Quotes

At the start of the school year, I would have my students write an essay responding to a quote about history. This would allow me to see how they felt about history in general and it allowed me to see my students' writing skills. Here are a few of my favorite quotes.

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday. ~Pearl Buck

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill

History is a novel for which the people is the author. ~Alfred de Vigny, Réflexions sur la Vérité dans l'Art

History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity. ~Dexter Perkins

History never looks like history when you are living through it. ~John W. Gardner

There is also an interesting article called "Top 10 Famous Historic Misquotes".

Waging War

The media seems to be losing interest in the war in Iraq. I don't usually think of the U.S. as a country at war-probably because the war is being fought on another continent while our borders are secure. What has made me contemplate the state of war and our situation/involvement in Iraq? There is a billboard by our house that says "What make us different?" The answer: unity. Compared to Iraq with the tension between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds the U.S. is a united country. Yes, we are all different whether conservative or liberal, different races, and so on but we are Americans above all else. There is a blog that was written by a girl in Iraq called Burning Baghdad . The last post is dated October 22, 2007 but it will make your heart hurt. If your interested in the viewpoint of someone who has seen firsthand (from the viewpoint of those who live there) what is happening in Iraq I recommend checking this blog out.

Money, Money, Money

There are a lot of tools out there on the Internet to help in career selection for students. Trying to choose a career is a daunting task. There is a website called Payscale that has tools such as a cost of living calculator, a salary calculator, choosing a career path, and other tools. It wouldn't work as a primary source to choose a career but it would be a good secondary source.

One Laptop Per Child

My husband works in the tech sector. He had been following a program called One Laptop Per Child. He showed me their website and suggested we get involved.

The program morphed out of a goal to build a $100 laptop. They keep the cost low by 1)using a screen display similar to that of lower cost DVD player models 2)streamlining the operating system thereby reducing the necessary horsepower and resources and 3)the laptops will be produced in bulk and sold to governemnt ministries of education in countries around the world.

OLPC's mission: "OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community."

On their website they have shocking stats. One in three children (out of over 2 billion children in developing countries) never progresses beyond the fifth grade. The amount spent to educate a child in these countries is often less than $20 compared to over $7500 in the United States.

The laptop is called XO (OLPC's symbol looks like an X and an O but the placement of these two letters makes the symbol look like a child). The XO "is a unique harmony of form and function; a flexible, ultra-low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine with which nations of the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development—immediately transforming the content and quality of their children's learning." The laptop runs on less than 2 watts (1/10th of what a normal laptop runs on). There is also a hand crank to recharge the battery (it is not yet available but its supposed to be soon). For those going green-there are no hazardous components comprising the laptop. The keyboard is sealed rubber (making it spillproof). Its estimated lifetime is about 5 years. It runs Linux operating system. Keep in mind it is designed for children and is smaller than a textbook.

At the end of 2007, the OLPC foundation had a special program (this is what renewed my husband's interest in the project) where individuals could purchase a laptop to donate to a child (for $200) and for another $200 they would send you one of the XO laptops. These laptops were only made available to private citizens for a short period of time to generate interest and support for the program. You can still get one if you frequent ebay.

Last week our XO arrived and I must admit it is an interesting piece of technology. It has a fascinating music program to create your own music and you can access the internet. Too bad it didn't come with an instruction manual. It will probably take my husband until my daughter is 5 before we figure out all the uses of the laptop.

Hollywood's Inaccuracies

Yahoo came out with a list of "The 10 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies: Films that Make Your High School History Teacher Cry" .

The 10 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies

10,000 B.C.
Gladiator
300
The Last Samurai
Apocolypto
Memoirs of a Geisha
Braveheart
Elizabeth:The Golden Age
The Patriot
2001:A Space Odessey

Needless to say, I didn't cry. I do disagree with 10,000 B.C. and 2001:A Space Odessey being included. What happened 10,000 years ago is purely conjecture and pure entertainment. Also, since when is science fiction history?

I have used The Patriot in my World History classes. I feel that several of these films are valuable teaching tools. Yes, Hollywood does take liberties with history for the sake of entertainment but it is important to teach your students how to analyze and weigh what they see on the big screen especially when what they are watching is "based on true events".

Psychology and Celebrity: Teen Pop Culture

Today I was reading an interesting article online about "The Culture of Celebrity" . It is scary how infatuated our society is with the lives of celebrities. Jill Neimark writes, "Celebrity in America has always given us an outlet for our imagination, just as the gods and demigods of ancient Greece and Rome once did. Celebrities are our myth bearers; carriers of the divine forces of good, evil, lust, and redemption." I'd rather read about Zeus and Apollo than the details of Britany Spear's latest disturbing episode. I was shocked when I did a bit of research and found that The National Enquirer had a circulation of 2 million readers (more than The New York Times which has the third largest circulation in the United States).

A Vigilante Goose, Child Abuse, and First Aid: Nursery Rhymes in the Classroom

Nursery rhymes are oral traditions. Where many of them originated, who created them, and when they came about are often a mystery. Just like the classic Sesame Street episodes released on DVD, many are not politically correct or socially acceptable in today’s society. Having a woman starving and beating her children is not an acceptable form of discipline, in fact, it’s called child abuse. Jack falling and breaking his crown is not really amusing. The rhyme about the goose biting the man’s leg (because he didn’t say his prayers) and his subsequent tumble down the stairs is even more violent. A vigilante goose, who knew?

Nursey rhymes like fairy tales (we’ve all seen or heard about the trial of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf) do have life lessons embedded in them. We just need to look for them. Some lessons are simple while others are more complex and would be more appropriate for high school students. Even those that are not very p.c. can be used to open discussions in the classroom. This is a great teaching tool for parents and teachers. In fact if one wanted to broach the topic of abuse with students the rhyme about the old woman in the shoe would be a good anticipatory set. The rhyme about good ole' Jack and Jill could be relevant to a discussion on first aid.

Students can relate to these rhymes since they have heard them before. It also ties together what they have learned in the past with what they are learning today. There is a connection. Hearing their teacher recite one of these rhymes will definitely get their attention.