Essay #2:
Re-envisioning History
In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen (1995) asserts that
"Understanding our past is central to our ability to understand ourselves and
the world around us" (p.13). Yet although history can enable us to better
understand our current predicaments, it is one of the most poorly taught
subjects. Many of us associate high school history with boredom, with memorizing
and regurgitating an endless number of dates, events, and people for the weekly
quizzes. And our high school history textbooks contributed to this boredom,
veiling their overly simplistic versions of events as fact, and neglecting to
inform us of other key perspectives and even some major events. This historical
amnesia, this historical whitewashing, as Loewen points out in his book, can
have deleterious consequences.
Adopting a similar critical stance to Loewen, your task in this essay is
to examine an event in American history, comparing and contrasting the high
school history book's version to the materials you discover during your research
process. (For your easy reference, I've put some history books from
Provide a larger framework for your research, drawing from Loewen's book
about why history is taught in this bland way, and the consequences of history
being taught in this bland way.
Bear in mind that this essay is a recommended
PEER
RESPONSE: _____________________________
DUE
DATE: ___________________________________
To
choose a topic, I highly recommend that you flip through any one of the history
books and find a topic of interest to you. Consider researching one event within
a larger historical context; regardless, sufficiently narrow your topic so that
you can examine it in all its glorious detail as opposed to skimming the
surface. The best way to determine whether to further narrow your topic is to
conduct some research; if your topic has many major themes, each of which
warrants more development, focus on those which you are most drawn to, even if
that means writing about only one theme.
Here are
some possibilities, all of
which may
require you to narrow your focus:
* annexation
of
* causes of
the Great Depression
* what
prompted Irish migration to the
* formation
of
* impact of
The Industrial Revolution
* Richard
Nixon's impeachment
*
emancipation of slaves
* Cuban
missile crisis
* what
prompted the Civil Rights movement
* women's
suffrage movement
* Brown
Berets
*
* conditions
on southern plantations
*
Christopher Columbus
*
* bombing of
* Japanese
American internment camps
*
immigration policies for a specific ethnic group
* Puritans
* role of
women in the civil rights movement
* Thomas
Jefferson
* anti-war
protesters against the Vietnam war
* Black
Panthers
* Black Elk
*
*
EVALUATING YOUR SOURCES*
Most
of the writing assignments you get in college will require you to draw from
assigned texts or research that you've conducted. To best prepare for such as
assignment, you should evaluate your sources for their relative reliability.
Obviously you must understand the text before you examine it carefully. You must
read it several times-- not just skim it-- and of course, you must think about
it. You'll find that your thinking is stimulated if you take notes and if you
ask yourself questions about the material. Notes will help you keep track of the
writer's thoughts and also of your own responses to the writer's thesis.
Sometimes the thesis is explicitly stated in the title or in a sentence or two
near the beginning of the essay or in a concluding paragraph, but other times
you may have to infer it from the essay as a whole. Yet another possibility is
when the text is relatively neutral, with the argument faintly discernible-- or
even with no argument at all.
Below are several steps you can undergo to evaluate your sources.
Step 1:
Summarizing the Main Points
Write the thesis, whether implied or explicit, in your own words at the top of
the page. Then write an outline of the main points addressed in the essay, both
those points which the writer contests as well as those points which the writer
uses to support his/ her thesis.
Step 2:
Examining the Author's Purpose
While reading an argument, try to determine what the author’s purpose was: was
the purpose to report or persuade?
An
analysis of a pure report will primarily dwell on its accuracy.
To
determine whether something is argumentative, look for two kinds of key terms:
·
transitions that
imply the drawing of a conclusion: therefore, because, for the reason that,
consequently
·
verbs that imply
proof: confirms, accounts for, implies proves, disproves, is (in)consistent
with, refutes, it follows that.
Keep your
eyes out for such terms and scrutinize their precise roles whenever they appear.
If the essay does not advance an explicit thesis, think of a thesis that it
might support or some conventional belief that it might undermine.
Step 3:
Examining the Author's Methods
When
the essay advances a thesis, you will want to analyze the strategies or methods
of argumentation that allegedly support the thesis.
* Does the
writer quote authorities? Are these authorities really competent in the field?
Are equally competent authorities who take a different view ignored?
* If
statistics are used, are they appropriate to the point being argued? Can they be
interpreted differently?
* Does the
writer build the argument by using examples, or analogies? Are they
satisfactory? Why or why not?
* Are the
writer's assumptions acceptable?
* Are all
relevant factors considered? Has the author omitted some points that you think
should be discussed? For instance, should the author recognize certain opposing
positions, and perhaps concede something to them?
* Does the
writer seek to persuade by means of ridicule? If so, is the ridicule fair-- is
it supported also by rational argument?
After
considering questions such as the aforementioned, you will probably find it
useful to write out your evaluation or judgment. You might say, for instance,
that the essay is impressive but not conclusive, or is undermined by convincing
contrary evidence, or relies too much on unsupported generalizations, or is
wholly admirable.