Think historically? What's that?

You may have heard the term but been puzzled by it

We're all familiar with historical stories

we learn them from our textbooks

popular histories, movies, documentaries, and grandparents and neighbors

Historical thinking is the reading, analysis, and writing

that necessary to tell these stories

It's not only what we know about the past, it's how we know it

Because the past is hard to retrieve

We can't travel back in time to see what happened

at the Boston Massacre or at Wounded Knee,

to hear Sojourner Truth's words

or understand how Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta

mobilized the Farmworkers Movement

But thinking historically helps us get closer to that past to retrieve

and construct a more accurate picture of what happened and what it meant

This video focuses on five aspects of historical thinking

Many people think of history as a single account

but in fact, we must use multiple sources to get

as accurate a picture as possible of events in the past

Whether we use textbooks, original documents, photos, drawings, or film

teaching for historical thinking demands

that students work with multiple accounts

and learn to analyze and synthesize them

No single account written from one perspective

captures the complexity of the past

Primary sources are original documents and objects created at the time under study

and they are vital to reconstructing the past

Historical thinking includes learning how to read, question, contextualize,

and analyze these sources, as they can

tell different stories about the same event

So, when we study what came to be known as the Boston Massacre

we can read a report from the commanding British officer

that says that soldiers fired on the crowd of colonists without orders

We can then read a contrasting account from someone

in the crowd who remembers that officer giving orders to fire

But we can't just assume that one is lying and the other isn't

instead, we have to ask questions about what these two

eyewitnesses had to lose or gain with their accounts

What interests were at stake?

We consider how soon after the event

and for what audience each account was recorded

We look for points of agreement and

disagreement between the two contrasting accounts

To be useful in retrieving the past,

primary sources need to be questioned and read closely

Okay, you may be saying, "Wait a minute, this all

sounds good but what about my state standards?

And the fact that I'm expected to cover my textbook's 26 chapters?

How does that fit in?

Isn't this some pie in the sky way to teach history?"

Actually, teaching kids how history is known

may very well be in your state standards

at least 38 specify this learning outcome

For example, various state standards

say students should be using multiple sources

and learning to analyze those sources for

purpose and perspective, credibility, and validity

analysis akin to what we call sourcing

Sourcing is about identifying and asking

questions about the origin of the source

about the author's purposes and perspective

when the source was created and for whom; about its trustworthiness

Imagine your students are working with two accounts

related to the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott

The first, a textbook, says, "Rosa Parks was

arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man

African Americans heard this and decided to boycott the buses."

The second, a letter written by English professor Joan Robinson

in May 1954 to the mayor of Alabama states

"There has been talk from 25 or more local organizations of

planning a city-wide boycott of busses

[ E ]ven now plans are being made to ride less, or not at all, on our busses."

This letter was written more than a year

before the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

A student who notices this learns that

plans for a bus boycott preceded Rosa Parks' arrest

and can better understand the boycott and its causes

Alternatively, a student who ignores the date of

Robinson's letter easily misses its real significance

the familiar story that depicts the boycott as an impulsive movement

motivated solely by Parks's arrest is left unchallenged

Sourcing the letter gets us closer to the fuller story

Context is at the center of historical reasoning

Consider these words spoken by Abraham Lincoln in 1858

"I have no purpose to introduce political and

social equality between the white and black races.

I...am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position."

Historians resist initial judgments to brand these words as bigoted

and instead realize that they must ask questions

Such as, who was Lincoln talking to and for what purpose?

What were the perspectives on race at the time?

What political tensions was Lincoln navigating?

They realize to get as accurate a picture as possible of the man

his times, and the event at which he spoke

they have to contextualize these words

and this requires making connections

Lincoln did not live in a vacuum

his speeches and actions are deeply intertwined

with what was going on in his own world

Context includes many different factors, from the ideologies of the day

to the words that came before those under investigation.

But in the big picture, historical context is about locating events

and sources in time and space and asking questions to do so

Taking a page from the math curriculum,

we can say that the coordinates of history are space and time

These sources are not free-floating items that speak for themselves

their historical context matters

When we write histories we tell stories and answer questions

To be called history, these stories must be supported by evidence

Sources, like the Lincoln speech and the Joan Robinson letter

provide evidence for claims made about the past.

History isn fiction

We can't change the story to create a more intriguing or satisfying plot

Truth claims in history need to be supported by evidence

That is how we distinguish plausible claims from balderdash

and good history from pure fiction

These five elements of historical thinking are all integral

to understanding how we know what we know about the past

But of course, there are more elements, concepts like causation

significance, change over time, and reading strategies like corroboration

Historical thinking is complex and it is vital

to helping students become better readers, thinkers, and citizens

It's not separate from the content we want students to learn

instead, it is the vehicle that will help them master it

Explore the Clearinghouse to find teaching resources that

will help you bring historical thinking into your classroom

It's a gift your students will use for the rest of their lives