Rationale for the Following Lessons
Teaching the 6th grade is akin to changing a baby’s diapers while you teach him to drive. Much of the time you feel like you are cleaning up messes, yet at the same time you try to provide your students with basic skills they’ll need to get around in life. In many areas my students are far more sophisticated than I was even in my late teens, yet in terms of cognitive development and experience, they are still children.
This paradox really hit home when I began teaching 3 years ago. After being told I would be teaching a unit on the medieval and Renaissance periods, I was overjoyed; as an art history major I had great visions of teaching history through art. I busily prepared slides on the finer points of Northern vs. Southern painting, symbolism, etc. When I proudly presented these lessons to the kids, they nodded knowingly as I spoke about Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. I only surmised we weren’t on the same page when one of the kids finally asked, "What does painting have to do with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" (For those who don’t know, the Turtles are animated, sewer-living cartoon figures on Saturday morning TV – they are named Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael.) I realized then that my students’ sophistication in computers and technology didn’t necessarily extend to other areas. This made me take a look at the materials I was given to teach – were they age appropriate and did they teach skills to my students in an interesting way? Unfortunately, the answer was a resounding "no".
Most texts for 6th graders (in any historical area) are benign mush because the sources have been sanitized so as not to offend. They are useless in building the skills twelve year-olds need such as critical reading or developing inferences. Primary sources are the texts one needs to use. The problem is, most primary sources from the Renaissance are well beyond the intellectual capabilities of my students. They can grasp some of the ideas, but wading through the "olden days" prose is too much for many students. Hopefully the following lessons will bridge that chasm through selection of passages that hold kids’ interest with paraphrasing alongside the original text.
The emphasis in these lessons is on spotting bias and how it affects of point of view – especially in regard to male/female relationships. In turn, the discussions in these lessons should allow a teacher to move smoothly into the larger questions all students need to think about:
- Who writes history?
- How does who writes history affect how events are seen by later eras?
- How might "neglected voices" alter established histories?
- Can there be more than one "true" history?
- What is the purpose of studying history in the first place?
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