Blog 4 History

I don’t know what is a more arduous task, starting a new quarter or ending it. This past week we started a new quarter and I have somehow let almost a week slip by without posting anything. The week before was Spring Break and I managed to get a few posts in. Anyway, the end of grading period is busy with grading and such, but starting a quarter I find more intense as I need to get off on a good start, get to know the kids, and it just seems to be more work. I don’t know, maybe just me?

I have refrained these past few weeks from getting into much politically, but when I see something that has to do with our troops, such as this. Well, I am compelled to post it:

WASHINGTON, March 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The leader of the nation’s largest veterans organization says he is “deeply disappointed and concerned” after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases.

“It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan,” said Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion. “He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”

The Commander, clearly angered as he emerged from the session said, “This reimbursement plan would be inconsistent with the mandate ‘ to care for him who shall have borne the battle’ given that the United States government sent members of the armed forces into harm’s way, and not private insurance companies. I say again that The American Legion does not and will not support any plan that seeks to bill a veteran for treatment of a service connected disability at the very agency that was created to treat the unique need of America’s veterans!”

To read more…

This is a mistake Mr. President. The effect of this will be on veterans having to pay more, and premiums will go up. This impacts the middle-class and lower classes, everyone. But not surprising, to spend like our government is will require new and creative ways to tax, and that includes all of us, not just the evil rich people making over 250k.

Also, why are the Democrats so concerned with “quick” and undemocratic debate concerning things like the stimulus bill and now the disastrous Cap and Trade Bill.  This is not democracy in action, this is not change.  Well, thankfully, some Democrats are starting to speak out.

And before you cry out that the debate on global warming as a man made thing is over, maybe read this.

O.k. I feel better, no political posts for, hopefully, a month or so…

BY: Chris Wehner

(Note: fellow teachers I have shared this with thought I should submit the findings of this simulation to a journal, as I simply don’t have the time to refine it I am posting it here on my blog. I welcome responses!)

I teach American Government to high school seniors in Western Colorado. I recently did a simulation where I instituted a “Grade Tax” on my class for 7 days. The results of the simulation were intriguing. Student morale and work slacked, effort and scores suffered, and frustration and angst set in. The students were not aware that it was a simulation and that afterward their grades would be restored.

The reason for doing this simulation was twofold: First, we were in the middle of discussing how and why economic systems develop alongside political systems; Second, to see what happens when a grading system based on Capitalism or Free Market principles (competition and rewards) is removed and replaced with a Redistributive/socialist (collective) system.

After giving this simulation serious thought I realized how I approached it was the key. First, the students had to believe that it was real. I did so by privately emailing the parents and asking for their cooperation, and to play along. As far as I know, all did and some did so with enthusiasm. Second, I wanted the students to see that what we were doing was for the greater good of the class. They could, indeed, succeed as a class.

I started by showing my students the grade averages and current distribution of points: The upper 5% of my class had amassed the total number of points possible. The upper 20% had capitalized 90% and so on, until I found that the lower 20% or so was just getting by at 60% average of possible points. I then explained that this was not their fault. These students, without naming them of course, were disadvantaged. They had evening jobs, less study time, and not the same access to technology and resources. Some, I theorized, came from less advantaged families and social environments not conducive to good study habits. The grading system was failing them.

When I finished I observed some students smiling and very pleased with my rationale, but most were either in disbelief or outright dismayed.
I then outlined my plan.

From this point on, I told them, I was taxing those students who earned more than 85% on any given assignment. But this wasn’t enough, so I immediately hit the class with a Grade Revenue Tax and then I showed them on the overhead projector that I wasn’t kidding. There in my electronic Grade Book was an entry for a “Grade Tax” where I had already taxed those upper 20% of students and redistributed their points to the bottom 60%. The 20% at the curve were unaffected, for now.

I was able to show the class we went from a wide range of grades to a common grade of about 80% for the entire class. Everyone was succeeding with a B in the class. No one would freeze to death, I told them. (This last comment was greeted with confused looks, but more on that later.)

This produced a combined uproar of celebration and consternation. Some students under their breath steamed with some disparaging words for their teacher. A few commented that this wasn’t true and if it was, their parents would be calling the Principle in the morning. One cried out that I would be fired.

I then told them of the sad story of a 93-year-old World War II medic who froze to death in his Bay City, Michigan home. After 50 years of paying his bill on time and unable to get out of his house, no one at the power company thought to call and check on him when his payment was late. He had the cash, over 600K in assets. But the power company did not know this and did not care. He was 2 months behind and so His power was turned off in the middle of one of the coldest months of the year. A man with no surviving children, a war hero, was rewarded by slowly and painfully freezing to death from hypothermia. Cold dispassionate capitalism and greed killed a war hero. This story had a deep impact on my class; you could hear a pin drop.

I next told them about the horrifying case of a man who fatally shot his wife, five young children and then himself after he and his wife lost their jobs. Here was a family man, a good man, crippled with the thought of financial ruin, and so turned a gun on his wife and children, before taking his own life. Victims of a society dominated by competition and greed I said, after all, that house will be for sale before long and at a great price for someone else. I have to admit that this last comment produced a reaction of horror from most of the class.

These are but two stories, I said, in a long line of sad cases. Our Free Market Capitalism wasn’t there for them. There was no collective system that made sure the power would remain on. The government failed these people. We will not do the same in regards to our fellow students, I proclaimed!

The looks of sadness on my student’s faces made me think that some of them were willing to give this a try, and indeed some were. But I suspect that they were mourning something else: the loss of freedom.

I immediately handed out the first assignment under the Grade Tax and the students finished it before the bell, all performing in line with how they had thus far achieved.

Let’s flash forward.

Day Three.

Assignment number three and behavior and work habits for most students had begun to drastically change. Many good students began to slack, while slacker students enjoyed their good fortune.

Students no longer expressed dismay and most seemed to accept that the Grade Tax was here to stay. (Most likely as their parents were not calling in complaining, this mystified several conservative students.) So apparently those convinced their parents would come to their rescue were still in shock. Some continued to work hard, but for the most part the class was changing.

Assignments turned in were sloppily or poorly performed, or not even completed. Though this was not unusual to have some assignments handed in like this, but the students who were not finishing or doing work was. Some of the high performing students began to perform in line with the average. Why work any harder?

I then announced to the students that the Grade Tax had to be increased in order to meet the needs of the sudden lowered performance of the class. Moans and shrugs from the students.
The Grade Tax was now for anyone in the 80% range. I told my students some were in danger of freezing and we could not allow this. I encouraged them to work harder and that as a class we can all succeed, and together we can get better. We just had to work harder and together we can raise our grade and achieve success!

By Day 5 things were getting bad. Students were making appointments with their counselors attempting to drop my class. Parents emailed that students were very upset, but they still supported and appreciated my simulation. However, they did enquire as to when exactly it would end?

Day 7, final day.

Test time. Our unit test and once again the Grade Tax was in play. The mood as the students strolled in was somber, peaceful. Accepting. Let’s get it over with seemed the temperament of most.

The finished their exam and handed it in. I graded them that night.

Several weeks before student performance on our unit test was overall far better than this one. Things had gotten really bad for the collective good. We would have to lower our standards.

Only 2 students earned above a B on the exam with only 14 spare points to redistribute. To get the class up to a B average I would have needed 122 extra points (it was a 60 point exam) to distribute among the class of 28 just to maintain a B- average. This would have resulted in us borrowing the points from another class. That was not an option I told them, so I lowered the Grade Tax floor and reduce the target collective grade from a B to a C. As a collective, we were starting to fail on a grand scale.

I realized that the simulation was ending at a good time, only 7 days into it.

True some students never took it too seriously, but most did. And overall the simulation did exactly what I had predicted it would do. The Grade Tax produced failure and it encouraged it. No one earned anything, they only received. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that without incentive, there is little to work for. Performance suffers.

Students want to be rewarded for their work. In a collective distribution system, some undoubtedly will be rewarded more than others. Failure is ultimately rewarded.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote about the “Pursuit of Happiness.” Notice he did not say “to Have Happiness.” Like it or not, a competitive environment with incentive and rewards works better than the alternative.

There is a natural aristocracy in the world, as there is in the classroom, and not all are guaranteed success. But they are guaranteed the right to pursue it if they wish. This simulation was obviously not scientific or perfect, but it does illustrate the point. When students were not allowed to succeed as individuals, they were guaranteed to fail as a group.
When I informed my students that this had been a simulation I could feel the relief from them. Some students announced that they knew it all along, but for the most part there was mutual joy with the announcement.

I had each student write a reflection asking them to openly express how they responded to the Grade Tax. Almost 90% of the students stated that they started to not work as hard, even those who were receiving the “benefits” of someone else’s points.

This became a teachable moment on several levels. First, competition is a natural act and to remove it removes something from human nature, that instinct to succeed; or at least the desire to. Second, even those students who benefited admitted that the added bonus rarely encouraged them to try harder. It simply was not that important to them. What was important to them was still doing as little as possible.

The classroom must reflect human nature, let alone the real world.

McFarland books are hamstrung by their price and often times their lack of production value: poor maps, illustration, ect.

However, I do have the pleasure to recommend a McFarland book (a 2 Volume Set) that I feel is worth the cost. Lincoln’s Assassins: A Complete Account of Their Capture, Trial, and Punishment, by Roy Z. Chamlee is an exhaustive and informative study of the capture, trial and execution of the Lincoln assassins. The book probes the background and character of everyone involved, and brings to light the controversy and suspension surrounding the events. Chamlee’s research includes War Department files, pretrial and trial testimony, newspaper accounts and manuscript collections including the words of powerful Cabinet members, generals, politicians and others.

How does it compare to works like Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial and Execution (Paperback) by James L. Swanson and Daniel Weinberg, I do not know as I have not read their presentation. The price difference is significant. However, I can tell you that Chamlee’s study is over 600 pages, includes 2 books, and theirs is a meek 160 pages in a single book. Given what I have seen and the sheer size difference, Chamlee’s study is comprehensive and should be your first purchase.

As a teacher I would highly recommend Chamlee’s exhaustive study.

I think one of the real challenges to teaching “The Great Depression” is to try to stay away from political historical analogy and focus on the changes taking place within American society. How the country transformed from the 1920s to the late 1930s. As a teacher I need documentaries that present Great Depression society and culture and I think I found a good one. The Great Depression is a history channel presentation hosted by former NY mayor Mario Cuomo who grew up during the height of the era. The DVD has over 200 minutes of material, but it is nicely broken up in to about 50 minute segments which are perfect for classroom use. These segments are: 1) ”The Great Shake-Up.” Faced with hard times, Americans sought release wherever they could find it, from marathon dancing to going to the movies; 2) ”Face the Music” uses extensive film clips and photos to show how the media came of age to become an integral part of daily life. As the Depression lingered and the New Deal failed to live up to people’s expectations, some Americans fought back against a system they felt had betrayed them;  and finally, 4) ”Striking Back,” rare footage and revealing interviews relive the desperate acts of people who had been pushed too far by the crisis. Finally, ”Desperate Measures” shows how the approach of World War II did what all the protests and recovery programs failed to do – end the Great Depression.

From the product page: In the first years of the Great Depression, banks and businesses failed in record numbers as America struggled to come to grips with the disaster. Examine the changes that swept the shaken nation, from the landslide victory of FDR in 1932, to the California migrations of Dust Bowl farmers.

I strongly urge you to get this DVD as it is useful and affordable at only $11.49 currently.

I received over the weekend my review copy of The Founding of America Megaset. Last night I watched “Founding Brothers,” which I view on the History Channel when it came out. I also watched the movie/docudrama “The Crossing”, starring Jeff Daniels. I looked through every DVD and can’t wait to watch them all. I will be spending many hours over the coming weeks doing so. These will be an invaluable to anyone’s collection. I think of particular use to high schools.

Included in this incredible package are 13 of the best docudramas and documentaries on the founding of our country. Here’s the list:

• Founding Fathers (mini-series)
• Founding Brothers (mini-series)
• The Conflict Ignites
• 1776
• Washington & Arnold
• The World at War
• England’s Last Chance
• Birth of the Republic
• The Revolution (series)
• Washington the Warrior
• Ben Franklin
• Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor
• The Crossing

DVD Release Date: February 24, 2009
Run Time: 1634 minutes

[From SoldierStudies.org]

Master of War: The Life of General George H. Thomas
by David Poremba

Bobrick, Benson. Master of War: The Life of General George H. Thomas. Simon & Schuster. Ill. Maps. Bib. 432p. $28.00 Feb. 2009.

Some of the benchmarks of good historical writing is the author’s ability to let the reader see things from a different perspective and present the argument in a convincing manner, leaving the reader with things to ponder.

In this delightful romp through Civil War generals’, politicians and modern historians reputations, Benson Bobrick marches to the front rank the life of General George H. Thomas, whom he claims is the greatest Civil War general, better even than Robert E. Lee. Certainly, on record alone, as a general who never lost a battle, the case could be made.

Bobrick spends a considerable amount of time on Thomas’ early life and pre-Civil War career to good effect. Thomas was born into a well-to-do slave-holding family in Virginia, had African-American playmates, and, as a young teenager witnessed some of the more violent aspects of slavery when he and his family barely survived Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Later, while serving as a law clerk in his uncle’s office, Thomas was nominated for a cadetship at West Point, entering in July, 1836, as a twenty-year-old, slightly older than his classmates. He shared a room with William T. Sherman, graduated in the middle of his class of forty-two and was posted into the 3rd Artillery, then stationed at Fort Columbus in New York Harbor. Over the next two decades of his career, Thomas saw active duty in many parts of the country.

His first combat action took place in the Everglades, Florida, where he won his first brevet “for gallantry and good conduct” against the Seminole Indians. Afterwards, service at Ft. Moultrie, South Carolina and Ft. McHenry, Maryland, exposed him to some of the social aspects of commissioned rank and reunited him some of his West Point classmates, among them Braxton Bragg. Upon the outbreak of the Mexican War, Thomas and his company were ordered to Texas and service under Zachary Taylor. Here he learned how battles are fought and won on a large scale, lessons he learned better than most of his colleagues.

Returning stateside with two more brevets (for Monterrey and Buena Vista), Thomas began a three-year stint at West Point as an artillery instructor. In recognition of his skills, his duties were expanded to include cavalry instruction – two of his star pupils were Phillip Sheridan and JEB Stuart. He also became close friends with Robert E. Lee, who was the Superintendent at the time, even sharing married quarters with the Lees after Thomas’ marriage in 1852.

Subsequent hard duty at desolate posts in the Pacific Division preceded a posting as major in the 2nd Cavalry, an elite new outfit created by War Secretary Jefferson Davis in 1855. This regiment would supply more officers to high command than any other in military history – sixteen officers would wear stars in the coming conflict. It was certainly a testament to Thomas’ reputation and skill as a professional to be posted here.

Thus the stage was set for the opening volleys of the Civil War and the facts upon which Bobrick’s argument for Thomas as the best general rests. No one among the major players, be he politician or soldier, is safe from the author’s assessment of their words o actions. These assessments are not made up but based on actual correspondence, contemporary accounts and reminiscences.

George Thomas was a political orphan, as opposed to Sherman and Grant, who were manipulators of power and patronage. This, coupled with the fact of his southern birth, led Lincoln and others, to doubt his loyalty; this attitude cost him a promotion after the Battle of Mill Springs. Thomas was a stickler for protocol, especially concerning rank and seniority. Thus, after Buell’s Division saved the day at Shiloh, Thomas was promoted and Grant was demoted in Halleck’s reorganization of the command structure. In respect to Grant’s seniority, Thomas asked to be relieved and reassigned back to Buell, an act of gallantry Grant never forgot nor forgave.

The War Department’s unhappiness with Buell’s whole campaign around Chattanooga led to the order for Thomas to replace Buell – and again he asked that the order be rescinded due to the fact that the army was in the early stages of active operations. Although appropriate, this led to the belief that he was unsure of himself in high command and when it came time to replace Buell, he was passed over in favor of Rosecrans. True to his character, Thomas continued in a subordinate role until his promotion to command to the Army of the Cumberland.

It is the subsequent campaigns that provide Bobrick with his evidence of Thomas’ greatness. Also blatantly exposed are Sherman’s inadequacies and Grant’s vindictiveness. Beginning with the Battle of Chattanooga, a battle Bobrick says Thomas won behind Grant’s back, through the Atlanta campaign and concluding with General James Wilsons’ cavalry raid through Alabama, evidence of Thomas’ brilliance as a master of war on the same level as the Prussian Von Moltke, is adequately presented, along with some interesting perspectives. Foremost among these is Sherman’s March to the Sea, a campaign designed solely to promote Sherman’s reputation. Bobrick contends the campaign was wholly unnecessary, begun because Sherman could not defeat Confederate General John B. Hood in and around Atlanta. It was left to Thomas, who became the only Union commander to destroy two Confederate armies in the field. This is a must book to read and own.

David Lee Poremba

He’s a Bears fan…

He’s a Bulls fan…

He drinks beer…

As a Chicago boy who also loves the Bears, the Bulls, and yes, beer, I enjoy seeing a President who actually resembles me other than my skin color!

Also, final note, there’s something I do not trust about a person who doesn’t enjoy the refreshing nature of a finely brewed beer.

I’d have a beer with Obama any day!

[Note: Photo is from last night's Bulls/Wizards game where the Bulls lost, darnit!]

This from the National Review Online website (picked up via CW Bookshelf) is a nice followup to my post from a week ago about Lincoln and Race. Eric Foner is a favorite of mine, not becuase I agree with everything he says, but as Guelzo writes he is a fair historian. I happen to agree more with the “progressive” view of Lincoln than Guelzo’s Conservative perspective, though his argument is interesting.

[Allen C. Guelzo]

The American Left has always had difficulty reconciling itself to Abraham Lincoln. As the Great Emancipator, Lincoln ought to be a winning candidate for the Great Progressive as well. But Lincoln was a tardy and cautious Emancipator. And the goal he looked for beyond emancipation was a nation of entrepreneurial strivers, operating under a government which kept itself strictly to the rule of doing only “for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves in their separate, and individual capacities.”

It comes as a mildly pleasant surprise, then, to read the estimate of Lincoln written by one of the history paladins of the Left, Eric Foner, in the January 23rd issue the The Nation. Foner, despite his membership in one of the first families of American Marxism, has always been a scrupulously fair historian of Lincoln and the Republicans of the Civil War era, and his description of Lincoln in The Nation gives full credit to the “eloquence and power” with which Lincoln condemned slavery.

Still, Foner is acutely aware that this same Lincoln “did not share the abolitionist conviction that the moral issue of slavery overrode all others,” nor did he view “the struggles against slavery and racism as intimately connected.” Much as Lincoln “claimed for blacks the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence … he insisted these did not necessarily carry with them civil, political, or social equality.”

The unpleasant aroma of these ideas has been enough to sour many a progressive on Lincoln, emancipation notwithstanding. But not Foner, who very much wants him to be “our Lincoln.” To do that, Foner must resort to a well-worn progressive trope — growth. “The Lincoln we should remember is the politician whose greatness lay in his capacity for growth” — by which Foner means, Lincoln’s ability to shed his embarrassing conservative notions for an identity as “an enlightened leader” who can “produce progressive social change.”

The difficulty is that Lincoln himself never confessed any awareness of “growth,” nor did those who knew him best. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” Lincoln said in 1864, “ I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.” Far from needing growth, Lincoln (according to Illinois congressman Isaac Arnold) “had it in his mind for a long time to war upon slavery until its destruction was effected.” Lincoln did not end slavery by repentantly abandoning his conservative ideas; he ended it by tenaciously applying those ideas according to a blueprint of classical political prudence.

I suppose it is better that Foner wants to re-upholster Lincoln as “our Lincoln” rather than trashing Lincoln completely, as so many other Left historians do. But even Foner must recognize that this is an uphill task. In a collection of essays published last month under the title, Our Lincoln, Foner recruits a contingent of fellow Left historians to endorse the “growth” Lincoln. But only one of them is actually a Lincoln specialist, and the others show varying degrees of reluctance to embrace the growth thesis. (Bona fide Lincolnites — think of Michael Burlingame, Lucas Morel, Thomas Krannawitter, the great Harry Jaffa — were conspicuous by their exclusion). Foner’s Lincoln is not really Lincoln at all, but a wax-work progressive. The real Lincoln is the conservative, after all — our Lincoln, and not theirs.

— Allen Carl Guelzo, Henry R. Luce professor of the Civil War era and director of the Civil War Era Studies Program at Gettysburg College, is a contributor to the Manhattan Institute’s MindingTheCampus.com.

I found out last week that I will be teaching A.P. United States History next year at my school, and hopefully will be doing so for the foreseeable future. Our current A.P. teacher is stepping down and the position opened up and I was luckily enough to get it.

I have mixed feelings. One the one hand, I am excited to be able to work with the very best of students in our public schools. I have to admit, that in my general U.S. History classes the wide range of learning ability handcuffs me. I have some students that struggle with the very basics, and others hungry for more. Differentiation nightmare. It has been very frustrating at times. I cannot wait to be in a classroom full of eager and intelligent minds. In the public school arena, A.P. is all we have for such interaction. No survey courses, limited electives, ect. We have a massive curriculum that we have to always be teaching to, so A.P. is our only chance at getting into in-depth discussions with students.

On the other hand, the goal of the student is to pass the A.P. test and get their college credit. Some students are there as they love history, but many because their parents make them. Students in A.P. classes can become fixated on simply gathering the facts, taking practice tests, and preparing for the written portion of the test. Fair enough. However, I think our school, which has had an excellent A.P. teacher who is going to mentor me, has a good approach to A.P. classes and I am excited to be an A.P. teacher.

Anyway, I will share my experiences as I go. I will also post samples of my curriculum, syllabus and other things this summer in hopes of getting feedback!

Chris