The Attitude of High School Pupils Toward History

Music has been a source of inspiration, of protest, of wisdom, and of emotion for millennia. In the United States, music became woven into the fabric of the culture well before it became a nation and it remains so today. Songs have expressed a range of emotions and informed listeners of historical, social, and political issues at every level of sophistication. Yet our passion for music, coupled with its significance as an artifact of history, has not found its way into classrooms in any prominent way. This article explores four models of using music in the history classroom, each of which ventures to encourage history teachers to consider music, its analysis, and even its creation as integral to history curricula. Each model uses various instructional strategies grounded in tenets of historical thinking and range from a teacher-centered Close Reading Model to inquiry and discovery-based approaches, concluding with a student-centered model of Creative Development.     

Failure in the Film Adaptation of White Deer Plain

Throughout the movie history, literature adapted to movies will be an important part of the movie in the past, at present and in the future. The standard of the film adaptation is gradually updated with the development of the film history. This article points out the disadvantages of the movie White Deer Plain according to Chen Zhongshi's novel, and further illustrates the relationship between faithfulness and creativity in the process of adapting.     

Combating Racial Inequity Through Local Historical Analysis: A Community-Informed Social Studies Unit

One way for teachers to use engaging and relevant social studies curriculum is by delving into local history to help students understand the influence that community activists have had on national policies and events. In this article, we provide teachers an approach to incorporate topics of racial inequity in their classrooms by showcasing a dynamic social studies unit that reveals the role of local history and community activists during the national Civil Rights Movement. As an example within the unit, we present a local, historical narrative that describes the activism of three local Black teachers in Palm Beach County, Florida, whose efforts in the 1940s significantly impacted the foundations of what was to become the Civil Rights Movement. We then present a multicultural social studies unit developed from this local history and guidelines for teachers to enact their own locally informed social studies unit. This content will help teachers expose students to the rich history of their community’s past by sharing ways that teachers can incorporate culturally relevant instruction of racially charged topics into the classroom.     

The Conclusions and Recommendations of the Commission on the Investigation of the Social Studies in the Schools

ABSTRACT

How can teachers effectively use documentary film to teach history, and toward what goals? This article addresses these important questions by: (1) exploring what we know about secondary teachers' practices with documentary film and secondary students' beliefs about documentary film as a source of knowledge about the past, (2) proposing a rationale for the use of documentary film that supports the goals of history education, and (3) discussing examples of documentaries that can be shown to further the rationale presented. Although there are numerous suitable purposes and methods for using documentary film, we argue that two of the most powerful and appropriate are as a way to explore multiple perspectives and as a way to teach about controversial issues.     

Positioning Students as Actors and Authors: A Chronotopic Analysis of Collaborative Learning Activities

Bakhtin's (1981) concept of chronotope provides a way of viewing student participation in the classroom as a dynamic process constituted through the interaction of past experience, ongoing involvement, and yet-to-be-accomplished goals. Although the actual design and use of classroom space may be important in facilitating a participatory pedagogy, chronotopic analysis directs attention to the grounding of interaction in dynamic and shifting time-space contexts that are emergent within the students' and teacher's discursive practices. In our analyses of classroom events and conversations, we focus on the agency of the students in actively shaping the space-time contexts of the classroom, considering how particular groundings for interaction are created as they draw on past, present, and future temporal relations to explain and justify their ideas to one another. Our analyses provide insights into the contested nature of the time-space relationships in the classroom, the hybridization of time-space contexts, and the ways students enter into past, present, and future time-space contexts during collaborative work in the classroom.     

Fantasy,Reality and Response

While some educators assert that classroom simulations assist students in learning history, others posit that simulations can trivialize the past for students. In this article the authors argue there are many myths about simulations and that simulations are a defensible teaching activity if teachers enact them to encourage students’ interest in historical topics and challenge them to think critically and develop empathy for people who lived in the past. The authors draw on their research in two middle level teachers’ classes and the research of others to explore six myths about simulations. They also offer recommendations for teachers interested in creating educative simulations.     

Is a picture worth a thousand words? Using films and television shows to teach public relations

While a number of studies have looked at the image of public relations practitioners as portrayed in films and other media, few if any of those studies have focused primarily on the pedagogical perspective of using films. Therefore, a benchmark international survey of public relations educators was undertaken to answer questions about how (or whether) to use films as a teaching tool. Among other things, the findings of the study shed light on how often PR instructors use films in the classroom; the value that films provide; why some professors decline to use them; which specific films and television shows are being used; and guidelines for utilizing movies and television programs as an effective pedagogical technique.     

The Significance of the Wealth of Nations for Economic Education

Students' understanding of history may be shaped less by their social studies teachers than by the powerfully ubiquitous, historically themed media images they passively consume outside of school. In this article, the author describes two strategies conducted during a classroom-based action research study designed to explore how historically themed film can be used to scaffold activities that encourage middle school students to conduct inquiries of the past and critically evaluate feature films and documentaries. Data collected from student surveys, focus group discussions, assignments, and classroom observations suggested that students benefit from well-structured activities that encourage them to compare historical accounts with cinematic portrayals of the past. In particular, the Know-Wonder-Learn and anticipation guide strategies can encourage critical critical viewing and thinking about how film accounts are created.     

How a Catastrophe Found the Past Hurricane Floyd and the Rise of Historical Consciousness in Princeville,North Carolina

History has no voice. It requires those who care enough about the past to put it into words. But to narrate the past, we must be conscious of it. This paper is an inquiry into how a small town in North Carolina found its unique history in the wake of a catastrophic hurricane. In 1885, Princeville, North Carolina became the oldest town in America charted by free Blacks. In spite of its historical significance, over time the town's storied past was silenced. By the latter half of the 20th century, the unique place of Princeville in African-American history, indeed in United States history, was known to only a few elderly people; and they did not talk about it. The reasons a muted past begins to matter are themselves rooted in history. In 1999 Princeville was flooded by the deluge that was Hurricane Floyd. In the midst of mayhem this wordless past found a voice. In this paper we explore how a massive storm created space for the emergence of an historical consciousness among the town's residents. We also look at how the people of Princeville are leveraging their new found past to secure a safer, more predictable future.     

CINEMAGOING AS A CONDITIONAL PART OF EVERYDAY LIFE

This paper is part of the recent shift within the ‘New Cinema History’ from the attention for the film text to a broader consideration of the social and cultural history of cinema. In the last years, research did not only concentrate on the production and meanings of the pictures, but it also saw an increased interest in the distribution, exploitation and consumption of film. Interest for film as a consumable good has come from various disciples such as Cultural Studies, sociology, anthropology, political economy, geography and oral history. This study is based on oral accounts. Research on memories of going to the movies has contributed significantly to defining the spatial and social conditions of the cinematic experience. Yet this illuminating bottom-up approach of lived cinema cultures is mostly limited to the Anglo-Saxon experience of American films in English spoken film markets. As part of a larger research project on cinema culture in Flanders, 62 inhabitants of Ghent, Belgium, were interviewed concerning their moviegoing habits from the 1930s to the late 1970s. The oral history project aimed to analyze the significance of cinemagoing in a local community defined by class, language and a ‘pillarized’ society. The main research question in this paper is how particular was going to the movies in a local film market not overwhelmingly defined by American distributors or Hollywood movies and what were the sociocultural mechanisms behind moviegoing. In doing so we look at the entwinement of the experienced everyday life with the memories of choosing a movie theatre, remembering a movie and recollections of choosing cinema as leisure. Memory reclamation of local moviegoing as non-textual empirical research can define a parallel media history of cinema culture in Ghent and supplement the international research on cinemagoing experiences.     

Geometry,Logic and Social Studies

This article presents an approach that teachers can use to strengthen students’ ability to make sense of the past at museums. Specifically, we propose a photography exercise to help students to learn from museums and to view museums critically, weighing both the objective realities and subjective interpretations offered by museums. To get the most from a lifetime of museum-going and history learning, students should learn to view museums as reflecting the kinds of perspectives, decision-making, and challenges that accompany any effort to make sense of the past.     

Communicating Coffee Culture through the Big Screen: Starbucks in American Movies

Abstract

This paper examines Starbucks product placement in American movies. The portrait of Starbucks images in movies not only serves a promotional purpose, but also as a way of communicating coffee culture through the big screen. Content analysis and semiotic approaches are employed to examine the coffee culture that is communicated through American movies. Seven American movies from 1998 to 2008 which include Starbucks product placement are included in the content analysis while semiotic theories are applied to the 1998 movie You've Got Mail. The findings suggest that, through the movies, Starbucks attempts to establish the image of an upscale cosmopolitan coffee chain and a coffee culture that represents a vigorous American middle-class lifestyle.     

The United States Court of Claims

Teaching with film is viewed as a pedagogical best practice, especially when teaching historical or social studies content. Many of the most popular films used to teach history topics leave women's voices out of the narrative. Women's history is generally left out of traditionally male-dominated history curriculum; when it is included, it is usually in the margins or in sidebars. This article promotes the use of historical films that have a female presence. How women are portrayed in film and how to choose films that meet the criteria of the Bechdel Test for women in film are also examined.     

Sociology in Hollywood Films

Close examination of 32 Hollywood films released between 1915 and 2006 shows that sociology is often portrayed as a discipline that focuses on the useless, the trivial, and the obscure. Undergraduate students of sociology are sometimes presented as academically untalented and weakly motivated, but at other times as thoughtful and capable of good work. Graduate students are depicted as flawed researchers who are more interested in romance than the completion of their degrees. The movies acknowledge the expertise of sociologists but also suggest they sometimes reach incorrect conclusions, snoop into behavior that should remain private, and fail to maintain appropriate distance from their subjects. Sociologists occasionally appear in brief classroom scenes that contain little of substance; they are as likely to be depicted as advisers or administrators as they are to be depicted as teachers. The sources of cinematic portrayals of sociology and their influence on popular attitudes require further research.     

Scholastic Pauperism

If textbooks are supposed to be an honest and impartial portrayal of historical events, they should remain the same over time. However, when examining one event across different editions of the same textbook, it becomes apparent that this is not the case. This study seeks to examine how the beginnings of the Cold War may have influenced how the Holocaust was discussed during the 1940s and 1950s. Results indicate that as Germany transformed from an enemy to be defeated into an ally needed to stop the advance of Communism, discussion of the Holocaust became more muted. While the beginnings of the Cold War may not be the only factor in this phenomenon, the results of this study indicate a methodological process in which textbooks could be used to create critical and historical thinking in today's classroom.     

Buildings as Artifacts: What Are Buildings in World History Telling Us?

Learning about people from long ago and far away poses a challenge for students because such people seem so distant and different. The lack of easily comprehensible text-based primary sources compounds this problem. Using a built environment as a primary source makes people from the distant past more accessible, concrete and exciting. Broadly speaking, a built environment entails all the changes that people have made to a landscape, such as buildings, roads, ways of conveying power and water, and even adaptations of the physical environment such as gardens and parks. Students' exploration of a built environment fosters historical inquiry and visual literacy, provides evidence for constructing a historical narrative, and offers insight into a people, place and time as they investigate not simply the structure, but the perspectives of those associated with it and the cultural and historical context in which it is situated. In this article we draw on our experience with 6th and 9th grade students as we present a guide on how to integrate the built environment as a source of artifacts into world history.     

Apps-olutely Perfect! Apps to Support Common Core in the History/Social Studies Classroom

The inclusion of technology in the classroom is an increasingly important feature of effective instruction. The implementation of Common Core Standards in many states also requires teachers to consider new pedagogical strategies to support meaningful learning. This article explores the intersection between technology demands and curricular change by examining apps that can be used to support Common Core State Standards instruction in history/social studies. Specifically, the authors highlight several apps that they presented at a professional development workshop for six to twelve history/social studies teachers and discuss the teachers' feedback regarding the strengths and limitations of apps to support their instruction. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations for history/social studies teachers using apps in the classroom are provided.     

Utilization of Family Photos and Movies in Family Therapy

This article discusses a technique the authors have designated Family Photo Reconnaisance. They describe the rationale for and process of utilizatizing family photographs and movies in family therapy sessions to evoke past events and memories and to uncover feelings about these occurrences and the people involved in them. Through their utilization, how one has changed over time is vividly seen. Who is missing from the constellation and when they "dropped out of the family orbit becomes obvious as do distorted memories. Family members reexperiencing the past together around their photographs come to better appreciate one another's current feelings and behavior and often are enabled to gain mastery over unresolved conflicts.     

Caste in contemporary Bollywood movies: An analysis of the portrayal of characters

Caste, an integral part of the Indian social system, has extensively influenced all walks of life. The media is not an exception for the persuasion of caste. The depiction of caste as a social reality is central to Indian cinema since its early years. However, there is a lack of studies examining the depiction of the caste system in mainstream Bollywood movies. In the present study, we have critically analyzed mainstream commercial Bollywood movies to understand: (i) How it depicts the caste system? (ii) What are the explicit or implicit indicators of castes in mainstream movies? (iii) How they reinforce or validate existing caste stereotypes? Using certain inclusion and exclusion criteria, 22 highest-grossing movies of the period 2014–2017 were selected. Analyses of the selected movies suggested that the majority of the lead characters carry surnames representing dominant castes, and the portrayal of characters was made in accordance with the traditional caste-based occupations. Further, the characterization is reinstating and upholding the dominant caste values. The narratives of the Dalits and backward castes are neglected in mainstream cinema. The subalternity appended with them has intentionally hidden, and these castes are treated unworthy to the cinematic portrayal.