Philosophies In Teaching American History

History is essentially the foundations of humanity. It contains what mankind was, what it is, and often foreshadows what it will be. In the development of a nation, the documents and customs established, set precedents that bury deep within the roots of a nation’s history as it grows in power and strength. In the development of the United States, one such set of acts played a key role in the way unto which this nation was formed and continues to affect it today. The Alien and Sedition Acts changed American ideology in the 18th Century and again influences the nation in the current era. By first understanding what the Alien and Sedition Acts were, how they shaped the nation 's development, and their role in America today, the importance and

In Interpretations of American History, a collaborative team of four editors (Francis G. Couvares, Martha Saxton, Gerald N. Grob, and George Athan Billias) seek to educate any student of history on the various perspectives on any one said historical issue. The editors sum up the entire book with “These volumes reflect our understanding that history is an act of interpretation. ” Essentially, this book offers a multitude of benefits for those who wish to further study history, but at the same time the reader must take everything said with a grain of salt.

Over the past few weeks of class, we have covered the first five chapters of our textbook, written by George Brown Tindell and David Emory Shi called, “America, A Narrative History.” Each chapter told the reader a narration of the history of America, as opposed to an expository version of America’s history. Each chapter had its own main idea over a portion of history, along with many details that cover the importance of the main idea. As a reader, one may obtain a deeper appreciation for the country 's history, prior to entering the class on the first day. The most important aspect of history, besides the battles that are fought, is the different cultures that make up today’s modern America.

Colonial life in America was a time of many victories and failings. It was a learning experience for the people of the time. In a A People’s History of the United States and A Patriot’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn and Larry Schweikart tell contrasting stories of the issues of colonial life.

The world is full of rich culture, diversity and experiences unique to each individual. When determining the validity of historic accounts we must factor in that particular historian’s point of view, which should be characterized by ethnicity, idealogy, theoretical or methodological preference. With these factors views of the past often vary from person to person. In this essay I will be discussing the four different stages that shaped the writing of American history over the last 400 years.

Throughout history society has to go through many changes that not only affect many of the people but also the areas around the transformation. The main point of Fredrick Jackson Turner’s thesis is what the real essence of America is, and how we’re all influenced by the many changes we have to go through. He believes that American history should not be focused on the extension of European enterprise. The society will have to realize that America will have to be emancipated because of the fact that we had a country with an unlimited amount of boundaries and have to come to realization that we have many closed-spaced limits. The views in the seminal essay share his thoughts on the idea of how the frontier shaped

Today, many American’s are proud to identify that the Declaration of Independence marks the beginning of freedom for North America. However, as students in history classes across American schools and colleges dig deeper into the realities of the country’s battles for freedom of rights it represents that from the beginning the Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the American people. The signing of the Declaration of Independence on the face of it depicts it as liberty and democracy, but the realism is that the American colonists had little choice or no choice at all, in how the American British governed its people. It is clear, the American colonies never gave up their fight for freedom and human rights, but the British Revolution still

1776, a non-fiction historical book, is written by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough. The book revolves around the American Revolution, hence the title 1776, and it accurately shows the course of actions that have taken place in that year. 1776 is displays how America became an independent nation and what the individuals during that time had to go through to gain access to freedom and liberty. The Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s most cherished symbol of independence, that same year on July 4. With education systems not going in depth of the year 1776, this paper is to show how this book has revealed so much of our country’s history in one year.

As it is said, “the victor writes history.” As a student, we believe that we know the history. But this is not true. We do not know African American history beyond the slave trade. Similarly, we know little about the American Indians, now referred to as Native Americans. The history we learnt that glossed over details and left students with the feeling that the immigrants from the United Kingdom and other European countries benefitted the native population. The search for the history of cowboys versus Indians will be challenging. Ethan Hawke and Greg Roth have resolved this challenge through their graphic novel, INDEH: A Story of the Apache Wars. In their collaborative work, Hawke and Roth successfully show readers that they may assume that they know Native American history, they do not. students were taught American history from the viewpoint of immigrants. The cowboy and Indians wars which erupted between Native Americans and the immigrant settlers was a war over territory and over culture and different lifestyles. It was not a war between savages and people from an advanced culture. Hawke and Roth show us that a war over resources and the determination of the settlers and immigrants to rule over what they referred to as the “New World.”

History is the framework of every nation. It describes what life was like in a nation, hundreds perhaps thousands of years previously. With history, many citizens are able to examine what lead to a crisis in a nation such as the Stock Market Crash of 1929 or the Civil War in the 1800s in the United States of America. Likewise, the moments of growth and economic success are looked at. From these past endeavors, the people can examine what went wrong and what went right and determine how they can stop themselves from making similar mistakes or act in a way that has been proven to work. In Eve Kornfeld’s “Creating an American Culture 1775-1800,” many different areas of national identity are discussed, including the beginnings of documenting the history of America as an independent nation. This was especially hard for Americans to create a singular national identity because there was bias in the early works, the different colonies or states were extremely diverse, and many intellectuals had different perspectives on the American identity.

American history is full of battles and freedom fighters. From the Boston tea party to voting rights. America fought against a king who was unfair and unjust. They may have had a civil war but it was also for the idea that rights were being taken away. The country has many amazing historical characters that made it the country it is today. This paper will discuss the Boston Tea Party, George Washington’s inaugural address, his warnings upon leaving office as well as the Boston Massacre, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and John Adams on voting rights.

The author of this book is a professor of history at Columbia University and is one of the country’s most noticeable historians. He graduated from Columbia with his doctoral degree under Richard Hofstadter. Foner is one of only two people to be president of three major professional organizations. They are the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians.

The historian who exemplifies and reflects the best interpretation and analysis of American history is the iconic Richard Hofstadter. From his graduate thesis, Hofstadter was writing pieces that would influence young minds far past his own time. He is acknowledged as one of the greatest historians of the mid-twentieth century, and he has left an imprint that is still evident to this day. His determination to record is demonstrated in his concise style of disproving myths and transforming them into historical truths. Once a far left scholar, Hofstadter was able to mold his mind with his learnings and bring the view of a new consensus historian into the picture. Richard Hofstadter absolutely depicts and reproduces the best take on the history

Tindall, George Brown, David E. Shi, and Charles W. Eagles. America a Narrative History. 10th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.

Many of the works in this year’s American Literature class cover many varying and seemingly unrelated, yet important topics. For example, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God talks about the idea and feasibility of true love, and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau expresses that one should not support unjust governments, as he says about governments in general, “Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” Despite these varied subjects, there is a common thread that runs through it all. George Washington, alongside many thousands of colonists, rose up against an overbearing British government and established a new government,