World War I

“The Great War” or if you prefer the “War to end ALL Wars,” these are but a couple of the titles given to the first modern world war. World War I as many Americans call it ushered in a new era for the once floundering democracy across the pond. There are many aspects about the war that many have and will continue to debate, but one thing is for sure the United States emerged from the war as a major player in the political and military arenas of the world. So how did a war that had such an impact on the global political and military structure of the world begin? This is where I would like to begin this blog session, because of all the things I would like to have learned in my educational career this is one that has been nagging me for years, how and why did this war begin. Dr. Keene was more than ready for the task. Her weaving together of the story lines, decision, and blunders helped to bring this picture into focus. The discussion centered on the three themes of accidental, inevitable, and choices.

Most American children are never given the choice of decision and are simply forced to memorize the accidental strand of WWI’s beginnings, within this strand the story goes that through a series of events the driver of Archduke Franz Ferdinand took a wrong turn accidentally leading him into the hands of a terrorist Gavrilo Princip who proceeded to shoot the Archduke and his wife. This strand is very dependant on chance and is therefore a mere piece of a much bigger puzzle, let us continue. The next strand lays out the unavoidable groundwork for war through the political and militaristic dealings of the major powers that were in a transitional stage of protraction and retraction. The major players in this imperialistic game are Britain, France, Russia, Austro-Hungary and Germany. Within this strand the learner is taught that 1914 is arbitrary and that had the war not started then it would have at some point, thus inevitability. This is easy to learn, but can lead to many assumptive thoughts by students leading them to think that all matters of decision making are out of their hands and this can be dangerous historical thinking. Dr. Keene’s third strand is predicated that on the ideas that the choices we make will have an impact on the future and is best described as a middle ground. This is an area of reasoned thinking and is usually where the answers reside. Too many people get caught on one extreme or the other and the answer is usually somewhere in the middle. The decision of Germany to fully mobilize its army and implement the Schlieffen Plan was a decision that was not inevitable or predicated on the assassination of the Archduke. It was what it was a decision to be made or not made, but one that would change the course of history. And although the history of WWI has been made the study and analysis of the decisions made decades, centuries, and a millennia continues to be written.

Citation: ARC Identifier: 641788
World War I Draft Registration Card for Charles Hamilton Houston Front
NARA's Southeast Region (Atlanta) (NRCAA), 5780 Jonesboro Road, Morrow, GA 30260 PHONE: 770-968-2100, FAX: 770-968-2547, EMAIL: atlanta.archives@nara.gov

Chicago National Archives

The National Archives and Records Administration system of regional storage and primary source holdings offers the historically interested public nearly inexhaustible tangents of topics. Our Teach American History grant group spent Monday the 23^rd learning about possible avenues of research and primary source materials for instructional use in the classroom. Among the topics up for discussion and further learning was immigration and WWI. One of the many things that makes historical acquirement so exciting is the variety of angles that you can trace when traveling to the same historical spot. For example, our archivist tour guides presented the group with a passport written in Chinese. This may sound rather innocuous after all a passport is just a passport? However, as he began to dig deeper into the subject matter the story began to develop. This was not a mere passport for travel, but was a passport for historical discovery of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This then leads us to the further questions concerning limited immigration, racism, and worker protectionism. All of which mirrors the issues of today and Mexican immigration. These types of connections continued for the next hour involving many threads of history including, the splitting of the atom, Abraham Lincoln, and the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

So what is that we as teacher/scholars to do with such information? After a fantastic lunch of Chicago deep-dish pizza, 2 slices, we donned the role of student and were paired up to work on specific topics pertaining to WWI and immigration. For our part we received the Constitutionally Famous case of US v. Eugene Debs. Debs was, without digging too deep into the history, a Socialist leader and Presidential Candidate. The specifics surrounding this case involved a speech he gave in Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918, denouncing United States involvement in WWI, again getting to history through the backdoor. Debs was arrested shortly thereafter on charges of violating the Espionage Act. The case included 10 counts of violation of these four were thrown out by the Grand Jury and six were sent to trial. The specifics of the case are not important here. For me as a teacher the violations are more important. As a teacher I would like my students to take preselected excerpts of the Canton speech and have them identify the violations, if they can, and then decide through a mock trial if the indictments should stick or should Debs, a possible subversive, be set free. Upon reaching a decision I will reveal the verdict of 1918 and discussion will surely ensue. To take this lesson a step further one could make strong connections to the Alien and Sedition Acts of the John Adams Administration further making my point that the avenues to learning history are many and varied.

Citation: US v. Eugene Debs (Verdict); Date: April 1918; File: Criminal Case 4057, US v. Debs (folders 1 & 2 of 10); Series: Criminal Case Files 1912-1969; Subgroup: US District Court Northern District of Ohio Eastern Division at Cleveland Criminal Records 1855-1969; RG21, National Archives and Records Administration—Great Lakes Region (Chicago)

Steamship Arabia Museum

What material possessions did the people of the 1850’s consume? Was it the stubbornly embedded image of flour, tin plates, and shabby clothing? This question is easily answered by students with a resounding, yes. They have been given this image by uniformed teachers, stereotypical media, and entrenched family mythology. There is hope however, students and teachers need only pack up and drive mere miles to Kansas City Missouri to the City Market and take a tour of the Steamboat Arabia Museum, click on link for further information. This amazing collection of pre-Civil War artifacts is without rival. And when you visit the museum you are confronted and confounded with your stereotypes and preconceived notions of the West. The settlers of the West consumed many strange and exotic products that show their connection with the rest of the world. From fine china to sardines and rubber overshoes these settlers were not the disconnected bumpkins of the stories from our past, but were in fact people who were as materialistic as many of us today. This is a must see for anyone teaching in Northeast Kansas.

TAHPS Day 3 - Visual History

I found today’s discussion of the text The Art of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum to be fascinating. The ideas that the American public has and continues to be fascinated, if not entwined with being deceived, to be the most interesting aspect of the discussion. And our depth of deception knows almost know bounds or time periods. There is no cyclical pattern of ups and downs in the popularity of deceptions. Instead they weave themselves throughout American History. In addition, there seems to be no particular type of deception that is more popular than another. For example, the common carnival freak might be as much or more popular than the millionaire magician or the infamous con artist.

And just like the people the medium of entertainment and or infuriation of deception has evolved and reinvented itself over time. The magician now performs his/her acts on national television in place of the Opera House or town square. The con-deception may come through your email in the form of a “jackpot lottery” or “wish for success” rather than the door-to-door salesman. With evolution and the passage of time comes the ever-changing face of deception, from Barnum to David Blaine the book does a nice job of chronicling many of the more famous deceivers. The namesake of the book, P.T. Barnum is the measuring rod by which all other deception artists are measured and the author does a wonderful job telling his story and judging other would be masters of deception against his success. All-in-all a great discussion covering a great book, one I would recommend.

Photo Source: http://www.taxidermy4cash.com/bartlett.html

Nelson-Atkins Museum

Everybody has driven by and saw the beautiful lawn with the huge shuttlecocks that look as though they just landed, but have you dared to enter one of the great treasures of Kansas City, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art? The Nelson-Atkins holds the largest selection of publicly viewable art for the citizens of Northeast Kansas. The museum houses many rare and exquisite paintings, sculptures, and photographs. But beyond all of this the Nelson continues to give back through the Ford Learning Center creating new young artists and developing educational traveling trunks for area teachers and their efforts don’t end there. Altogether an amazing place and one that I would recommend for any teacher looking for a place to integrate art and history.

Daguerreotype Project

The average photo taken during a family outing last week may not seem like something of much interest to someone living two states away. However keep those photos in a safe place for roughly two or three hundred years and those same photos may tell a story, activate imaginations, and their intrinsic value escalates. Why is this so? It is because humans are curious about the past and are always searching for a connection to it so they may learn a bit more about their own lives.

Our own Daguerreotype projects started with examinations with the ordinary, the macabre, and the lovable Daguerreotypes of the early and mid 19^th century. These images developed on polished silver plates were the first successful system of photography and as with any new technology people wanted a slice of the experience. But what would you photograph? This is where the connection to our own sensibilities comes into play. Many of the people of the 19^th century were getting Daguerreotypes of along many of the same themes that we might today; family, work, and everything in between. We were shown images of deceased children, the last image for a grieving family, miners working the muddied grounds of California looking for Gold, and the family pet.

So how do we or should we use these images in our classrooms? The answer is an unequivocal, yes. These images are a window to the past that a book full of words cannot compete with. For the average student who is connect to as many as three or more electronic devices and who receives much of their information visually a simple Daguerreotype is a connection they can make. They understand a photo and they can, with some simple instruction, analyze these photos and pull out stories of peoples lives long gone and thus creating a student historian rather than a data return specialist. What an amazing tool for teaching!

Citation: American Memory Collection; Digital ID: cph 3d02055 Source: b&w film copy neg. post-1992

TAHPS Day 1-Document Project

Class, Philanthropy, Religion, and the evolving Industrial Economy how are they at once different and intertwined. Today was the start of our TAHPS summer institute and the discussion centered on the ever changing and undulating face of American society. To tell this story Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz weave together the history of Matthias a colorful character of American History in their book Kingdom of Mathias: Sex and Salvation in 19^th Century America. Mathias’ story mirrors that of many Americans of the 19^th century and their growth within the emerging middle-class. Middle-Class America trotted down the path of middle-class emergence while at the same time creating the very path. In a very real sense the American Middle Class was to embark on a path of self discovery creating a new section of society as their feet pounded the pavement of creation.

With them came all the baggage of inherited traditions and values, including religion and preconceived notions on society, among others. Religion became the thread that wound through all classes while at the same time keeping these divisions cemented. Threading religion into American society is not to be frowned upon because religion is so pervasive in American life. Religion is the glue that for most people binds and guides them in their everyday lives. As Dr. Petrik stated in her discussion with the class today, when a person moves to a new location they are drawn to the familiar and the church fits the bill. And it is Mathias that exploits this familiarity to make himself anew in the middle-class image of the self made man. But Mathias is overshadowed in this quest of the self made by a person whose life has been shaped, quite literally, by events of the 19^th Century, Sojourner Truth. Sojourner not remakes her name, but her life as well. These transformations are mere personal examples of the ongoing struggle of an entire generation trying to find its way in an emerging American society of Middle-Class. For further entertainment on this subject please see the following project designed by Ben Doll, Adam Plummer, and Vickie Wold here.

TAHPS Year I Implementaton

Summer 1 of the TAHPS Grant. The first summer of the TAHPS grant was filled with many new experiences and we all learned a great deal. The summer started in Kansas City at the National World War I museum and a visit from a Gilder Lehrman team with an academic content expert and a master teacher. And what was it that we were to discuss during our time together? The Cold War was the topic of choice a subject that I knew only on a superficial level. I found the books and instruction exceptional. In addition to the lectures we were given the chance to spend some time at the regional office of the National Archives in Kansas City and the Eisenhower Library in Abilene. The time spent at both archives gave all us the chance to research and find documentation related to the subject matter. As for implementation of the subject matter I found this task to be rather cumbersome and difficult. The Cold War is a 20^th Century topic and is therefore not within my sphere of teaching US History, however some of the subject matter does have pertinence for my Kansas History class and this is the direction of implementation that I chose. For my students I like to have the student’s active in their learning of history. With this in mind I used the materials acquired at the various archives to develop document analysis activities as well as a reader’s theater lesson which will be explained further in the Google documents portion of this assignment. Readers Theater is a fabulous way for students to learn history on a more personal level and therefore a more permanent level. As for the document analysis questions, these were designed as preview activities for learning about the Eisenhower Administration in Kansas History.