Wineburg & Martin: Reading and Rewriting History
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The Student of Today
The student of today can retrieve data and explain what they have learned, but the idea making a judgment on this data eludes students. For Sam Wineburg and Daisy Martin, the authors of the essay "Reading and Rewriting History; this is the problem in the history classroom. In the age of Google, students have so many facts at their fingertips. It is important that students learn to weed through this data and create sound judgments on the information they are taking in. Wineburg and Martin point to the fact that anyone can create a web page, and that site does not need to substantiate their information. It is imperative that students look critically at their sources in order to judge their reliability, as well as question previous historian's interpretation of facts.
Teaching Students to Judge History
So where does a student learn how to judge the information of their sources? In the history classroom. Wineburg and Martin completed a study with fifth graders to help them learn how to interpret data. These fifth graders brought with them their prior knowledge on the subject matter, in this case the colony of Jamestown and the story of John Smith and Pocahontas. Even at this level, students could read through two very different primary source documents written by John Smith and see them as contradictory. After then reading two different accounts from historians, the students were left perplexed. This activity was designed by Wineburg and Martin "to teach the interpretive and evidentiary nature of history" (Wineburg & Martin, 2004). Outrage followed the students perplexed emotions as they realized what loose interpretation of history Disney's Pocahontas movie was. This began a letter writing campaign to the Disney Company by the fifth graders. In this case, the students compared multiple sources and judged the validity of these sources compared with their prior knowledge.
The Role of Reading and Writing
Reading primary and secondary sources is only one piece of the puzzle for Wineburg and Martin. Writing is an equally important piece to the equation. The fifth graders in the study then took to rewriting the textbooks to make them more historically accurate. The successful history teacher must include both reading and writing at the core of the history curriculum. But according to the authors, this is becoming less so. They give the examples: teachers in underfunded schools are trying to get across as much information as possible in the limited capacity they have, while other teachers have turned toward passive PowerPoint lectures. The authors contend that writing most be at the core of the history classroom if students are to grow into good readers, writers, and thinkers. For Wineburg and MArtin, this ties directly into our political system. Accurately comparing the world of yesterday makes students able to compare the differing viewpoints of today, which is vital to the survival of democracy.
