OUSD | De Tocqueville's Ghost : American History Project

Written historical accounts can never be the same thing as the past itself, they cannot include everything that happened from every perspective. Historians construct interpretations based on the questions they ask and the evidence they gather. For this reason, they are constantly challenging, revising and rewriting historical accounts. Some historians, for example, understand the events leading up to the Civil War as a moral conflict, while others stress the economic nature of the divisions between the North and South as the key to understanding what led to the conflict. In addition, interpretations of the past are also subject to influences that reflect the historian's own particular time and place. For example, many historians in the past have seen American westward expansion in the 19th century as a sign of progress. Today, environmental historians view this period less optimistically.

The goal of this particular standard is for students to be able to understand how historians construct history and to construct coherent historical narratives of their own as they work with evidence, accounts, and other historical narratives. It is also for students to understand the similarities and differences among histori-ans' accounts of the past, and those of novelists, filmmakers, storytellers, and others.

Constructing and comparing historical accounts often involves making moral judgments. As Peter Seixas, a history educator, points out, " ... our ability to make moral judgments in history requires that we entertain the notion of an historically transcendent human commona-ity, a recognition of our humanity in the person of historical actors, at the same time that we open every door to the possibility that those actors differ from us in ways so profound that we perpetually risk misunderstanding them."

Grappling with the vital moral and ethical issues illuminated by the study of history provides an opportunity for students to better understand themselves and their present conditions. They get to see how people worked for, or against, change. They examine actions inspired by ideals of equality and social justice, as well as self-interest and greed. They see the constraints on people's decisions and the intended as well as the unintended cons-quences of their actions. All of this helps students to gain perspective and understanding, to help them make crucial decisions about their participation as citizens in their own commu-nity.

As students construct coherent narratives, the multiple viewpoints within a student popula-tion is also an important component of study-ing history. For example, because many of our students come from families that recently emigrated from Southeast Asia they may provide a different perspective on the Vietnam War than students whose families were in the United States during the war. If historical understanding requires the consideration of a variety of perspectives, then a classroom's diversity can be an important part of that process. Multiple perspectives on the meaning and significance of historical events and indi-viduals can emerge through the diverse views and interpretations students develop as they discuss and write about the history they encounter.