a reality check, sort of

     More on the subject of how to tell if what you see in a movie is real or pretend--visit a museum. If you can't go in person, visit online, where you can look at things in  museums all over the country and the world. All of the things in the museum are real. Most of them are old. Here in Philadelphia, there is a "Hall of Weapons" in the art museum, with swords, halberds, and armor, among other things. There is an authentic Tudor period room, and a medieval cloister--straight out of Doctor Who, but real. The science museum has a train in the basement that will be 200 years old soon, but it still takes visitors for ( short ) rides. If you don't live near a museum, try typing "museum" in your search box and see what you get.

you'd watch soap operas, wouldn't you?

     Millions of people watch soap operas every day. Millions of people watch crime dramas every week. Tens of millions of people will watch the latest war movie. So what's wrong with a little history?  Take Henry VIII, for example. He had six wives. He divorced two of them, ending the monopoly of "the church". He had two of them beheaded. One died in childbirth. One outlived him. What's not to watch?

farming never-neverland

     I watched a video about farm life the other day, hoping that it could help to explain food production. It couldn't. Some people do not believe that food comes from farms--and when told, deny it, as they already "know" better. They "know" that farms are pretend, or out of the past--we get food by some more modern method now--factories, or machines. I have spent hours on the video clip site, trying to put together a set of films that would show plowing, planting, tending, harvesting, transporting, processing, and distribution. I found a lot of videos of combines and harvesters, but I couldn't arrange the set I wanted.  I'll have to try again, or contact an educational video service. I'm looking for a video that will show that farmers are real, not  fantasy characters. The video should show that farms and farmers are modern, not a historical re-enactment. The film should explain what "factory farming" means, as the same people who don't believe that food comes from farms have "decided" that this means food comes from factories. Any suggestions?

it's all a plot

     Crime, war, disaster, romance, intrigue--these all do well at the box office. Making them seem boring in a history book is a crime--or a diabolical plot of some kind. Hollywood does a better job making history interesting than many authors of textbooks. Unfortunately, many people believe that if Hollywood puts it on the screen, it must be pretend. That's right, they believe that Hollywood invented Henry VIII as a screen character. So the movies can't teach them history, since they believe it to be a fantasy.  How to teach them that history was real is the problem.

the need to reclassify oneself

     Ask a female black student when she would have been first able to vote--in history--and you will probably get the answer "1865". Which is, of course, utter nonsense. She would have first voted in 1920, when American women were given the vote. Look for the "enfranchisement of women", or "women's suffrage". Try to tell your female black student this, and you may get a denial and an argument, even if you tell her to  look for the "enfranchisement of women", or "women's suffrage".  Did these young women need a public school lesson to tell them that not only are they black, with black skin, but that they are also, 1. women;  2. Americans; 3. people., 4. students? Surely they need to learn to reclassify themselves when occasion warrants--as something other than a skin.

can history be outdated?

     Someone once asked me if an old history book was outdated. In other words, shouldn't I get a newer history book? My answer was no--but it's not as obvious as I hoped it might be. Any book or document ( paper of any kind) "becomes" history if it gets old enough, of course. A very old diary, newspaper, bill of sale, letter, advertisement---they are all "history".  So an old history book "becomes" history in the same way.  If it contains data like population statistics they will be outdated as current information--but they are still history. History doesn't change much, anyway, even though it is often re-written for style and content. I think the history books we used when I was in school forty years ago did a better job including blacks and women than some of the newer books do. So in the case of using the book in a classroom, and not just for adult scholars, there is no substitute for reading the book with the ideas in mind you hope to see expressed in it. Up to the minute statistics are readily available on the internet. We no longer need the books to be as "current" as we once did for the purpose of statistics on population or economics, for instance.

Suggestion--If the students' books seem out of date to them, an interesting assignment might be to have students update some of the material, using the internet and library.


Suggestion--