Having finished my Civil War unit last week I wanted to reflect back on it and share that here with you. To re-emphasize, I teach at a regular public school in Colorado that is very diversified in its level of students. As a public school we are subject to the NCLB act and other government and political intrusions, so we have to follow a standard curriculum and use standardized assessment. Joy!
We as a staff had to come up last year with key terms, vocabulary, essential learnings and understandings for each unit. And overall I really thought we did a nice job doing so. We are allotted 2 weeks to teach the Civil War if teaching a 95 minute block (quarter) class, and about 4 weeks teaching a 45 minute (semester) class. I am teaching a semester class. I ended up taking almost 5 weeks.
It was important to me that my students understood the following (would love feedback, suggestions, critiques, ect.):
Essential understandings dealt with the causes of the war, which acknowledges that there were many causes, but that slavery was the underlining causation. Remove the institution of slavery, and there is no states rights issue and there is no Civil War.
We also wanted our students to understand the social climate, including the average soldier and citizen. We addressed the issue of racism and how it was an unavoidable fact of life because of slavery. Had you been alive during the Civil War you would have been a racist. This thought blew some students away. You might have seen slavery as an evil, you might have even been an abolitionist, but there is very little chance you would have seen the Negro as your political and social equal. This triggered some very heated and interesting debate in the classroom.
Also, it was important for us to cover how Victorian era values played a role in why soldiers went to war and why citizens supported such a fight. Understanding the nature of the conflict beyond the political and military was important.
Covering the fighting and the major battles was also a priority. We discussed how the nature of combat changed from 1861 to 1864. This was a great way to easily show how no one at the time (1861) believed the war would last long, how the North approached the war at first in a conciliatory manner, and then the evolution of hard war (some of my partners still call it Total War).
Within these “big” ideas we get into more detail.
I am now just finishing up Reconstruction which is always a big bummer for the students as they learn how it ultimately failed to help blacks gain true equality. Once again, some great discussion among the students who really did not know a lot of the ins and outs of Reconstruction. As we covered the black codes and Jim Crow laws we reflected back to the opening discussion about racism. Reiterating that though the Civil War was caused by slavery, few who fought felt that they were fighting for slavery. Some would change their minds as they experienced/saw it first hand, but still in the end, it was not enough to overcome the race card.
My desire as an American history teacher is not to point to such things and say to my students, “See, see how awful we were.” But instead to say, “See how far we have come…” Are we perfect, no, but I would not trade my place with anyone else in the world.
-Chris
What a delightful summary. It sounds to this non-academic like you’ve done quite well by your students.
I wouldn’t worry too much about stretching 4 weeks into 5. When I took High School US History (one year for 1865-1990), the teacher lamented that he’d had to cut his coverage of Reconstruction from one semester to 12 weeks. I’m sure I missed out on some mid-20th century history — despite what I now view as adequate coverage of the Depression, De-segregation, and Vietnam — but it’s hard to beat an intense study of poll taxes and “grandfather clauses” to equip a youngster growing up in the South to understand the background of his environment. I’ve since managed to move both backward and forward in time from Reconstruction in my own reading of history, in a way that would have been impossible without that in-depth study.
Keep up the good work!
Well done Chris. Sounds to me like your students now have a fairly sophisticated view of the war and its consequences. It really is a fascinating period to teach, in part, because it so difficult to make it uninteresting.
Saying that without slavery there was no states rights issue oversimplifies the progression of political thought that shaped our national government. I recently read a letter written by Albert Gallatin during the War of 1812 where he mentioned that one result of that conflict might be several states in New England rejoining Britain. What surprised me about the letter is that there was no discussion of the constitutionality or legality of such an act which, given his high-level position in the Federal government, would have been expected. Instead, he seemed to accept it as one possible consequence of the war (unthinkable today) and quickly moved on to the topic of Napoleon.
States rights was always an issue for the South and was most often tied to how they managed their economy. It included slavery but extended to tariffs, taxes, land use, and the development of infrastructure (private corporations versus public funds). Even without slavery I don’t believe North and South would have been of politically like-minded and the Nullification Crisis in 1832 showed that South Carolina was ready to dissolve their her to the union in favor of local control.
Students should understand that states rights had roots in the Continental Congress and that it was a theory both North and South used as leverage. They should also know that it continues to impact our government today in places where they are fighting the No Child Left Behind Act in favor of state education programs or in the arguments over civil unions and gay marriage.