9.i.08 Spring term begins: Revolution and Constitution

Last night: Wednesday 9.i.08
HIS 301: Revolution and Constitution

I have been looking forward to this class, and was overjoyed to see the small enrollment, because it means greater specificity and mobility for the class.

My basic thesis (expressed in the syllabus) is that the American Revolution is not limited to the American War of Independence, but is rather an ongoing process, the record of which is the Constitution of the United States of America. A useful metaphor here is the Constitution as the DNA of the revolution; just as events impact DNA and cause alterations in the code which then institutes new forms, just so events impact the Constitution and institute new forms within the society to which the Constitution refers.

I asked the students to prepare brief responses to the following questions:

Why did you take this course rather than another? What do you expect to gain from the course? What do you expect from the instructor? What do you expect to gain from the class environment?

I also asked them to list specific concerns they have for or about the course, particularly listing skills or information they wish to gain.

Here are the students' responses (slightly edited):

I'm taking this course because I feel that it is important to know and study the constitution. The subject itself intrigues me. I want to gain the ability to know the constitution and its relevance in politics and society today. I am hoping that the course material is presented in a way that is as interesting as the name of the course itself. Open discussion of the topics presented, I feel, [is] important.

I was interested enough [in] the content of the class as opposed to the other courses offered also I've taken all the other courses (except for film history). What do I expect to gain? A better understanding of the time period and sequence of events. What do I expect from the instructor? To present the information, [and maybe] go into detail about certain events. What do I expect from the class environment? I don't expect anything. I'm awful at dates. As of now I don't know much about the revolution or constitution, but I guess that's why I'm here.

I felt it of interest to learn more about our country's history since I know very little. I feel everyone should learn some American history. A knowledge of how we progressed. A solid understandable breakdown of ideas and information.

I chose this course b/c I've always been interested in our history, but failed to grasp our rights fully, in the political sense. More thorough knowledge of how our society has achieved its present reality. I guess just a more informed insight -- maybe breaking down the fundamentals? It's important to understand how we (as a country) function through the government. It's embarrassing that I understand/remember so little of it, so I wanted to remedy that.

Why am I taking this course? I want to gain an understanding of American history, and it seemed like a good choice. What I expect to gain, again, is a better understanding of the concepts and ideas of this county which I happen to belong to. I would expect your insights and superior knowledge of the subject matter to help us understand and learn in the class. I would expect some class participation to make it more interesting. I hate silent classes. I don't like to talk constantly, but some debating and group discussion would be nice.

I also answered these questions myself: Because I'm paid for it. Because I really enjoy the subject and think it's essential knowledge for USAmericans. I want to gain a clearer understanding of what young folks KNOW about the US Rev. and Constitution & what they BELIEVE about it. What I expect from the students is active engagement with scholarship and citizenship. In the class environment, I'm looking for collegiality, given the background of the students. The skills I am looking to develop are facilitation and discussion, listening, and information about the constitution itself and court cases relative to constitutional law.

I thought the student responses were, first, pretty much what I expected, but also usefully pointed in the direction of conceptualization rather than mere memorization.

When I first proposed the course, I wanted it to be listed as MDS (Multi-disciplinary studies) because I didn't want to scare folks away with the label "history". But perhaps this course can be so intriguing that word gets around and history courses become a fun thing. But for administrative reasons we labelled it HIS, and sure enough, enrollment was low.

This is fine, in a sense; it means we can ditch the echoing classroom and find some tables to commandeer in a local coffee shop and create a different sort of learning environment. I particularly want to do this for four reasons:

1) I am curious to see what effects the coffee shop environment has on learning.
2) I want to promote the college as a "forward-looking" institution, and the public exposure of such a class as Rev & Const could be useful to the school.
3 I want to make a conscious and conscientious link to the role of coffee shops and other public houses to the independence movement, and similar institutions to other movements in the revolution.
4) I like coffee shops.

I talked briefly about the idea of meeting elsewhere, but I did not outline all the reasons above; I also asked for the students to meet in the regularly scheduled room on Monday.

I am a bit concerned about the... how can I say this... variability of the students' capacities for independent work. This is a 300-level course, but there is no prerequisite course providing information, so if I ask the students to prep anything I shall have to ensure that the quality of it is sufficient to carry the presentations built from it.

If we meet at the Prince Street Cafe and I borrow a laptop. I believe I will be able to use the wifi internet there to access on-line resources such as the Avalon project, providing us with documentation as needed. This is really exciting in its possibilities.
I will have to test the capacities of laptops tomorrow or Monday.

I had the students take a pre-test on the Constitution; the results were generally poor, which is indeed what I expected.

If I may rant for a moment: here we have voting-age people whose understanding of the basic structure of government of their country (which after all in its written form is not more than twenty-five or thirty pages long) is poor -- and these are "educated" people. We need to amend this situation. Constitutional literacy cannot really be brought about by a single-day celebration: that is a typical congressional band-aid. How about a consistent emphasis upon excellence in education, backed with sufficient (hell, even excess) funding?

While I'm at it, how about funding pre-schools and elementary schools MORE than high schools and colleges? It's at that basic level that the problems arise. If a person is still functionally illiterate when he or she emerges from elementary school, how can we expect success for her or him in high school? This is a national crisis, and frankly, if we can't solve this one, it won't matter how we do against international terrorism, or how well we secure oil reserves. But if we can resolve our educational woes, we should be able to resolve just about everything else.

I realize I'm biased - but it's the right bias.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. High school and elementary school day schedules should be switched. Put the elementary-school kids into the classrooms at dawn. Bring the high-schoolers in about 9. They'll still be sluggish, but they'll be better for the extra hour or so of sleep. Frankly, I think no school for adolescents should be admitting kids much more before 10 a.m. But, as my daughter says, "that's just me".

So, the students in Rev and Const think that the American Revolution = the War of Independence. This is typical, and troubling. Often students understand the civil rights movement to be over and done with; they think that women's rights have been resolved by the 19th amendment; they think that slavery can never exist again because of the 13th, or that secession is no longer an option. So, there is a lot of work ahead. The question is, where should the work begin?

This class session, I spent time asking the students to define "constitution" and "revolution". When I asked students to name revolutions, they came up with this list:

the American revolution (a bit obvious, since I had it already written on the board)
the rock 'n' roll revolution (which led to a fruitful discussion of the ubiquitous use of "revolution" to advertise new products)
the French Revolution

Matt Doyle suggested the meaning of revolution as "a new beginning" (as opposed to an old beginning).

Dan Cooke suggested that revolutions are often rebellions. He also noted that revolutions are radical changes. We then discussed the term "radical".

After suggesting that the French revolution was in fact a series of revolutions, I added the Russian Revolution (which was also a series), and just at the end of the period Jessica Andrascik added the Industrial revolution.

I distributed copies of the syllabus and of the Constitution of the United States of America, requesting that the students bring these documents with them regularly to class.

I did not review the syllabus, and so will need to do this on Monday.

Next class session I will begin to present a basic outline of the sequence of events in the American revolution up to the founding of the United States. I do think some sense of dates is important, and I will have to think about how important.



Over all, I felt the class session was successful.