In November the AHA completed its third in a series of conferences on constitutional history in the schools. The first conference was held in Philadelphia in September, the second in St. Paul, Minnesota, in October, and the third in Austin, Texas, in November. The conferences took place under a contract with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Readers will recall from earlier articles in Perspectives that the project was begun as part of an effort to introduce central themes in constitutional history scholarship to secondary school teachers in the form of lectures and lessons that can be adapted for high school classroom use.
In preparation for the conferences, a team of nine high school history teachers and six constitutional historians was assembled to develop lesson materials and essays. They met at planning meetings in the spring and summer of 1983 at Washington, DC, and the Johnson Foundation’s Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin. These activities resulted in the development of eighteen classroom lessons divided among the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. The century-based lessons were accompanied by overview essays that outlined the key historical and historiographical issues. Each sample lesson is constructed around a body of primary documentary sources and the appropriate text of the Constitution. Each lesson is also introduced by a short essay providing the general context and historiographical rationale upon which the lesson is based.
The lessons vary in teaching strategies and levels of student ability, although most are best suited for high school juniors, seniors, and advanced placement classes. United States history survey instructors at the college level will also find these lessons of interest.
Participants at the conferences represented virtually every part of the United States and a wide variety of schools, teaching assignments, and instructional leadership responsibilities. Some participants took part as individuals, others were members of small teams from a single school district. In some cases, state social studies coordinators or persons at state historical agencies charged with school outreach activities worked closely with participant to assure that the conferences would have a statewide impact. The conferences have led to various spin-off activities in several states and a number of local school districts.
The conferences themselves involved a variety of activities, though no two conferences followed exactly the same format. In general, there was some modification of conference program and materials to take into account “what worked” in a preceding conference. While at the conferences, teacher participants spent most of their time in small group sessions where they could “walk-talk” through sample lessons and critique the materials in detail. Participants also heard statements from the constitutional historians working on the project, listened to presentations on “how to read” the Constitution, and in two of the conferences participated in lesson-planning sessions where they could begin developing lessons geared to the specific needs of each teacher’s students.
The conferences have been a major learning experience—for the participants, the project’s staff, and the Association. Of course some activities were more successful than others. Every opportunity was seized to stress that the conference materials were developed by teams of teachers from high schools and universities. While the goal of the project has been to strengthen the teaching of constitutional history in high schools, a related objective was to explore ways in which history teachers at various levels could work together to identify needs and draft teaching materials that embody the best in recent scholarship while involving students with historical sources in creative and attractive ways.
The challenge, then, has been to develop lessons reflecting the best standards of scholarship which also can be used by the broadest possible range of students, and in the widest range of high school teaching situations. We have been impressed by the difficulties of this charge, and also by the tremendous gulf between current scholarship in history and the materials in use in schools. The key link is the able and dedicated high school teacher. Fortunately, our conferences were blessed with an abundance of talent in this area.
This gap between scholarship and school pedagogy is immense, but one that we hope the conferences have helped to bridge in small ways. Dedicated history teachers are eager to learn of the latest developments in areas of scholarship and are in need of up-to-date, usable classroom materials that can supplement textbook treatments. College historians also have a great deal to learn from their colleagues in the schools. Barriers exist, but they are surmountable, for both groups are bound by the same ideal of educating students about the past. Teachers taking part in the conferences uniformly expressed delight to see the Association reenter secondary education in such a visible and useful way. While we received a number of suggestions for improving later conferences in the series, there is no doubt that these conferences helped meet teachers’ needs, and that AHA members (in ever-increasing numbers) will be called upon by high school teachers.
The NEH has funded a fourth conference, scheduled to be held in the Los Angeles area, February 24-26. This fourth conference is under the continuing and iible direction of Jack Larner. Sharon K. Tune of our headquarters staff is the administrative assistant.
We would be remiss without once again acknowledging the hard work and dedication of the project’s lead teachers and constitutional historians, those who developed the materials and staffed conferences. The lead teachers include: W. Alton Bryant (John F. Kennedy High School, New Orleans), Bonny M. Cochran (Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, Maryland), Werner Feig (Scarsdale High School, New York), Thomas Lyons {Phillips Academy, Massachusetts), Rosemary Miller (South River High School, Annapolis, Maryland), Richard J. Morey (The Prairie School, Racine, Wisconsin), Ken Rodriguez (Cibola High School, Albuquerque, New Mexico), Denny L. Schillings (Homewood-Flossmoor High School, Flossmoor, lllinois), and Marv Louise Williams (Los Alamos High School, New Mexico).
The constitutional historians included professors Harold M. Hyman (Rice University), Linda K. Kerber (University of Iowa), Stanley I. Kutler (University of Wisconsin-Madison }, Mary K, Bonsteel Tachau (University of Louisville), Jon C. Teaford (Purdue University), and William M. Wiecek (University of Missouri-Columbia) Maeva Marcus (Georgetown University Law Center), a member of the project’s advisory board, served as a workshop facilitator at the Philadelphia conference. We welcomed the contributions of two other historians at the St. Paul conference: Professor Paul L. Murphy (University of Minnesota) delivered a keynote presentation, and Professor Herman J. Belz (University of Maryland) delivered a presentation and served as a workshop leader. Professor Alan D. Kownslar (Trinity University) delivered a presentation at the Austin conference on biographical approaches to the study of constitutional history.
We have also benefited from the lesson development activity of Project ’87. Under a grant from NEH, Project ’87 has developed Lessons on the United States Constitution for use in the schools, designed and developed by Professors John J. Patrick and Richard Remy. Several of the lessons were presented at the Austin conference by Professor Paul Finkelman (University of Texas-Austin), the consulting historian for the project, We were also pleased to distribute at the Austin conference copies of the first issue of Project ’87’s this Constitution: A Bicentennial Chronicle. Scheduled for each issue of the magazine is a lesson for use in the schools. The magazine is being published under a grant from the NEH.
The subsequent shape and direction of the conference project was the result of a key meeting of the advisory board held in December 1982. Like members of most advisory boards, ours were prominent in the beginning and less visible in the end. We would like to rescue them from their undeserved limbo. The board’s chair is Professor David D. Van Tassel (Case Western Reserve University), and includes Mildred Alpern (Spring Valley High School, New York), Professor Matthew Downey (University of Colorado-Boulder), Lynne Iglitzin (National Council for the Social Studies), Professor Stanley N. Katz (Princeton University), Professor Maeva Marcus (Georgetown University Law Center), Sheilah Mann (Project ’87), and Page Putnam Miller (National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History).
This project would not have been possible without funding from NEH. We also appreciate support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Johnson Foundation which enabled us to complete development of the lesson materials.
