Teaching the tricky stuff and developing a historical mindset:sources and historical interpretations for ordinary pupils in ordinary

classrooms

West London Free School History Conference 2017Ben Walsh

ben@bwalsh.uk.com@History_Ben

1

A proclamation by Charles I on playing cards and dice, 1638 By the King.An announcement about the making of playing cards and dice.To prevent the common abuses caused by the use of false cards and dice, deceiving and damaging his subjects, His Majesty has appointed an officer for finding and giving the seal of approval to all cards and dice made in this realm. All makers of cards and dice within the realm, and merchants or others who import them from foreign parts, should now bring these cards and dice to His Majesty's officer to be viewed, examined and given the seal of approval if they are good and saleable. For this seal they will pay His Majesty's officer or his deputies the fees set out in His Majesty's official document.

Melanie might say it is not useful because …

But we would say it is useful as evidence about …

It’s just about dice

‘The Apotheosis of James I’ by Rubens. This painting was installed by Charles I into the Banqueting House, Whitehall in 1636. Apotheosis means someone being made into a god. This ceiling panel shows his father, James VI/I, becoming a god.

Melanie might say it is not useful because …

But we would say it is useful as evidence about …

It’s not real

2

Letter from a constituent to Winston Churchill, September 1938Sir,In the serious position in which, as a nation, we find ourselves, my sister and I, as two of your constituents, beg of you to ponder our contentions.In the first place, war in support of Czechoslovakia cannot really help any of the people there. We saw in the Great War what fighting on one’s territory meant.Far better avoid war, and, to this end, we suggest offering up some national or imperial interests. The German folk hunger for a comfortable place in the world, and, we who have seen their sufferings, and repressions, during the post-war years, must admit that they have a genuine grievance. We believe our plain duty, as a Christian nation, is to join with the Czechs in giving, to the point of great economic sacrifice.May we beg of you to consider all the facts and consider them again and again; so, we believe, you will be able to supply the needed solution.Many thanks for your consideration of this letter.Yours faithfully,(Miss) M. Akhurst.Melanie might say it is not useful because …

But we would say it is useful as evidence about …

Appeasement was a bad policy and it failed

Poster for an anti-Jewish exhibition, 1937. The caption reads ‘The Eternal Jew’.

Melanie might say it is not useful because …

But we would say it is useful as evidence about …

It’s a Nazi poster so it’s biased

3

Spicing up Source AnalysisThink about the sources …

• Sources are NOT just unhelpful versions of the textbook• If you see them as ‘information’ you will not be thinking like a historian. • Historians use sources to look for the things which are not found in textbooks (cultural artefact)

– Attitudes, values, concerns, anger ….– Purpose and what this reveals about the author / society– Methods used by groups / individuals to influence others

Is it useful?• Usefulness of source type • Identifying bits of source which might be useful eg

– it has information about – it says X did Y

• Useful as evidence of reasons for ..• Useful as evidence of success / failure of …• Useful as evidence of living / working conditions • Useful because of what the source reveals about the person / organisation which produced it (cultural artefact) • Purpose was X which shows author was concerned about Y • Purpose was X but by accident it tells us a lot about Y• Useful because it shows how X tried to achieve Y • Useful because it reveals attitudes of X towards Y • Useful because it is evidence of how X tried to achieve Y • Useful because it shows importance of / extent of / influence of …(or vice versa)

Is it surprising? First of all … What events take place? Who is saying or doing the things and what do we know about them which might be helpful? Are different things being said or done in different parts of the source? What things get said? About whom? Do they reveal particular attitudes, beliefs, fears etc? When is this happening? Does the time help to explain any of the points above?REACH THIS POINT AND YOU ARE JUST UNDER HALFWAY THERE – NOW YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN …Is it surprising that …• A person was saying / doing a particular thing?• A person was doing a particular thing at a particular time?• A person was doing / saying a particular thing about a particular group or person? • A person was doing / saying particular things to / about particular people or groups at a particular time?

Does the source ‘feel right’? • Typical?• Representative of the majority view? Some other view?• In accord with your knowledge of the period?• Agree or disagree with other sources?

Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts(Prof Sam Wineburg)Historian Richard White’s mother immigrated to the United States from her native Ireland in her early twenties, and he grew up listening to tales about her native home. Her family story, transmitted from generation to generation, conferred legitimacy on the family’s past. Pressed by his family White then did to this story what historians do. He unearthed documentary evidence—immigration forms, police records, tax rolls, old letters—that exposed a fault line between his family’s ‘history’ and the blurry and partial narrative hinted at by the documents. Eventually White’s mother told him that she wished to hear no more about his researches.[Richard White’s account of this experience is written up in Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories (2003)]

4

A BOX OF COLD WAR SOURCES …

SOURCE 1 A British government poster from 1941.The Russian caption reads, ‘Greetings tothe heroic warrior of the Soviet Union fromBritish allies fighting with him.’

[In 1961] we increased our military aid to Cuba. We were sure the Americans would never agree to the existence of Castro’s Cuba. They feared, and we hoped, that a Socialist Cuba might become a magnet that would attract other Latin American countries to socialism. We had to find an effective deterrent to American interference in the Caribbean. The Caribbean Crisis was a triumph of Soviet foreign policy and a personal triumph in my own career. Today Cuba exists as an independent socialist country right in front of America. Cuba’s very existence is good propaganda. We behaved with dignity and forced the United States to demobilise and to recognise Cuba.SOURCE 2 Khrushchev was forced from power in 1964. This extract comes from his memoirs written in 1971.

I have been informed by Chairman Khrushchev that all of the Soviet nuclear bombers in Cuba will be withdrawn within 30 days. Inasmuch as this goes a long way towards reducing the danger which faced this hemisphere four weeks ago, I have this afternoon instructed the Secretary of Defence to lift our naval quarantine. We will not abandon the political, economic and other efforts of this hemisphere to halt subversion from Cuba. It is our purpose and hope that the Cuban people shall someday be truly free. But these policies are very different from any intent to launch an invasion of Cuba.SOURCE 3 Kennedy announces the end of the Cuban Crisis.

SOURCE 4 A Soviet cartoon. Churchill is shown with two flags, the first proclaiming that ‘Anglo- Saxons (British and Americans) must rule the world’ and the other threatening an ‘iron curtain’.

5

SOURCE 4Cartoon from the British newspaper The Daily Mail October 1962Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand – ‘how many [army] divisions have you got?’ . . . I’m tired of babying the Soviets. SOURCE 5 President Truman, writing to his Secretary of State in January 1946.

The Soviet Union has become a danger to the free world. A new front must be created against her onward sweep. This front should be as far east as possible. SOURCE 6 Churchill writing to Roosevelt shortly afterthe Yalta Conference in February 1945.

SOURCE 7 Coal being unloaded from a plane at Berlin airport, 1948.

On 23 June the Soviet authorities suspended all traffic into Berlin because of alleged technical difficulties . . . They also stopped barge traffic on similar grounds. Shortly before midnight, the Soviet authorities issued orders to . . . disrupt electric power from Soviet power plants to the Western sectors. Shortage of coal was given as a reason for this measure. SOURCE 8 US Government report, June 1948.

The crisis was planned in Washington, behind a smokescreen of anti-Soviet propaganda. In 1948 there was danger of war. The conduct of the Western powers risked bloody incidents. The self-blockade of the Western powers hit the West Berlin population with harshness. In the Spring of 1949 the USA was forced to yield . . . their war plans had come to nothing, because of the conduct of the USSR. SOURCE 9 A Soviet commentary on the crisis in Berlin in 1948

In addition to protecting Cuba, our missiles would have equalized what the West likes to call the ‘balance of power’. The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you … SOURCE 10 Khrushchev writing in his memoirs in 1971

6

7

Historical interpretations See Historical Association E-CPD Resource on historical interpretations http://history.org.uk/secondary/module/2602/historical-interpretation-why-is-it-still-such-a See also Interpretations of History, Ofsted Subject Conference Report 2004 https://goo.gl/d7c3JF

Types of Interpretation Examples

AcademicBooks and journals by professional historiansExcavation ReportsLectures

Educational

TextbooksMuseumsTV DocumentariesArtists' interpretations

Fictional

NovelsFeature filmsTV dramasPlays

PopularFolk wisdom about the pastTheme parksNostalgic depictions in advertising

Personal Personal reflection

Activities / tasks on interpretations Light / non-existent interpretations focus Strong interpretations focusPupils construct their own interpretations (e.g. Cromwell - hero or villain?)

Pupils compare, contrast, discuss how/why their own interpretations differ

Pupils use contemporary sources Pupils consider how the availability of sources has shaped an interpretation

Pupils identify errors and inaccuracies in Blackadder Pupils consider why the makers

of Blackadder chose to include inaccuracies

In short, historical interpretation in this context means a version of history which has been created by some person(s) at a later time than the events described, often for some specific purpose. The focus of any such work should be on how and why the environment in which the interpretation was created has shaped the interpretation itself. This is distinct from students making use of source material from the time of the events being studied. Another extract from the Ofsted report of 2004 provides some helpful clarification:"In summary, opportunities are missed where teachers assume that ‘the central force of pupil reflection' must be on accuracy, reliability, utility, rather than on historical context of the interpretation; on processes of construction; on purpose (witting or unwitting); on audience; and on form." Ofsted 2004, op cit

8

British academics protest after Russia closes down history website Move reflects official efforts to rewrite Stalin's role and to cover up Nazi-Soviet pact Monday 13 July 2009 17.58 BST https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/13/russia-shuts-history-website

A group of British academics including the historian Orlando Figes and the poet and translator Robert Chandler have spoken out after authorities in Russia closed down a website dealing with the country's controversial Soviet past.On 19 June the home affairs ministry in St Petersburg shut down the site www.hrono.info. The website had been Russia's largest online history resource, widely used by scholars in Russia and elsewhere as a unique source of biographical and historical material.Officials said they closed the site because it published extracts from Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf. Today, however, its founder, Vyacheslav Rumyantsev, said the closure had nothing to do with Hitler, adding that the text was widely available elsewhere and was only summarised on the site.Rumyantsev said the authorities may have pulled the plug after an article was posted on 16 June criticising St Petersburg's pro-Kremlin governor, Valentina Matviyenko. The article attacked Matviyenko's decision to cut an allowance given to survivors of the Nazi siege of Leningrad.The closure comes amid official attempts in Russia to rewrite some of the darkest aspects of its 20th-century history. School textbooks now portray Stalin not as a mass murderer but as a great, if flawed, national leader and an "efficient manager" who defeated the Nazis and industrialised a backward Soviet Union.In December, police in St Petersburg raided the human rights organisation Memorial, removing much of the material used by Figes in The Whisperers, his acclaimed book on family life under Stalin. It included interviews with gulag victims, photos and personal testimonies. Figes's Russian publisher later scrapped plans to publish the book in Russian.Today Figes said in an email the Kremlin had become "very active on the internet" on history, claiming that it even hired bloggers to pose as members of the public, their task being to disseminate a Kremlin-approved version of the past and to "rubbish historians like myself".

Russian textbooks attempt to rewrite historyA new Russian history book for schools, approved by the Putin Government, glosses over Stalin’s Terror and other truthshttp://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6937923.ece Now you see him, now you don’t. Stalin was a past master at the art of airbrushing. In one classic set of photographs, there Stalin is with his secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov — and in the next photo, there Yezhov isn’t (he was executed in 1940, with his boss’s approval). And now, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the airbrushing of history seems to be all the rage again. If you look hard enough — and we travelled for 5,000 miles around the former Soviet Union — you can find old Soviet airbrushing in concrete. Not far from the railway station in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, are three giant faces on the frieze of a building: Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Next to them is a strange shadow, a memory of a fourth face no longer there. Stalin’s visage was chiselled off, sometime after Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” of 1956, in which he denounced Stalin to a closed session of the party congress. But that is in the sticks, where folk are behind the times. In Kursk underground station in Moscow, a frieze saluting Stalin was removed after the “secret speech”. This summer, after an absence of half a century, it mysteriously reappeared. Stalin is back, his name high above the heads of Muscovites heading down into the underground, with a line from the old Stalinist Soviet anthem: “Stalin brought us up and inspired us to carry out heroic deeds.” Russia seems to be not de-Stalinising but re-Stalinising. In Russian schools, something even more troubling appears to be happening. They call it “positive history” and the man behind it is Putin. In 2007, the former secret police chief told a conference of Russian educationists that the country needed a more patriotic history. Putin condemned teachers for having “porridge in their heads”, attacked some history textbook authors for taking foreign money — “naturally they are dancing the polka ordered by those who pay them” — and announced that new history textbooks were on their way. Within weeks, a new law was passed giving the state powers to approve and to disallow history textbooks for schools.

9

10