[Download] "Using "Influential Persons" to Teach World History." by Teaching History: A Journal of Methods ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Using "Influential Persons" to Teach World History.
- Author : Teaching History: A Journal of Methods
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 185 KB
Description
The questions start early in the first class of the semester, smacking of curiosity with some hints of "what's in this for me?" "What's the point of learning about the past?" "What connection do dead people have to me?" Questions such as these, whether directly expressed or not, are the most basic ones that students bring to introductory history classes. They deserve answers. (1) With students, it is appropriate to begin by acknowledging that skepticism about the value of the past is a legitimate position, one that should be taken seriously. This is especially true in classes that for many students seem to be distant from their lives. At my college, World History is such a course. World Civ, as we call it, is required of all Arts and Sciences students. It is fair to say that more students enroll in the class under compulsion than because they think learning about the distant past has some connection to the twenty-first century. There are times when I deplore the present-mindedness of my students and of society generally, but this is not one of those times. I will note instead as I do in class that their skepticism about the past puts them in good company. A long line of Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, have questioned the value of the past for the present. In other words, skepticism about the past has a past.