Rationale

=Rationale:= As our group discussed Elie Weisel's //Night// and Sherman Alexie's //The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian//, we continually came back to issues of power and power struggles. Through these discussions it became evident that we all were interested in using the books to approach issues of oppression and suppression in history, as well as approaching familiar issues (the Civil Rights Movement, the Holocaust, and the bloody history of early America and Native Americans) through an unfamiliar lens. We were interested in what makes one story more "true" than another. Is //Night// more true than //The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian//, because one is purported to be a biography and one a piece of fiction? Both contain real places, and Sherman Alexie's novel has many biographical elements. And if Elie Wiesel's book is considered true, what effect, if any, does the fact that it was written ten years after the fact have on its "authenticity?"

Ultimately, our unit has taken on the task of asking the questions, what is history? Are the concepts of power and history social constructs? By asking these questions we ask students to think both about the legacy of oppression in the United States and elsewhere, and also consider the methodologies used—such as physical borders, forced language change, and a refusal to accept certain stories as “historical,” to name a few—to shape and form our concepts of social groups. We have approached our guiding text, //Night//, from a universalist stance. We see the book as a way to approach many other issues in our own society in the past, present and future. We chose to spend some time on the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in the first week, and revisit it in the third, but for the most part we have chosen to "use" the Holocaust as a way to address other specific issues we view as crucial to students of history.

In many ways, we see this unit as a good beginning or end to a history class--as a way to introduce the problematic nature of history and historical nature to students either as they enter into a history class, or as a way to wrap up a class and suggest to students that their learning and thinking can stretch beyond our classroom's walls. In either case, we view this unit both as a method of teaching about a few particular social movements, but also as a way to suggest to students that history and historiography are constantly shifting and always changing. We view this as an integral way of thinking in order to be a citizen in our country who is capable of working his or her way through often different and/or contradictory subject matter.

It is our hope that through this unit and by considering these questions, students will both gain a better understanding of their own approaches to and beliefs about historical knowledge of the past and the present. Additionally, our goal is to ask students to question what they take as fact or fiction, and consider the implications of labeling one account “truer,” or “more factual,” than another. The ability to be literate beyond simply reading words on a page is crucial to becoming a fully functional member of our society. By not taking the historical record at face value, students will ideally be able to both inform their own opinions while also becoming more skeptical readers of media and society. We are not aiming to teach students that what they have learned in history classes is wrong, but that they should be aware that there is always more than one side to every story, and to consider the implications of deciding on a “best story,” rather than a “full story.”

We view this unit as being suitable for juniors or seniors in high school. Additionally, we think the unit would be suitable for either a United States history course or an elective course such as International and Social Relations. We have chosen to use a broad range of instructional activities with the hopes of creating differentiated instruction that will reach more students in more ways. In terms of the specific outline for the unit, we chose week one to be an introductory week introducing students to some of the history behind both Jewish and Native American culture. The second week moves beyond these basics into a more complex conversation on the Civil Rights Movement as a way of bridging different social movements. The third week takes a step beyond and asks students to reevaluate the way they approach the discipline of history, and consider the complications seemingly simple ideas.

Both the curriculum for high school students in social studies as well as the current political and social landscape of the United States ask students to be thoughtful and complex thinkers, able to both read and interpret various types of information. Thus, our decision to vary our instructional techniques from group discussions, to a debate, to lectures and structured listening ask students to interpret information that comes at them in a variety of different modes and helps them exercise this ability in a safe space. Additionally, the fact that we have chosen a broad range of texts for students to read and analyze benefits our differentiated techniques, because often in the "real world," different texts require different forms of literacy. We hope to begin the transition for students towards a more broad literary ability within their own lives.