Sadly, I've been having trouble with uploading my videos. I'll keep trying but in order to give this blog some more substance let me tell you about the last couple of days. The past two days I've totally shifted in my sleeping schedule. I've gone to bed by midnight, and gotten up by 6am. Its been really awesome. I know why I haven't done it before, but I must admit, its better in a lot of ways from my past system. I've had a couple of hours each morning to study the bible and pray. Its been great... lots of insights. This morning I was taking a shower and I had an epiphany about my philosophy of teaching history... so I hope you enjoy:

Teaching history, as any other discipline, is both a subject and a method. The confusion of this truth is often the cause for the apathy many students show towards history.

As a subject history is often encompassed by the ‘Who’, ‘What’, ‘When’, and ‘Where’ questions. Who did what, when, and where did it occur? It seems to me that many teachers employ, or at least many students encounter this pedagogical approach to teaching history. The problem with this approach seems to be centered on the issue of interaction between student and subject.

Extremely few students will connect with the ‘Who’ subjects of history because it is certainly not themselves and its most likely not someone they know personally. It is difficult to overcome this introspective. Many pupils simply do not care about long dead individuals. Unless they happen to have a family connection, or a personal relational knowledge of the individual many students find it difficult to connect on biographical history alone. They desire more.

Few will connect with the ‘Where’ because the vast majority of students will live in areas of relatively little historical impact. In the grand scheme of history, American cities pale in comparison to the historical juggernaughts of London, Paris, or especially Rome. Geographical history is therefore confined to the few major events, and a compilation of minor historical events of a student’s immediate area.

Due to their age, many students have only interacted with around twenty years of history, and even that’s the history that we are just beginning to discover. Eventually history moves back in time beyond any personal connection to the particular time period. At these points history has become an abstract. It no longer has any connection points for students and becomes a ‘boring’ subject because of it.

The only topic which may yet grasp their attention is the ‘What’ of history. Events and occurrences are not limited by identity, location, or temporal placement. Students may be able to connect with any persecuted person of anytime from anywhere not due to the connection with that individual, time, or place, but due to the event taking place. The ‘What’ is the only interaction to which they can relate.

Sadly, many students experience only this side of history. Quizzes, essays, and tests are frequently based mainly or even solely on these criteria. A question may go as the following:

Fill in the blank

(Who) (What) (Where) (When)

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4^th, 1776.

It is uninteresting because it could just as easily be:

Max ran in the park yesterday.

These questions seem to be asked because they are easy to ask, easy to learn and study, easy to recall, and easy to relate… and above all easy to grade. In all ways these types of questions are the easiest historical questions with which to interact. Students gain little but percentage points and grades from these questions. Little knowledge is actually taught, merely trivia. Both this trivial knowledge and the percentage points will be worthless later in life.

However, the method and the interest in history both shine when different questions are posed. It is precisely the ‘What’, ‘How’, and ‘Why’ questions of history that make history interesting and relevant. I could ask, any student could study and regurgitate that Jefferson wrote in Philadelphia on the 4^th of July 1776, but without out know what he wrote, why he wrote it, and how he and his countrymen had reached that point it contains no deep meaning. Students will never find themselves historically being someone else in the same time and place, but they may often discover that they are in a similar historical event, and understanding why they are in the situation and how to handle are invaluable lessons.

Students connect with the “hows and whys” of historical events (whats). These questions are more challenging to ask, to study, to conceptualize, and to answer. In fact, many of the answer to how or why something occurred are subjective and vary. There is rarely a single right answer. Learning this lesson and how to interact with history in this manner is life changing. They are far more difficult and time consuming to interact with or grade, but the value of the lessons far exceeds the sacrifice of time or thought.

While walking beside a class of students, trying to develop the answers to ‘how’ questions and ‘why’ questions the door is opened to explore deeper philosophical ideas about life. Little in the way of life lessons can be taught by history through ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘where,’ or ‘when,’ but loads can be explored through ‘whys’ and ‘hows.’

My goal then is to be the type of teacher who will put in the extra work and thought to explore the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of history beside my classes. Certainly there will inevitably be those who always find historical investigation boring or useless, but hopefully this approach to teaching will limit that number.