Unrolling the Map in American History

Cinematic feature films are a big part of youth popular culture. When blockbuster movies are about historical topics, it is reasonable for teachers to be drawn to using them in the classroom to motivate students interest. This article overviews research on film in the history classroom and describes three learning functions that history movies can have fact and ficion; constructing the past and the people in it; and reacting to the past.     

Proper Perspective in American History

This article describes the instructional methods of four high school government teachers during their coverage of the 2008 presidential election. By analyzing the ways in which these teachers attempted to generate interest in the election and further their students’ conceptualization of politics, the author seeks to better understand political instruction at the secondary level. Overall, the author observed that the teachers were successful in capturing student interest in both politics and the election; however, the teachers often missed opportunities to foster this interest into a nuanced understanding of politics.     

Teaching History That Functions for Daily Living

As the development of active, democratic citizens has become, arguably, the primary purpose of social studies education, the model of instruction in citizenship education varies significantly. Although current models of citizenship education typically foster a sense of societal conformity and law-obeyance to the exclusion of social change, this article illustrates how elementary school students engaged in the critical examination of a pertinent social issue and guided the direction of a social action plan devised to overcome the injustice of bullying. The focus of this article is to illustrate how one fourth-grade teacher harnessed her students’ enthusiasm and interest in activism through an inquiry-based, interdisciplinary social action unit devised to solve elementary school bullying. A detailed, step-by-step narrative of the unit is described.     

Constructing Childhood: Discourses About School Violence in the Greek Daily Press

This study explores the construction of discourses about childhood in the Greek daily press. It employs the theoretical frameworks of the new sociology of childhood and critical discourse analysis to question which discourses of childhood are constructed in the daily press presenting cases where children were the victimisers in school violent episodes. The study showed that while there are distinct discourses constructed in the texts such as the romantic childhood, the minority group childhood, the homogeneous childhood and the childhood as actor, these tend to co‐exist textually. Results are critically discussed in relation to the positioning of children through everyday practices such as the daily press.     

Historical Slogans in Teaching American History

The issues surrounding the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit are complex, but not beyond the reach of young students. This study finds scant treatment of the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit in high schools today. It is hardly surprising that high school teachers spend so little time discussing these topics in their classrooms, another finding of this study. As bleak as we found the current state of education about these topics, we also found significant opportunities to teach them in high school classrooms. Specifically, we discuss four recommendations for teachers to infuse the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit into high school social studies courses.     

Deriving Daily Purpose Through Daily Events and Role Fulfillment Among Asian American Youth

Establishing life purpose is a key developmental task; however, how it is linked to adolescents’ everyday family, school, extracurricular, and leisure experiences remains unclear. Using daily diary data from 180 Asian American ninth and tenth graders (50% ninth; 58% female; 25% first generation), daily purpose was positively related to daily family assistance. Leisure time was negatively associated with purpose, especially for first‐generation adolescents. Social role fulfillment (e.g., feeling like a good son or daughter) also contributed to daily purpose. Implications extended into daily affect, with positive associations with happiness, and negative associations with distress and anxiety. Results suggest that promoting social connectedness and activities that allow adolescents to feel like a valued family member may best foster youth purpose development.     

History of the American College Health Association

Abstract

Following Dr Edward Hitchcock's lead at Amherst College in 1861, soon other institutions of higher education established physical education departments that evolved into independent college health programs. As the field of college health expanded, leaders from numerous campuses began meeting to share information and discuss formation of a national organization. As a result, the American Student Health Association was founded in 1920 to promote campus health care for students and advance the interests of college health. The name was changed to the American College Health Association in 1948. The past history of this organization has been well documented in the literature, so this review will focus more on ACHA's accomplishments over the past 20 years. ¹ Turner, H S and Hurley, J L. 2002. The History and Practice of College Health., Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.  [Google Scholar] ^{, 2} American College Health Association. A brief history, Available at: http://www.acha.org/About_ACHA/docs/ACHA_Brief_History.pdf Published 2002. Accessed February 26, 2011 [Google Scholar] ^{, 3} Boynton, RE. 1971. The first fifty years: a history of the American College Health Association. J Am Coll Health Assoc, 19: 269–288.  [Google Scholar] ^{, 4} Christmas, W A. 1992. The history of sections in the American College Health Association. J Am Coll Health, 41: 121–125. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]     

American Sociology Rewrites Its History

Sociology textbooks written over the course of the twentieth century provide surprisingly different portraits of the field's origins. Spencer once held a stellar position but is now treated negatively. Marx was once treated negatively but now holds a stellar position. In the 1990s, Harriet Martineau, a prominent nineteenth-century publicist, was announced as a founder. Alexis de Tocqueville received little attention at any time. Some important contemporary sociologists receive very little attention. Questions are raised about the adequacy of this performance.     

A Program for the Improvement of Instruction in American History

Although much energy has been spent designing children's books and curriculum to bring issues of diversity and acceptance into classrooms, perhaps the most meaningful and relevant curricular materials only require a digital camera and a space for students to talk about photos of their own classroom community, creating an organic and everyday curriculum. From over three years of research in a preschool classroom, the researcher-author tells how she uses digital photography to allow students to examine and reimagine their own social community. She revives the pedagogies of seminal social educators like Vivian Paley and Fannie Shaftel while offering a photo methodology for researchers of children who are interested in better understanding children's peer culture. As play is perhaps the most important vehicle of social education, carving out a time and space in the school day for a reflective component with digital photography can be an interesting and empowering way for children to examine social dilemmas and confront inequities.     

Life History and the Critique of American Sociological Practice

This paper is a contribution to the uses of life histories and the dialogue regarding the standards for their use. Through a meta-analysis of life histories in the United States since the publication of the Polish Peasant , we develop a typology to critically evaluate their methodological/theoretical practices in sociology. We find a broad range of uses of life histories in the areas of substantive focus, analysis, relationship of oral history and the subject, relationship of oral/life history to other materials, purpose of the research, and relationship of oral/life history to other phenomena. We conclude that life history methods have not had the transformative effect on sociology that they have had in other disciplines. By and large, the actual production of life histories continues to be a historical, to be characterized by abstract empiricism, to extinguish subjects, and to ignore the link between biography and history.     

The Tradition of Pioneer Hardships in American History Textbooks

Two middle-school teachers incorporated student creation of historical accounts into their history instruction. During these projects, the teachers instructed their students to (1) summarize information presented during classroom instruction on a topic (e.g., the Great Migration) and (2) explain the significance of that topic to the present day. This second component of the task addressed a curricular standard regarding historical thinking, but students' responses referenced themes from citizenship education (e.g., cultural pluralism, social criticism, and national identification). More than eighty student projects were analyzed and coded for themes. This study presents a portrait of ambitious history teaching and suggests a tactic for a civics-infused history education course.     

Class,State, and Revolution in the History of American Capitalism

The significance of the American Revolution has generally been downplayed in accounts of the rise of capitalism in the United States, especially those undertaken from a critical perspective. New approaches to the history of capitalism, however, have emphasised the centrality of the state. This article argues that re‐centring the state's role in the history of capitalism should return attention to the significant restructuring of the American state that occurred during and as a result of the revolution. At the same time, it argues that this restructuring cannot be understood historically outside the context of class‐formation of which it was a part. Revolution reshaped the new nation's capitalist class, in the near term, much more than it did the labouring classes. This reconfiguration encompassed and went beyond the innovation of new political institutions. In the long‐run it helped to underpin the particular development of capitalism in the United States.     

Promiscuous Intimacies: Rethinking the History of American Casual Sex

Casual sex has become a cultural commonplace since it was named in the 1960s and later became associated with the US college sex phenomenon of “hooking up”. However, contemporary accounts of this sexual practice are curiously lacking in historical perspective. This article explores this modern history, both before and after uncommitted, non‐romantic, sexual encounters – sex for sex's sake – were named as casual sex. It agues that studies that contrast the increased “sexual possibilities” of hookup sex to the assumed restrictive practices of an earlier era distort both the restrictions of the earlier period and the freedoms of the latter.     

The History and Status of Social Workers in the American Psychoanalytic Association

Historic changes within the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) in the 1980s eventually allowed social workers and other non-medical professionals to train in clinical psychoanalysis as regular “candidates”. The steps to work through organizational resistance to this change are traced. The present level of activity of those analysts who began as social workers is discussed, with numeric data showing expansion of involvement in training and organizational life. Analysts with a background in social work are beginning to make significant positive contributions to APsaA. There is a more rapid pace of inclusion of analysts from social work in the governance side of APsaA than the educational. The ultimate impact on the organization is difficult to anticipate.

The Electoral College and Conflict in American History and Politics

The historical relationship between the electoral college and controversial U.S. presidential elections, specifically with respect to conflict, is examined. The elections of 1800, 1824, 1860, 1876, 1888, 1968, and 2000 are examined. Aside from the 2000 election, there has been essentially no conflict in American history due to the electoral college. The constitutional structure and thinking behind the form of the electoral college is given, with emphasis on the federal aspects of the structure. The current movement to abolish the electoral college in favor of direct popular vote is depicted, along with the arguments against making that change. The conclusion is that we as a nation are far better off to retain the status quo than to make the called-for change.