What’s historical thinking? What’s “context”? A quick but worthwhile exercise for your high school and college students. 1/

Seeing words that evoke associations, but pausing long enough to think about the context in which they were uttered, ain’t easy.

Nor is it something that comes naturally to many of us (hmm… reminds of a book I once read)

A quick exercise for students. A document ostensibly about Columbus. Ask them to read it and write a few sentences putting the document into historical context.

Even your bright students may respond as Jacob did, even after cued about context. For many students, the temporal anchor for this document is 1492.

Not for historians. The anchor is 1892. Hmmm… a presidential year. Benjamin Harrison locked in a tight race against Cleveland. @matthew_klingle

Why a pitch about Columbus? Italian immigrants, along with the Irish who had immigrated earlier, formed a new Catholic voting bloc. For years, Catholics had been rallying to get a hero of their own.

Few students will know about the suspicion & prejudice faced by Catholics in postbellum America. Samuel F.B. Morse or Morse Code fame? Also author of Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States (1834). When he talks about “popery” guess who he’s talking about.

According to Thomas J. Schlereth, for Catholics, Columbus had become “an American ethnic saint in an era of unprecedented immigration.” In other words, a great way for politicians to court a new voting bloc.

How to get students to think about 1892, not 1492? Here’s a short article from NPR. Students can handle it. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/14/232120128/how-columbus-sailed-into-u-s-history-thanks-to-italians

If you want more background, as well as some docs, this is free. @eduhistorian https://www.holycross.edu/sites/default/files/educ/columbus_chapter.pdf

If students have trouble with context, don’t despair. Multiple examples help. I’ll come up with a few more in the coming days. Stay tuned. @SHEG_Stanford

P.S. Stay safe, stay sane!