Historical Concepts - What Happened Then.ppt

WHAT HAPPENED THEN
MATTERS NOW

CONCEPTS TO THINK BY
HISTORICAL
THINKING

The 6 Benchmarksof Historical Thinking
 To think historically, you need to be able to:
1. Establish historical significance.
2. Use primary source evidence.
3. Identify continuity and change.

4. Analyze cause and consequence.
5. Take historical perspectives.
6. Understand the ethical dimension of historical
interpretations.

Historical Thinking = Historical Literacy
 Taken together, these concepts tie “historical
thinking” to competencies in “historical literacy.”
 “Historical literacy” means gaining a deep
understanding of historical events through active
engagement with historical texts.

Historical Literacy
 Historically literate citizens can assess claims that
there was no Holocaust, that slavery wasn't so bad
for African-Americans, that Aboriginal rights have
a historical basis, and that the Russian experience
in Afghanistan serves as a warning to our previous
mission there.

Historical Literacy
 Such students/citizens have thoughtful ways to
tackle these debates.
 They can assess historical sources.
 They know that a historical film can look
"realistic" without being accurate.
 They understand the value of a footnote.

 In short, they can detect the differences between
the uses and abuses of history.
 “Historical thinking” only becomes possible in
relation to substantive content.

 These concepts are not abstract “skills.”
 Rather, they provide the structure that shapes the
practice of history and the understanding of
history.

Historical Literacy
 Historically literate students/citizens can assess
claims that there was no Holocaust, that slavery
wasn't so bad for African-Americans, that
Aboriginal rights have a historical basis, and that
the Russian experience in Afghanistan serves as a
warning to our previous mission there.

SO HOW DO WE DECIDE WHAT IS WORTH
REMEMBERING ABOUTTHE PAST?

1. Historical Significance
 We can’t remember, learn,
or cover everything that ever
happened.
 What is important
historically speaking?
 Who or what should be
remembered, researched,
taught, and learned?

 There is much too much history to remember all
of it.
 So we tend to highlight significant events.
 Significant events are those that resulted in great
change over long periods of time for large
numbers of people.

 Significance depends upon one’s perspective and
purpose.
 A historical person, event, or development can
acquire significance if we can link it to larger
trends and stories that reveal something
important for us in history and contemporary
life.

 For example, the story of an individual worker in
Winnipeg in 1918, however insignificant in the
post-World War II sense, may become significant
if it is recounted in a way that makes it a part of a
larger history of workers’ struggles, economic
development, or post-war adjustment and
discontent.

 Watch: Historical Significance Explanatory Video
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62wYq1RGBNg
 7:14 mins
 Source: The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2)

Guidepoststo Historical
Significance Review
 1. Events, people, or developments have historical
significance if they resulted in change. That is,
they had deep consequences, for many people,
over a long period of time.

Significance Review
 2. Events, people or developments have historical
significance if they are revealing. That is, they
shed light on enduring or emerging issues in
history or contemporary life.

Significance Review
 3. Historical significance is constructed. That is,
events, people, and developments meet the criteria
for historical significance only when they are
shown to occupy a meaningful place in a
narrative.

Significance Review
 4. Historical significance varies over time and
from group to group.

HOW DO WE KNOW WHATWE
KNOW ABOUTTHE PAST?

2. Evidence
 How do we know what we
know about the past?
 Asks us to consider:
 1. How reliable is the
evidence?
 2. What
other evidence exists?
 3. What other
interpretations are
possible?

2. Evidence
 Primary sources are the litter of history —letters,
documents, records, diaries, drawings, newspaper
accounts and other bits and pieces left behind by
those who have passed on — are treasures to us.

2. Primary Source Evidence
 A history textbook is generally used more like a
phone book: it is a place to look up information.
 Primary sources must be read differently – like a
clue in a murder.
 To use them well, we need to set them in their
historical contexts and make inferences from
them to help us understand more about what was
going on when they were created.

Guidepostto Evidence
 1. History is interpretation based on inferences
made from primary sources. Primary sources can
be accounts, but they can also be traces, relics, or
records.

 2. Asking good questions about a source can
turn it into evidence.

 3. Sourcing often begins before a source is read,
with questions about who created it and when it
was created. It involves inferring from the source
the author’s or creator’s purposes, values, and
worldview either conscious or unconscious.

 4. A source should be analyzed in relation to the
context of its historical setting: the conditions
and worldviews prevalent at the time in question.

 5. Inferences made from a source can never stand
alone. They should always be corroborated -
checked against other sources (primary and
secondary).

2. Evidence + Interpretation
 Watch: Evidence and Interpretation Explanatory
Video
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIzUXZb3xE4
 6:55 mins

HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND THE
COMPLEXITY OF THE PAST?

3. Continuityand Change
 How can we make sense of
the complex course of
history?
 Asks us to look for similarities
and differences in the lives
and conditions of people and
societies that came before us.

 Sometimes we misunderstand history as a list of
events.
 Once we start to understand history as a complex
mix of continuity and change, we will reach a
fundamentally different sense of the past.

3. Continuityand Change: The Steps
 We need to see historical events as interrelated =
continuous changing not isolated, discrete events.
 Identify turning points that help to locate the
change.
 Use progress and decline to evaluate change.
 Organize our understanding via chronology and
periodization.

 One of the keys to continuity and change is
looking for change where common sense
suggests that there has been none and looking for
continuities where we assumed that there was
change.

 Judgments of continuity and change can be made
on the basis of comparisons between some point
in the past and the present, or between two points
in the past, such as before and after Confederation
in Canada.
 We evaluate change over time using the ideas of
progress and decline.

3. Continuity + Change
 Watch: Continuity and Change Explanatory Video
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFHyQmk1khw
 6:19 mins

Guidepostto Continuity
and Change Review
 1. Continuity and change are interwoven; both
can exist together. Chronologies - the sequencing
of events - can be a good starting point.

and Change Review
 2. Change is a process, with varying paces and
patterns. Turning points are moments when the
process of change shifts in direction or pace.

and Change Review
 3. Progress and decline are broad evaluations of
change over time. Depending on the impacts of
change, progress for one people may be decline
for another.

and Change Review
 4. Periodization helps us organize our thinking
about continuity and change. It is a process of
interpretation, by which we decide which events
or developments constitute a period of history.

HOW DO WE EXPLAIN THE EFFECTS OF
THE DECISIONS AND ACTIONS TAKEN IN
THE PAST?

4. Causeand Consequence
 Shifts our focus to the
multiple causes and
consequences of
historical events.

 In examining both tragedies and accomplishments
in the past, we are usually interested in the
questions of how and why.
 These questions start the search for causes: what
were the actions, beliefs, and circumstances that
led to these consequences?

 In history we need to consider human agency.
 People, as individuals and as groups, play a part in
promoting, shaping, and resisting change.

 People have motivations and reasons for taking
action (or for sitting it out), but causes go beyond
these.
 For example, the Vancouver Anti-Chinese/Asian
riot of 1887 certainly involved the racial attitudes
and motivations of the white workers who
rampaged.

 Did the workers cause the riot? In some sense they
did.
 But the causes must be set in the larger context of
employers paying Chinese workers a fraction of the
regular wage rate and the desperate situation of
Chinese Canadian workers after the completion of
the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

4. Cause & Consequence: The Steps
 Know that historical actors/agents are people who
cause historical change.
 Understand that these historical agents cause
change in social, political, economical, historical
contexts that impose limits on change.
 Also, comprehend that actions often have
unintended consequences.

4. Cause & Consequence
 Watch: Cause and Consequence Explanatory Video
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yImH3L1Vhng
 6:21 mins

Guidepoststo Causeand Consequence
 1. Change is driven by multiple causes, and
results in multiple consequences. These create a
complex web of interrelated short-term and
long-term causes and consequences.

 2. The causes that lead to a particular historical
event vary in their influence, with some being
more important than others.

 3. Events result from the interplay of two types of
factors:
 (1) historical actors/agents, who are people
(individuals or groups) who take actions that
cause historical events, and
 (2) the social, political, economic, and cultural
conditions within which the actors operate.

Human Agency
 People cause historical change, but they do so in
contexts that impose limits on change.
 Limits come from the natural environment,
geography, historical legacies, as well as other
people who want other things.

Human Agency
 Human actors (agents) are thus in a perpetual
interplay with conditions, many of which are the
legacies of earlier human actions.

HOW CAN WE BETTER
UNDERSTAND PEOPLE IN THE PAST?

5. Historical Perspectives
 Asks us to not judge the past
by today’s standards so that
we can better understand
the different social, cultural,
intellectual, and even
emotional contexts that have
shaped people’s lives and
actions in the past.

 “The past is a foreign country, they do things
differently there.”
 ~ David Lowenthal, 1985
 In other words, the past is a different thus at times
difficult to understand.

5. Taking a Historical Perspectives
 For instance:
 What could it have been like to travel as a youth in
the Underground Railroad to Canada in the 19th
Century?
 What could it have been like to travel as a young
fille du roi to New France in the 17th century?

 Can we imagine the previous slides experiences,
from our vantage point in the consumer society of
the 21st Century?
 What are the limits to our imagination?

 Taking a historical perspective means
understanding the social, cultural,
intellectual, and emotional settings that
shaped people’s lives and actions in the past.
 Tough it is sometimes called “historical
empathy,” historical perspective is very different
from the common-sense notion of identification
with another person.

 Indeed, taking historical perspective demands
comprehension of the vast differences between
us in the present and those in the past.

5. Taking a Historical Perspectives:
The Steps
 Work to understand that the perspective of the
historical actors depends upon evidence for
inferences about how people felt and thought.
 It is important to avoid presentism = the
unwarranted imposition of present ideas on actors
in the past.

5. Taking a Historical Perspectives:
The Steps
 Remember that historical events and situations
involve people who may have diverse
perspectives on it = exploring this is a key to
understanding the event.
 Work at taking the perspective of a historical actor
does not mean identifying with that actor.

 Watch: Historical Perspective Explanatory Video
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XQbBFr7cO8
 5:53 mins

Guidepoststo
Historical Perspectives Review
 1. An ocean of difference can lie between current
worldviews (beliefs, values, and motivations) and
those of earlier periods of history.

Guidepoststo
 2. It is important to avoid presentism - the
imposition of present ideas on actors in the past.

Guidepoststo
 3. The perspectives of historical actors are best
understood by considering their historical
context.

Guidepoststo
 4. Taking historical perspectives of historical
actors means inferring how people felt and
thought in the past. It does not mean identifying
with those actors. Valid inferences are those based
on evidence.

Guidepoststo
 5. Different historical actors have diverse
perspectives on the events in which they are
involved. Exploring these is key to understanding
historical events.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE PASTTO
HELP US BETTER UNDERSTAND THE
PRESENT?

6. The Ethical Dimensionsof History
 Involves making ethical
conclusion about historical
actions and people, and
assigning ethical
responsibility to historical
figures or contemporary
individuals and groups for
past actions.

6. The Ethical Dimensions
 Are we obligated to remember the fallen soldiers of
World War I?
 Do we owe reparations to the Aboriginal victims of
residential schools, or to the descendents of those
who paid the Chinese Head Tax?
 In other words, what responsibilities do historical
crimes and sacrifices impose upon us today?

 These questions are one part of the ethical
dimension of history.
 Another part has to do with the ethical judgments
we make about historical actions.
 This creates a difficult paradox.

 Taking historical perspective demands that we
understand the differences between our ethical
universe and those of bygone societies.

 We do not want to impose our own anachronistic
standards on the past.
 At the same time, meaningful history does not
treat brutal slave-holders, enthusiastic Nazis, and
marauding conquistadors in a “neutral” manner.

6. The Ethical Dimensions: The Steps
 We should expect to learn something from the
past that helps us to face the ethical issues of
today.
 Remember that all meaning historical accounts
involve implicit or explicit ethical judgment.
 Work, while making ethical judgements of past
actions, to avoid the risk of imposing our own
standards or “right” and “wrong” on the past.

6. Ethical Dimensions
 Watch: Ethical Dimensions/Judgements
Explanatory Video
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wbw08jPRus
 6:33 mins

The Ethical Dimensions:
To Remember
 Remember that all meaning historical accounts
involve implicit or explicit ethical judgment.
 Work, while making ethical judgements of past
actions, to avoid the risk of imposing our own
standards or “right” and “wrong” on the past.

Ethical Dimension
Guidepost#1 Review
 1. Authors make implicit and explicit ethical
judgments in writing historical narratives.

Ethical Dimension
Guidepost#2 Review
 2. Reasoned ethical judgments of past actions are
made by taking into account the historical
context of the actors in question.

Ethical Dimension
Guidepost#3 Review
 3. When making ethical judgments, it is
important to be cautious about imposing
contemporary standards of right and wrong on
the past.

Ethical Dimension
Guidepost#4 Review
 4. A fair assessment of the ethical implications of
history can inform us of our responsibilities to
remember and respond to the contributions,
sacrifices, and injustices of the past.

Ethical Dimension
Guidepost#5 Review
 5. Our understanding of history can help us make
informed judgments about contemporary issues,
but only when we recognize the limitations of an
direct “lessons” from the past.

Review:
 To think historically, students need to be able to:
1. Establish historical significance.
2. Use primary source evidence.
3. Identify continuity and change.

Review:
 To think historically, you need to be able to:
4. Analyze cause and consequence.
5. Take historical perspectives.
6. Understand the ethical dimension of historical
interpretations.

TheWebsiteformore Info
 http://historicalthinking.ca/

Sources
 The Historical Thinking Project (2016)
http://historicalthinking.ca/
 Historical Thinking Summer Institute (July 2016)
http://canadashistory.ca/HTSI

Historical Concepts - What Happened Then.ppt

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Historical Concepts - What Happened Then.ppt

Similar to Historical Concepts - What Happened Then.ppt (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Historical Concepts - What Happened Then.ppt