanatory Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIzUXZb3xE4

6:55 mins


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIzUXZb3xE4

HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITY OF THE PAST?

3. Continuity and Change

How can we make sense of the complex course of history?

Asks us to look for similarities and differences in the lives and conditions of people and societies that came before us.


Sometimes we misunderstand history as a list of events.

Once we start to understand history as a complex mix of continuity and change, we will reach a fundamentally different sense of the past.

3. Continuity and Change: The Steps

We need to see historical events as interrelated = continuous changing not isolated, discrete events.

Identify turning points that help to locate the change.

Use progress and decline to evaluate change.

Organize our understanding via chronology and periodization.


One of the keys to continuity and change is looking for change where common sense suggests that there has been none and looking for continuities where we assumed that there was change.


Judgments of continuity and change can be made on the basis of comparisons between some point in the past and the present, or between two points in the past, such as before and after Confederation in Canada.

We evaluate change over time using the ideas of progress and decline.

3. Continuity + Change

Watch: Continuity and Change Explanatory Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFHyQmk1khw

6:19 mins


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFHyQmk1khw

Guidepost to Continuity and Change Review

1. Continuity and change are interwoven; both can exist together. Chronologies - the sequencing of events - can be a good starting point.


2. Change is a process, with varying paces and patterns. Turning points are moments when the process of change shifts in direction or pace.


3. Progress and decline are broad evaluations of change over time. Depending on the impacts of change, progress for one people may be decline for another.


4. Periodization helps us organize our thinking about continuity and change. It is a process of interpretation, by which we decide which events or developments constitute a period of history.

HOW DO WE EXPLAIN THE EFFECTS OF THE DECISIONS AND ACTIONS TAKEN IN

THE PAST?

4. Cause and Consequence

Shifts our focus to the multiple causes and consequences of historical events.


In examining both tragedies and accomplishments in the past, we are usually interested in the questions of how and why.

These questions start the search for causes: what were the actions, beliefs, and circumstances that led to these consequences?


In history we need to consider human agency.

People, as individuals and as groups, play a part in promoting, shaping, and resisting change.


People have motivations and reasons for taking action (or for sitting it out), but causes go beyond these.

For example, the Vancouver Anti-Chinese/Asian riot of 1887 certainly involved the racial attitudes and motivations of the white workers who rampaged.


Did the workers cause the riot? In some sense they did.

But the causes must be set in the larger context of employers paying Chinese workers a fraction of the regular wage rate and the desperate situation of Chinese Canadian workers after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

4. Cause & Consequence: The Steps

Know that historical actors/agents are people who cause historical change.

Understand that these historical agents cause change in social, political, economical, historical contexts that impose limits on change.

Also, comprehend that actions often have unintended consequences.

4. Cause & Consequence

Watch: Cause and Consequence Explanatory Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yImH3L1Vhng

6:21 mins


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yImH3L1Vhng

Guideposts to Cause and Consequence

1. Change is driven by multiple causes, and results in multiple consequences. These create a complex web of interrelated short-term and long-term causes and consequences.


2. The causes that lead to a particular historical event vary in their influence, with some being more important than others.


3. Events result from the interplay of two types of factors:

(1) historical actors/agents, who are people (individuals or groups) who take actions that cause historical events, and

(2) the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions within which the actors operate.

Human Agency

People cause historical change, but they do so in contexts that impose limits on change.

Limits come from the natural environment, geography, historical legacies, as well as other people who want other things.

Human Agency

Human actors (agents) are thus in a perpetual interplay with conditions, many of which are the legacies of earlier human actions.

HOW CAN WE BETTER UNDERSTAND PEOPLE IN THE PAST?

5. Historical Perspectives

Asks us to not judge the past by today’s standards so that we can better understand the different social, cultural, intellectual, and even emotional contexts that have shaped people’s lives and actions in the past.


“The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.”

~ David Lowenthal, 1985

In other words, the past is a different thus at times difficult to understand.

5. Taking a Historical Perspectives

For instance:

What could it have been like to travel as a youth in the Underground Railroad to Canada in the 19th

Century?

What could it have been like to travel as a young fille du roi to New France in the 17th century?


Can we imagine the previous slides experiences, from our vantage point in the consumer society of the 21st Century?

What are the limits to our imagination?


Taking a historical perspective means understanding the social, cultural, intellectual, and emotional settings that shaped people’s lives and actions in the past.

Tough it is sometimes called “historical empathy,” historical perspective is very different from the common-sense notion of identification with another person.


Indeed, taking historical perspective demands comprehension of the vast differences between us in the present and those in the past.

5. Taking a Historical Perspectives: The Steps

Work to understand that the perspective of the historical actors depends upon evidence for inferences about how people felt and thought.

It is important to avoid presentism = the unwarranted imposition of present ideas on actors in the past.

5. Taking a Historical Perspectives: The Steps

Remember that historical events and situations involve people who may have diverse perspectives on it = exploring this is a key to understanding the event.

Work at taking the perspective of a historical actor does not mean identifying with that actor.


Watch: Historical Perspective Explanatory Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XQbBFr7cO8

5:53 mins


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XQbBFr7cO8

Guideposts to Historical Perspectives Review

1. An ocean of difference can lie between current worldviews (beliefs, values, and motivations) and those of earlier periods of history.


2. It is important to avoid presentism - the imposition of present ideas on actors in the past.


3. The perspectives of historical actors are best understood by considering their historical context.


4. Taking historical perspectives of historical actors means inferring how people felt and thought in the past. It does not mean identifying with those actors. Valid inferences are those based on evidence.


5. Different historical actors have diverse perspectives on the events in which they are involved. Exploring these is key to understanding historical events.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE PAST TO HELP US BETTER UNDERSTAND THE

PRESENT?

6. The Ethical Dimensions of History

Involves making ethical conclusion about historical actions and people, and assigning ethical responsibility to historical figures or contemporary individuals and groups for past actions.

6. The Ethical Dimensions

Are we obligated to remember the fallen soldiers of World War I?

Do we owe reparations to the Aboriginal victims of residential schools, or to the descendents of those who paid the Chinese Head Tax?

In other words, what responsibilities do historical crimes and sacrifices impose upon us today?


These questions are one part of the ethical dimension of history.

Another part has to do with the ethical judgments we make about historical actions.

This creates a difficult paradox.


Taking historical perspective demands that we understand the differences between our ethical universe and those of bygone societies.


We do not want to impose our own anachronistic standards on the past.

At the same time, meaningful history does not treat brutal slave-holders, enthusiastic Nazis, and marauding conquistadors in a “neutral” manner.

6. The Ethical Dimensions: The Steps

We should expect to learn something from the past that helps us to face the ethical issues of today.

Remember that all meaning historical accounts involve implicit or explicit ethical judgment.

Work, while making ethical judgements of past actions, to avoid the risk of imposing our own standards or “right” and “wrong” on the past.

6. Ethical Dimensions

Watch: Ethical Dimensions/Judgements Explanatory Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wbw08jPRus

6:33 mins


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wbw08jPRus

The Ethical Dimensions: To Remember

Remember that all meaning historical accounts involve implicit or explicit ethical judgment.

Work, while making ethical judgements of past actions, to avoid the risk of imposing our own standards or “right” and “wrong” on the past.

Ethical Dimension Guidepost #1 Review

1. Authors make implicit and explicit ethical judgments in writing historical narratives.


2. Reasoned ethical judgments of past actions are made by taking into account the historical context of the actors in question.


3. When making ethical judgments, it is important to be cautious about imposing contemporary standards of right and wrong on the past.


4. A fair assessment of the ethical implications of history can inform us of our responsibilities to remember and respond to the contributions, sacrifices, and injustices of the past.


5. Our understanding of history can help us make informed judgments about contemporary issues, but only when we recognize the limitations of an direct “lessons” from the past.

Review:The 6 Benchmarks of Historical Thinking

To think historically, students need to be able to:




Review:The 6 Benchmarks of Historical Thinking





The Website for more Info

http://historicalthinking.ca/


Sources

The Historical Thinking Project (2016) http://historicalthinking.ca/

Historical Thinking Summer Institute (July 2016) http://canadashistory.ca/HTSI


http://canadashistory.ca/HTSI

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