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"An Unexpected Insight","Mr. Harvey was the most outstanding, demanding and humane teacher I studied with during my four years of high school. His course in world history first opened my eyes to the excitement of historical studies, to discussing the interpretation and meaning of historical developments, to independent and critical thinking, and to the challenge of writing [my historical essays] well. He would write copious comments on my papers, counseling me, e.g., to choose words wisely, especially verbs — remember what Voltaire said, he reminded us: “the verb is the soul of the sentence.” Receiving this recognition from him was so unexpected and so wonderful; the way I felt you might have thought I had won a Nobel Prize. And as part of this gift, he offered his final unexpected insight, with that quote from John Dos Passos. He was sharing another idea, giving me yet another view — a long and capacious view — of how and why the study of history is so valuable and important.","
At the end of my sophomore year in high school, during the awards ceremony in June, I received my varsity letter for playing football. And then my history teacher, Mr. Harvey, got up and gave three academic awards. To my complete surprise, I received one of those prizes. It was a book of Plutarch’s Lives, which was inscribed to me in part as follows: “This book ... represents his persistent toil toward clear, precise and meaningful expression in history at the Paris American High School.”
In addition, Mr. Harvey had also written the following quotation on the inside cover of the book, for me to ponder: “In times of danger and change when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present.” –John Dos Passos
Mr. Harvey was the most outstanding, demanding and humane teacher I studied with during my four years of high school. His course in world history first opened my eyes to the excitement of historical studies, to discussing the interpretation and meaning of historical developments, to independent and critical thinking, and to the challenge of writing [my historical essays] well. He would write copious comments on my papers, counseling me, e.g., to choose words wisely, especially verbs — remember what Voltaire said, he reminded us: “the verb is the soul of the sentence.” Receiving this recognition from him was so unexpected and so wonderful; the way I felt you might have thought I had won a Nobel Prize. And as part of this gift, he offered his final unexpected insight, with that quote from John Dos Passos. He was sharing another idea, giving me yet another view — a long and capacious view — of how and why the study of history is so valuable and important.
",,"Plutarch's Lives",,"June 1, 1956","Jaroslav Folda, N. Ferebee Taylor Professor emeritus, UNC",,,,,,unexpected-insight,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Books & Reading,Dos Passos, John,History Education,Paris American High School,Paris, France,Plutarch,Plutarch's Lives,Professors,Teachers & Teaching,World History",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/8/58/plutarchs-lives-300.jpg,Text,"National Humanities Center Fellows",1,0
"A few lines of poetry might be all we need...","My students were so engaged in this lesson, and I am sure some of these words and images continue to affect them today. I certainly hope my humanities moment enriched their lives and changed the way they thought about our world then and now.
","I remember seeing the images on the television, in newspapers, and in magazines. It was such an epic event. The Berlin Wall was coming down, something I never imagined would happen. As a child in the 50s and 60s, I remember bomb drills during elementary school.
Several of my friends had fallout shelters in their homes. I used to be afraid of bombs, of communists, of Khrushchev. I tried to understand how a wall could divide the city of Berlin into two very different places.
And then, in 1989, the unbelievable happened. I had just accepted an interim job teaching Senior English at Mooresville High School, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with such a momentous moment in history. Just a few lines from Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown’s Body made everything crystal clear and powerful.
Sometimes there comes a crack in Time itself.
Sometimes the earth is torn by something blind.
Sometimes an image that has stood so long
It seems implanted as the polar star
Is moved against an unfathomed force
That suddenly will not have it any more.
Those six lines provided so much focus for our classroom discussion and reflection... and awe.
My students were so engaged in this lesson, and I am sure some of these words and images continue to affect them today. I certainly hope my humanities moment enriched their lives and changed the way they thought about our world then and now.
","Stephen Vincent Benet","Stephen Vincent Benet’s lines from John Brown’s Body",,"November, 1989","Nancy Gardner, educational consultant and NBCT teacher",,,,,,a-few-lines-of-poetry,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Benet, Stephen Vincent,Berlin Wall, 1969-1989,John Brown's Body,Mooresville, North Carolina,Poetry,Teachers & Teaching,World History",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/7/92/berlin-wall.png,Text,#Humanitiesinclass,1,0
"It was never about the slingshot",,"I was selected for a two week institute entitled, Contested Territory, in which we took a deep dive into the multiple understandings and misunderstanding surrounding the Vietnam War (or as the Vietnamese refer to it: The American War). I had a basic understanding of this war in that it was a product of the Cold War. I was taught that the Vietnam War was an avoidable mistake and that it should be a precautionary tale of how not to make that mistake again.
In a lecture given by Pierre Asselin, Professor of History at San Diego State University, I was struck by how my understanding of the Vietnam War, in which the superpowers of the cold war had used Ho Chi Minh and the landscape of Vietnam in a proxy war, was grossly oversimplifying.
In fact, Asselin argued that it was Ho Chi Minh who used Russia, the US and even China to accomplish his real goals: to expel the French, to become an independent nation, to increase civil rights in Vietnam and to produce a strong national, working class led government.
It is Ho Chi Minh who allows the US to train his Viet Minh army to fight the Japanese and then go on to use the same training to fight the French and eventually align with China to fight the US. The communist/nationalist party of Vietnam continually plays both sides of the cold war tensions between the Soviet Union and the US to get aid from both sides and to establish independence. Ho Chi Minh went so far as to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence on the US Declaration of Independence at the same time it was meeting with the USSR to align with the world communist struggle and model his government on its principles.
Once Truman declares a policy of containment in regards to communism the Vietnam War is inevitable. No President could survive the political fall out of allowing communism to spread in South East Asia or anywhere else. As a result, small countries become extremely important on the world stage as the US and the USSR engage in a game of RISK. But that game makes the super powers vulnerable. Small countries can now play the US and the USSR against each other to impose power over them. It becomes clear to Ho Chi Minh and others that Vietnam can now threaten to adopt communism unless they gain US support which they can then use to negotiate favor from the USSR. David and Goliath was never about the slingshot; it’s about David manipulating the giant to let down its guard just enough so that he can deliver the kill shot. The United States lost the Vietnam War when it based its foreign policy on ideology. Ho Chi Minh was not a puppet of the cold war, he was an architect.
""You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.""
-Ho Chi Minh
Excerpt from TheDeclaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
""For the people of Vietnam, who were just beginning to recover from five years of ruthless economic exploitation by the Japanese, the end of World War II promised to bring eighty years of French control to a close. As the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi), better known as the Viet Minh, Vietnamese nationalists had fought against the Japanese invaders as well as the defeated French colonial authorities. With the support of rich and poor peasants, workers, businessmen, landlords, students, and intellectuals, the Viet Minh (led by Ho Chi Minh) had expanded throughout northern Vietnam where it established new local governments, redistributed some lands, and opened granaries to alleviate the famine. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh square. The first lines of his speech repeated verbatim the famous second paragraph of America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence.
All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.""
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.""
",,,,"July 24, 2018","Terry Ashkinos, 8th grade Humanities teacher, CA",,,,,,never-about-the-slingshot,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,NHC,"Colonialism,Teachers & Teaching,Vietnam War (1961-1975),World History",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/201/Ho_Chi_Minh-Appeal-1930.pdf,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0
"There is No Singular Experience",,"The study of contested territory for me has alway been a story of land and/or ideological dispute between colonial powers, regional peoples, religious factions, or other distinctions that come into play as humans acquire land and promulgate cultural traits and ideologies.
Contested territory is more than a story of “us versus them” or “them vs. them.” In fact, “them” is not a singular entity.
During a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, we had the pleasure of hearing from UNC professor Gang Yue, Chair of the Department of Asian Studies. He opened a lecture on Communism Today by sharing the experience of his parents, both doctors, during mid-twentieth century China. In 1950, Chairman Mao announced that there would be a, “complete unification of Chinese medicine” (qtd. In Levinovitz’s article, Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine). Despite being educated in cutting edge medicine in one of China’s top hospitals, both Professor Yue’s parents were reeducated in traditional medicine which westerners have come to identify as synonymous with China. Yue’s mother and father were sent to rural, outlying provinces for several weeks to treat the countries remote population.
Through his story, it became clear that his parents had vastly different opinions of their experience both with their training in traditional Chinese medicines and practicing in the rural provinces of China. While his father looked down at his reeducation experience, Yue’s mother found many practical purposes of traditional practices which she incorporated in her field of gynecology. In addition, she remembered her practice in rural China as the most rewarding service in her career, providing medical care to those in need rather than with the elites in urban China.
Upon hearing this story, my romanticized view of a China, steeped in tradition, that continued to remain a practicing culture of traditional medicine, was shattered.. More disturbingly, I realized that I had bought into the cultural myth and view of the “mysterious Orient,” ignoring my own first lesson to students to not “mythisize” or “otherize” people. More importantly,Yue’s personal narrative opened my eyes to the complicated task of curating stories to try and define a singular experience of contested territory. People have differing memories despite being from the same side of the same coin, even those individuals who are a part of the same family. As with any narrative, there is no singular experience of a contested territory.
",,,,"July 23rd, 2018","Lesley Jane Mace, 40, Social Studies Teacher",,,,,,there-is-no-singular-experience,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Humanities Center","China,Communism,Medicine,Teachers & Teaching,World History,Zedong, Mao",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/220/Traditional_Chinese_Medicine.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0
"Representing Southeast Asia",,"There’s a game I like to play in class called “Look At.” We practice our close reading skills by gazing at a picture for 3 minutes and then writing down everything we see (or don’t see) about that image by starting each sentence with: “Look at…” When I first looked at Vietnamese American artist Dinh Q. Lê’s woven photo-collage, “Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness,” at the Ackland Art Museum (UNC Chapel Hill), I was struck first by my not knowing: what it was, how it was made, what it represented. On-screen, the image resembles 80’s over-pixelated computer graphics, but in person, it’s a traditional prayer mat woven from strips of two separate photographic images. Look at how colonized cultures are represented. These two images, official photographic records of the Khmer Rouge’s S21 prisoners, who are about to be executed, and a bas-relief of a Vishnu incarnation from the ancient Khmer temple of Angkor Wat, offer polarizing visions of how Cambodia is represented in an American imaginary: the Killing Fields or one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The two images echo questions that we’ve discussed in our National Humanities Center seminar: how are nations memorialized? What are the human geographies represented and reproduced? How are these competing representations contested? Look at Vishnu’s vanished face. When I visited Angkor Wat, I was overwhelmed by the spiritual power standing alongside me, at this nexus of religious histories, the fall of an empire, the way this temple’s physical weight changed the geographical landscape. Look at these missing eyes. The artist has razored out eyes from the S21 prisoners’ faces. They look like my parents’ old document pictures that I once found buried in a dresser drawer. When I visited the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh, I literally felt physical distress, panic, anxiety. How can the earth retain emotion and memory? Can trauma leave a residue in the earth itself? Look at the dark spaces woven together. Human meets divine. Official record meets folk tradition. Black and white meets color. Modern technology meets ancient carvings. Vishnu’s arms are outstretched: in pain? In embrace? I leave the NEH Summer Institute on Contested Territory with many more questions than answers, but such compelling questions. What does territory in Southeast Asia mean and who controls its expression? How do humans affect geography? How can we read this image through a diverse set of disciplinary expectations? How do we survive a war? And why is this important? This is why the humanities matter.","Dinh Q. Lê’","""Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness"" by Dinh Q. Lê’",,"July 25, 2018","Adrian Khactu, High School English Teacher",,,,,,representing-southeast-asia,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Andy Mink","Ackland Art Museum,Cambodia,Chapel Hill, North Carolina,Geography,Khmer Rouge,Museums,Photography,Teachers & Teaching,War,World History",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/221/Dinh_Q_Le.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0
"The Inca Trail",,"Sure, I had studied the Incas in school. I knew about Machu Picchu or I thought that I did. ""You cannot judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes"" from To Kill a Mocking Bird describes my moment.
The trail went through the Andes, we were able to interact with local villagers. We were able to see how they lived, in the altitude where food was scare. It was eye opening. We camped along the trail, seeing more stars than I could have imagined. I was able to the see the Southern Cross in the sky, bringing up images of people using the stars as navigation points. The engineering of the trail and Machu Picchu spoke to the Incas' advanced society. That being said, the trail was tougher than anticipated. But worth the trip due to your view of Machu Picchu as you come up to it. It is a spiritual place and when I first saw it I could not move, I just stared at it.
Walking throughout the area brought to life for me all that I had studied. We were able to see the terrace farming concept, the temples, all at this altitude, making me wonder about how this was accomplished. The manpower needed. . . This has impacted how I teach the Incas to students. It enables me to tell stories that they might not be able to read about in the class, showing pictures from Machu Picchu. For me when I teach this to students it brings back the memories.",,"Hiking the Inca Trail, visiting Machu Piccu",,"March, 2002","Wendell Johnson, 52, Social Studies Teacher",,,,,,the-inca-trail,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Through professional development","Agriculture,Cross-Cultural Relations,Inca Civilization,Inca Trail,Lee, Harper,Machu Picchu,Peru,Teachers & Teaching,To Kill a Mockingbird,UNESCO World Heritage Site,World History",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/337/postcard.jpg,Text,,1,0
"Turning Historical Events into Modern Reflective Inquiries ",,"For years, every time we covered World War II and the Holocaust in school it was just a fact memorization activity. ""Hitler was bad and did bad things."" When I was afforded the opportunity to travel to Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic in college, I got to look at the Holocaust in a new light. It was not just a fact dump but instead a philosophical inquiry.
We used the Holocaust and the work of the Third Reich as a jumping off point to debate and consider questions like: How are values and ethics established in individuals, groups and organizations? What are the responsibilities of leaders to establish ethical climates in their organizations and communities? What are the responsibilities of followers and bystanders? How does this all relate to the world today?
This experience put the power into my hands to guide my educational experience and allowed me to truly reflect on not just events that happened in history but how and why they happen. Now as a World History teacher who covers both World Wars I and II, I attempt to provide this same energy and power to my students by bringing historical dilemmas and events into modern terms that promote inquiry and self reflection.",,,,"Summer after my Sophomore Year of College","Josh Britton, 23, High School History Teacher",,,,,,turning-historical-events-into-modern-inquiries,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Through Professional Development","Critical Thinking,Genocide Prevention,Teachers & Teaching,World History,World War I (1914-1918),World War II (1939-1945)",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/339/HM_Auschwitz.jpg,Text,,1,0
"Facing History is Not a Walk in the Park",,"I recently returned from a two week mini ""Grand Tour"" of Europe. The last stop on our itinerary was the Bavarian capital, Munich. As a World History teacher, I had to sign up for the Third Reich walking tour of the city. Along the two hour walk, we saw many significant sites like the Nazi Headquarters, Dodger’s Alley, and Hofbrauhaus. However, the most remarkable moment for me was actually the very end of the tour.
As we stood in Marienplatz, the last stop on our journey, our guide asked if we had any questions. The ten of us looked around at each other and remained silent, except for one man who asked, “How is Nazi history taught in German schools?” Our tour guide explained that when he was in high school in the 1980s, he learned about Nazi history for about two weeks. After a tumultuous year, teaching online during the pandemic, I only had about two weeks to teach most units which spanned hundreds of years, rather than a few decades. He added that his children who are currently in school spend about two months learning about the Nazi period. Additionally, every student in Bavaria is required to visit Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp in Germany.
I was in awe listening to how the German education system teaches the darkest period in the country’s history. I thought about how I learned about slavery in the US when I was a student. I grew up in Northern Virginia, an area rich in Civil War sites and mansions owned by slaveholders. However, our field trip to Mount Vernon in 1st grade and trip to a Civil War era mansion in 4th grade completely ignored the lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the grounds. Then I considered how controversial teaching accurate history in the US has become, especially the last few years. I reflected on how I taught. I try to provide students with a more detailed understanding of often oversimplified topics like slavery, colonialism, and imperialism but was I doing enough? What perspectives was I missing?
Germany’s commitment to providing a thorough and accurate understanding of one the most inhumane and difficult topics to teach motivated me to improve upon my instruction for the upcoming school year. I hope to reframe many units to highlight the experience of the oppressed and those who tried to enact change, rather than focusing on the elite who fought to maintain control.
",,"Third Reich Tour in Munich",,"July 2021","Natalie Glees, 25, teacher",,,,,,facing-history-not-walk-park,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Europe,History Education,Holocaust,Teachers & Teaching,World History",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/516/kz-2063348_640.jpg,Text,Educators,1,0
"World History Puzzles",,"I have vague recollections of eating my packed lunch on the stone steps of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art after completing a scavenger hunt for facts about particular paintings deemed important by my elementary school teacher.
I more distinctly remember returning to that art museum with my mom a few years later to view the Monet’s Water Lilies: An Artist’s Obsession exhibition. I had already developed a partiality for impressionism, and Monet specifically, probably from that early field trip, and we discussed the similarities and subtle differences in each iteration of the painting. Alongside the paintings were photographs of the gardens from Monet’s time as well as modern images that immediately put this French commune on our travel bucket list.
My mom and I haven’t made it to Giverny yet, but this summer we traveled to see the Monet and Boston: Legacy Illuminated exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts. This collection featured Monet’s paintings alongside works from his predecessor Millet and contemporary Rodin, but it was the comparison to the Japanese artist Hokusai that I found most surprising - until I learned that the forced reopening of Japan to foreign trade in the nineteenth century exposed Western Europeans to Japanese style and culture which inspired many artists of the time, including Monet.
This art exhibition displayed the interconnectedness of political and economic power plays, expanding global trade networks, and cultural diffusion. And it has been by teaching my students how to analyze the content and context of paintings, maps, and other images that they have been able to put together the pieces that make up the puzzle that is world history. But I was doing to my students what my elementary school teacher did to me twenty years earlier.
I selected all of the visual sources used in my classroom and explained how students should analyze them in order to understand the past - I was making them all complete my version of the world history puzzle. But then I came across the Black Histories, Black Futures exhibition curated by local high school students who developed a theme to explore, selected the works of art to display, and wrote the labels to provide context for three galleries throughout the MFA. These students actively researched and interpreted historical information to reach their own understandings about a past that was important to them. Next year, I look forward to seeing how my students put the pieces of world history together to create their own unique puzzles … and maybe even to curate their own museum galleries!","Museum of Fine Arts, Boston","Black Histories, Black Futures",,"June 18, 2021","Sarah Bartosiak, High School Social Studies Teacher",,,,,,world-history-puzzles,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"High School Social Studies Curriculum Specialist","Art Exhibitions,Art Museums,Learning,Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,Teachers & Teaching,World History",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/523/Claude_Monet-Madame_Monet_en_costume_japonais.jpg,Text,Educators,1,0