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Historical Imagination
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From: Cappiello, Maryann <mcappiel_at_lesley.edu>
Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:11:51 +0000
Forgive me for a second post. I love this topic.
Something that I have always been fascinated by as an educator is a child's sense of historical imagination, of having the world of the past up and ru nning in one's imagination. How do you do that? When does it start? Who ini tiates it? The child, the family, the school? It's different with every per son. With the disappearance of social studies as a key component of element ary school curriculum over the past ten years, I think we have lost the opp ortunity to cultivate that within that slice of school. Thus, it's what chi ldren read, or what they do with their families, that might introduce them to the past and cultivate that sense of imagination. I don't mean fiction, I just mean having an imaginative backdrop to attach things to.
I can't remember a time when I couldn't imagine myself into the world of th e past. Whether what I imagined was always accurate, I don't know. It did c ome from what I was exposed to---grandparents telling family history on the
front porch of the house my great-great grandfather built when he came fro m Ireland in the 1870s, looking at the Empire State Building and rememberin g the stories of my great-grandfather, another Irish immigrant, who worked on the construction crew, choosing to build George Washington's home during my 2nd grade class bicentennial celebration. With my daughter, it's the sa me. Obviously, much of that is because of what I have exposed her to. Early on, at age four, she delighted in comparing time periods. She would start to create her own timelines of drawings, articulating what/who came first. Not that she had a highly developed sense of time. She was just fascinated with time periods and what people looked like and did, reveling in the comp arison and contrast, much like other children are interested in different t ypes of dinosaurs or trucks. Now, at seven, the fascination continues.
When I was teaching middle school language arts and humanities in the 90s a nd early 2000s, I felt that imagining the past in this way was difficult fo r most children. I started to use historical fiction, nonfiction, and prima ry source artifacts, with an emphasis on material culture, to serve as a ca talyst. I find myself doing the same thing as a teacher educator with the a dults with whom I work, both to instill a sense of that in them as well as to model teaching methodology.
There are many goals of a social studies/history curriculum. Most certainly , having a sense of historical imagination is more of a disposition, perhap s, than something you can "teach" or would be expected to teach in this era of standards based education. And yet, I think you can teach to meet the s tandards and still work towards cultivating a sense of the past, a flavor o f the past, through the use of nonfiction and historical fiction, along wit h all sorts of evidence from the past in the form of art, memorabilia, arti fact, documents, photographs, etc. Not all period of the past are pleasant to explore. But bringing children into the past and exploring it from multi ple perspectives seems to be a good way to prepare them for walking around their futures with a sense of multiple perspectives.
Mary Ann Cappiello, Ed.D. Associate Professor Language & Literacy Division Coordinator, Collaborative Internship Partnership Graduate School of Education Lesley University
Teaching with Text Sets, http://estore.seppub.com/estore/product/50688 www.classroombookshelf.blogspot.com
/
Office Phone: (617) 349-8603 Office Location: 2-054 University Hall
Mailing Address: 29 Everett Street Cambridge, MA 02138
Received on Thu 08 Nov 2012 07:11:51 PM CST
Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:11:51 +0000
Forgive me for a second post. I love this topic.
Something that I have always been fascinated by as an educator is a child's sense of historical imagination, of having the world of the past up and ru nning in one's imagination. How do you do that? When does it start? Who ini tiates it? The child, the family, the school? It's different with every per son. With the disappearance of social studies as a key component of element ary school curriculum over the past ten years, I think we have lost the opp ortunity to cultivate that within that slice of school. Thus, it's what chi ldren read, or what they do with their families, that might introduce them to the past and cultivate that sense of imagination. I don't mean fiction, I just mean having an imaginative backdrop to attach things to.
I can't remember a time when I couldn't imagine myself into the world of th e past. Whether what I imagined was always accurate, I don't know. It did c ome from what I was exposed to---grandparents telling family history on the
front porch of the house my great-great grandfather built when he came fro m Ireland in the 1870s, looking at the Empire State Building and rememberin g the stories of my great-grandfather, another Irish immigrant, who worked on the construction crew, choosing to build George Washington's home during my 2nd grade class bicentennial celebration. With my daughter, it's the sa me. Obviously, much of that is because of what I have exposed her to. Early on, at age four, she delighted in comparing time periods. She would start to create her own timelines of drawings, articulating what/who came first. Not that she had a highly developed sense of time. She was just fascinated with time periods and what people looked like and did, reveling in the comp arison and contrast, much like other children are interested in different t ypes of dinosaurs or trucks. Now, at seven, the fascination continues.
When I was teaching middle school language arts and humanities in the 90s a nd early 2000s, I felt that imagining the past in this way was difficult fo r most children. I started to use historical fiction, nonfiction, and prima ry source artifacts, with an emphasis on material culture, to serve as a ca talyst. I find myself doing the same thing as a teacher educator with the a dults with whom I work, both to instill a sense of that in them as well as to model teaching methodology.
There are many goals of a social studies/history curriculum. Most certainly , having a sense of historical imagination is more of a disposition, perhap s, than something you can "teach" or would be expected to teach in this era of standards based education. And yet, I think you can teach to meet the s tandards and still work towards cultivating a sense of the past, a flavor o f the past, through the use of nonfiction and historical fiction, along wit h all sorts of evidence from the past in the form of art, memorabilia, arti fact, documents, photographs, etc. Not all period of the past are pleasant to explore. But bringing children into the past and exploring it from multi ple perspectives seems to be a good way to prepare them for walking around their futures with a sense of multiple perspectives.
Mary Ann Cappiello, Ed.D. Associate Professor Language & Literacy Division Coordinator, Collaborative Internship Partnership Graduate School of Education Lesley University
Teaching with Text Sets, http://estore.seppub.com/estore/product/50688 www.classroombookshelf.blogspot.com
/
Office Phone: (617) 349-8603 Office Location: 2-054 University Hall
Mailing Address: 29 Everett Street Cambridge, MA 02138
Received on Thu 08 Nov 2012 07:11:51 PM CST
