H. Marcuse: Lessons from The Diary of Anne Frank Teaching primary sources

H. Marcuse: Lessons from The Diary of Anne Frank

• Teaching primary sources

• The Diary as a primary source

• Lessons from the Diary

Teaching Primary Sources

• Educational research (Wineburg, AERJ, 1991)

• Historians engage in dialog with sources
• Students read to glean information

• Consequences:

• Students simulate without learning
• Students trust textbooks more than docs., BUT (study by Terrie Epstein, Social Education, 1997): whites: textbooks, teachers, library Blacks: families, teachers, movies

Cognitive Learning Studies

• Text + meaningful images best

• No matter for “experienced learners”
• Visuals help inexperienced learners

• “Coolness factor”

• Motivates and engages students

• Distraction effect

• Decorative color, motion decrease learning

Learning process

• Engage the students, “pick them up where they are”

• Package for interest, not distraction

• Crucial: Teacher modeling of learning

• Don’t “know it all” (present only facts)
• Show process of arriving at conclusions
• Engage in dialog with sources (and students)

The Diary as a Primary Source

• Historical context (personal)

• Anne born in Germany, 1929
• Fled to Holland, 1933

• Historical context (structural)

• Great Depression
• Radical solutions appeal to many

Simultaneity: for connection

• Anne 4 years old in 1933

• Biographical connection

• My father born in 1929
• Students’ grandparents
• Anne would be 73 now

• Timeline exercise?

Core for ALL Lessons

• READ THE DIARY!

• It has definite literary quality
• Anne supplies the context

• THEN discuss other issues

• History of the WW2, Germany, Holocaust
• Racism, persecution
• Quality, goals of life

My lesson today

• The Diary as a primary source

• Original vs. authentic

• Reliable, true to the original

• Many versions of the Diary: Many truths?

Content Standards

• 10.8 Students analyze the causes and consequences of World War II.

• 5. Analyze the Nazi policy of pursuing racial purity, especially against the European Jews; its transformation into the Final Solution; and the Holocaust that resulted in the murder of six million Jewish civilians.
• 6. Discuss the human costs of the war, with particular attention to the civilian and military losses in Russia, Germany, Britain, the United States, China, and Japan.

Analysis Skills Standards

• “to be learned through, and applied to, the content standards”

• K-5: Students differentiate between primary and secondary sources. Also: sequence, similarity/ difference, connection, location

• 6-8: distinguish fact from opinion; detect different historical points of view

9-12

• Historical Research, Evidence, and Point of View

• 1. Students distinguish valid arguments from fallacious arguments in historical interpretations.

• 2. Students identify bias and prejudice in historical interpretations.

• 3. Students evaluate debates among historians concerning alternative interpretations of the past, including an analysis of authors' use of evidence and the distinctions between sound generalizations and misleading oversimplifications.

3 Basic Versions of Anne’s Diary

More versions, more audiences

• Dutch publisher: T II - 15 deletions (1947)

• French translation (1950)

• German translation (1950): typescript II

• English translation (1952): hybrid (7 back in)

• Critical edition of versions a, b, c (1986)

• Definitive edition (1995)

• Redoes synthesis by Otto in 1945-46

• Stage versions (1955; 1997); film (1959)

Old vs. New Technology

• For some things, bells and whistles don’t work as well

• Now for text analysis, word by word --I’ll use “old technology”: overhead proj.