be a historian

[Pooja]

What if you were a history teacher, and you taught US history?

And, hypothetically, you were teaching a survey course that had to be broken down into 4 chunks.

How would you divide up america's history?

My first inclination here, is to divide it up this way:

precolonial (native american history), which is before 1492 (or whenever the europeans came).

colonial (after the settlers arrive, but before independence from Britain.

the 1800s ... can't really think of a catchy phrase for that whole era. it was really america's developement phase. Wonder if i could just call it "the industrial era"?

the modern era (1900's). which is defined by the 2 world wars, and the mid-east conflicts

----- needless to say, that this is boring. Perhaps that's why so many students turn away from history? The presentation stinks.
Should it instead be chopped up by it's wars? (revolutionary, civil, ww1, ww2)
or scientific innovations? or presidents?

*i'm writing a paper for my histiography course, and this is a question posed by the prof. I'm fascinated by it, and am wondering on how other INTP's would categorize something as messy and varied, as US history.

[Zergling]

before independence

independence through civil war

Civil war to WW1 or WW2

Everything else.

These seem to be the most natural divisions, since each of the dividing events had big changes on the country, though actualy timne spent teaching may vary between these breakups and quarters of a school year.

[outmywindow]

My AP US History teacher in high school completely ignored what you have identified as the pre-colonial and colonial periods up until about 1760 or so (he had us just read the chapters on our own -- no in-class teaching of it), and spent the majority of the year on the period between the Revolutionary War and the end of WWII, with a horribly drawn out month-long respite on the Civil War in between.

That said, I did enjoy the class quite a bit (although I could have done with a lot less Civil War), though if I were to have improved on its organization, I would probably have had us look at a lot more primary sources, as opposed to staying with the text book and some Ken Burn's documentaries. If you want us to learn about Thomas Paine's Common Sense, have us read Common Sense! If the writings of Frederick Douglas, Mark Twain, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, etc. are crucial to understanding the difference between the pre- and post-war South, have us read them!

As a side note, I find European history to be much more interesting.

[HilbertSpace]

It really depends on what it is that you're studying the history of.

Although all of the dividing lines are somewhat arbitrary, there are occasionally watershed events that can be used to, if nothing else, schedule cut-off points for exams. However, each individual aspect of history (social, political, economic, military, etc.) has its own key phase transitions. The decision as to what periods to include (e.g., pre-colonial) also has to be made with this in mind.

For several reasons, major wars can make convenient pausing points in general history, but it has to be emphasized that the other aspects of history bridge these gaps.

If I were dividing up a general course in the history of the United States, I would use the Colonial era through roughly the Revolution (actually including the Constitution), which would include a sampling of contemporary British history), post-Revolution through the Civil War (intellectual, economic, trade, and international components), Reconstruction through WWI/post-war (industrialization, changing role of US in the world, etc.), and WWII through today (modern period).

I think that you can use some of the same techniques you would use if you were writing a story, e.g., ending each chapter with a key event that makes the students reflect on what happened up to that point and anticipate the future events.

[omnirook]

What if you were a history teacher, and you taught US history?

And, hypothetically, you were teaching a survey course that had to be broken down into 4 chunks.

How would you divide up america's history?

My first inclination here, is to divide it up this way:

precolonial (native american history), which is before 1492 (or whenever the europeans came).

colonial (after the settlers arrive, but before independence from Britain.

the 1800s ... can't really think of a catchy phrase for that whole era. it was really america's developement phase. Wonder if i could just call it "the industrial era"?

the modern era (1900's). which is defined by the 2 world wars, and the mid-east conflicts

----- needless to say, that this is boring. Perhaps that's why so many students turn away from history? The presentation stinks.
Should it instead be chopped up by it's wars? (revolutionary, civil, ww1, ww2)
or scientific innovations? or presidents?

*i'm writing a paper for my histiography course, and this is a question posed by the prof. I'm fascinated by it, and am wondering on how other INTP's would categorize something as messy and varied, as US history.

I would first break it down into a more reasonable outline, as follows below. Then I would try to rework the 25 points to make an outline that satisfied my moron of a teacher. See below the 25 points.

1 - prehistoric America (by convention, the Native Americans would fall into the latter part of this because they did not have writing)

2 - colonial America (the "Indians," the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the British)

3 - the Revolutionary War, independence from Britain, the squabbling that continued on until the War of 1812

4 - the Napoleonic Wars - these wars were crucial to the United States' development. Britain and France and Spain were too busy to expend men and money on keeping the new kid down; also, Napoleon needed cash and sold Jefferson a chunk of land that was larger than the then United States for cheap

5 - Slavery in America, part one - a brief step back to cover its inception, including the fact that slavery was practiced in the northern states until the19th Century; Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery in 1793; I would include the build up in the trafficing in slaves, the sale of slaves, the implications of Britain having illegalized slave trading in 1837 (we were no match for the Royal Navy, so slave ships were being stopped or blow out of the water); and I would conclude this part w/the abolitionist movement and friction between the free and slave states

6 - Westward Expansion - Jefferson Administration through to the end of the 19th Century - again, slavery - the squabbling about the Misouri Compromise and whether new states would be slave or free states - oh, and don't forget the war w/Mexico - Texas west to California, Mexican territory, taken at gunpoint - and don't forget what was done to the Native Americans along the way

7 - The Civil War

8 - Reconstruction

8A - Slavery in America, part two - slavery is abolished - so, now what do we do w/the ex-slaves? ... The KKK, segregation, legalized discrimination, the lynchings, the beatings, the generalized cruelty towards and suppression of the ex-slaves

9 - America outpaces Britain as an industrial power

10 - Imperial America is born, the McKinley Administration, the Theodore Roosevelt Administration - territorial ambitions, starting w/taking Florida from Spain and then taking the Phillipines from Spain

11 - The 20th Century - its technology

12 - The First World War and how the US became a world power

13 - The big boom, the "Roaring Twenties," the stock market crash
13A - The Great Depression

14 - World War Two - and how the US became THE super power

15 - The Cold War and how the US and Soviet Union split the world between them, thru to the Kennedy assassination

16 - The Civil Rights Movement

17 - Roe v Wade and the liberation of women

18 - Vietnam - how America awoke to the fact that a tiny, badly equipped people can kick the snot out of a superpower when that tiny, badly equipped people are fighting for their own country - Johnson Administration

19 - Johnson Adminsitration - Civil Rights, the War on Poverty

20 - Nixon Administration - end of Vietnam, Watergate

21 - Carter Administration - the MIDDLE EAST comes to the fore!

22 - Reagan Administration

23 - Bush One

24 - Clinton Administration

25 - Bush Redux, 9/11, the "War" on Terrror

Here's what you can do w/only 4 topic headings - all of the above has to be shoved in under the headings

1 - pre-historic America up until Columbus

2 - colonial America from Columbus forward, the Revolutionary War

3 - 19th Century

4 - 20th Century to the present

[joft]

my inclination would be to present the nation as a system and show how it evolved over time. i would divide it based on population growth, and certain macroeconomic technologies like railroads and so on which changed the organization of the system profoundly. i'd like to show pictures of ancient america and the glaciers, and where the human populations likely existed and were injected into the continent migrated around to over time as the glaciers receded and the land bridge melted. that's how i myself would like to organize the info in my own mind, as a time lapse video of a satellite image of the planet which i could zoom into if i wanted and see what the populations were doing and what their way of life was like and so on.

but i don't know enough about US history to actually give any real examples :blush:

i had this one interesting class about urbanism that gave me a cool understanding of the industrial revolution and how it drained the country-side and exploded cities. i like that spy-satellite view of history from miles away from it all.

(but that's not to the exclusion of finding other perspectives interesting either. i like microscopic, little subjective views, like the writings of one person, which help keep me from floating away into space, and remind me that those people were humans just like me but in a different situation and yet still so similar)

[dunee]

the 1800s ... can't really think of a catchy phrase for that whole era. it was really america's developement phase. Wonder if i could just call it "the industrial era"?
You could... I'd probably go with "Manifest Destiny" myself. Got a catchy tune to it.

----- needless to say, that this is boring. Perhaps that's why so many students turn away from history? The presentation stinks.
Should it instead be chopped up by it's wars? (revolutionary, civil, ww1, ww2)
or scientific innovations? or presidents?
I agree that the conventional chronological way is old beans and not that inspiring. The intro chapter in my geology text mentioned spiral learning (revisiting topics in each new unit), and it just occured to me that that might be useful in history to make the stuff stick better... in effect, we'd be covering every period chronologically in every unit, but each unit would have a different focus. If it were up to me, I might: give an extreme rundown on events from 20000 BC to 2007 ACE for a week, then start up the units, dividing them into several ideological blocs (I'll use 4 here, but there could be more).

So, I might divide the topics up roughly something like this:
The American- would cover "what is an American?" teach of indigenous North Americans of 13000BCE, then 1492, Jamestowne, Hugenots, Quakers, Slaves, German & Italian immigrants, Washington, Lee, Wilson, Rachel Carson, all the lot.

Conflict- start with 1066 and Magna Carta to show beginnings of American ideologies (could also go in the "America & the World" sector instead). Quickly move on to, say, first meets of Abenaki with Jesuits (not necessarily war, but a conflict of ideologies too). Then Conquistadores, French/English, War between States, 1812, Little Big Horn, Bay of Pigs, Wilson's 14 points, Feminist Mystique, etc.

Shifting into CapitalismCover reasons for colonizing New World, Manifest Destiny, Belle Epoque world's fairs, Medical advancements, Unions and 19th century union struggles, present day techno revolution, etc

America and the WorldHere is where we talk more indepth on interactions (of any sort) and the perception of America in the world. Includes Natives, the granddaddy Brits, Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick policies, Canada, Hawaii, Iran Contra, Kuwait, 1992, and Oil, the Conservation movement, and anything else not in the above 3 categories!



As a side note, I find European history to be much more interesting.tsk tsk. <_< they've had a lot longer to make fools of themselves on the other side of the pond!

[outmywindow]

tsk tsk. <_< they've had a lot longer to make fools of themselves on the other side of the pond!

Heh -- I'm a bit biased since I'm minoring in medieval studies, which by default excludes the United States. :)