Unawares

     Teaching often catches me unawares. Little moments creep up and surprise me with a sudden plunge into a depth unseen. With no advanced notice I find myself gasping in surprise at a startling revelation. Perhaps this is what keeps me coming back. Humans are marvelously intricate and subtle and each day I watch as seventy-odd young people unpack some new bit of data. Sometimes they look at me, hoping I kept the receipt in order to get their money back. But more often, they joyfully examine this new thing; turning it this way and that as they seek to fit it into their growing body of knowledge. Occasionally, and these moments are teaching at its most sublime, they unveil a new insight an unexpected vista spreading out before us in pristine beauty.  In those moments, the relationship is not one of teacher and students. It shifts and we become fellow explorers on an amazing journey of discovery together. This happened to me recently.

     I use debate to help my eighth grade American History students review for chapter tests. Aside from covering the material in an enjoyable format, I get a chance to help them develop reasoning skills. They initially balk at the requirement to eschew emotion and argument, but as the term passes they find great joy in developing a good, logical argument. Some of them find particular pleasure in marshalling facts into an unassailable formation. A few discover that they enjoy public speaking. And everyone hungers for the chance to be one of the judges and make decisions. They hear about the debates while they are in seventh grade and savor their arrival at this plateau of ability. Once the students understand how debates work, I enjoy this time almost as much as they do. Our most recent debate centered on the Treaty of Paris which ended the American Revolution; specifically the requirement to return Torrie property to its rightful owners. I set up the scenario so that one team represents a Torrie family which had fled to Canada and returned after the Treaty of Paris only to find another family had moved in and occupied their land. The other team represents the occupying family.  Each team argues from the standpoint that they alone should occupy the land; however, the judges frequently develop some sort of creative way to solve this problem. These debates usually take about three days of class-time. In the most recent event I learned something new.

     Like all other history teachers, I continually harp about the need to carefully examine primary source documents, holding them up as the holy grail of historical thought and accuracy.  This day, the team which represented the occupying family came in loaded for bear. I could tell from their demeanor, their excited whispering, their heavily underlined, circled, and annotated papers that something was afoot. They spoke first and very quickly unveiled their discovery. The Treaty of Paris did not “require” the returning of the property! I was a bit surprised as we normally teach about the requirement for returning of seized property. It is, after all, a generally agreed upon interpretation of the treaty.  Well, this group had taken the time to read the pertinent section of the treaty and had uncovered some very important language. I quote directly from the treaty, “It is agreed that Congress shall earnestly recommend it to the legislatures of the respective states to provide for the restitution of all estates, rights, and properties, which have been confiscated…” Those pesky words, “…shall earnestly recommend…” Frankly I was surprised and had to look it up in order to make sure, but there it was in black and white, a new wrinkle that changed my view. The other team and I struggled momentarily to reorient ourselves to this new bit of data.

     My students had done it to me again, surprised me with excellent scholarship that refreshed my own view of history. I reveled in the moment as the tables turned and the teacher found himself the student. This is history at its best when the historian peruses some dusty tome and uncovers a bit of data that enhances our understanding of how our world assumed its current shape. Aside from the changes I will now need to make in my presentation of the Treaty of Paris, I now have more color to add to the next chapter on the Articles of Confederation. You see that language reflects the prevailing view of our nation at its birth. Under the Articles of Confederation we struggled with an almost powerless central government and here was the result. “Congress shall earnestly recommend.” Our own government was powerless to make its own citizenry do the right thing and return that which was stolen. I love learning, it often catches me unawares.