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|  | The following suggestions are taken from the Teacher's Guide -- AP European History.
- "3 Minutes-An Investigative Journal." Students role-play news correspondents on a program styled after television's 60 Minutes to get to the essence of an era. They investigate why a particular event or person can help someone understand a particular historical era and then prepare a 3-minute report. Students receive an introductory paragraph, which everyone must use. They prepare their report, work up cue cards, and have their report videotaped. Their report must last at least 2 minutes and 45 seconds and may not go over 3 minutes.
Students also prepare commercials about imagined products specific to the era. The commercials may be as creative as they can make them and may last for as long as 30 seconds each. The commercials are interspersed with the 3-minute reports on the video. Students learn how to use an event or person to describe the essence of an era; how to be precise and concise in articulating their ideas; and how to go beyond the text and do a bit of historiographic digging.
- Writing Resumés. A teacher at New Canaan High School in New Canaan, Connecticut, has her students write a resumé for a seventeenth-century character. She begins by handing out sample resumés. Next, students pick a character and conduct research on that person. Finally, they write the resumé, including a description of the desired job.
- Preparing Questions (DBQs and multiple-choice questions). This exercise was contributed by a teacher at Durham Academy in North Carolina. Students take turns devising and presenting to the class a thematic question that is relevant to a particular era. One 20-minute presentation is scheduled every other Friday beginning in November. The day before the presentation of the question, the student hands out to the class a timeline and four documents to use in answering the question. Two of the documents must be in a form that is not primarily text. Students may use sources such as film clips, slides, CD-ROMS, posters, and books. Three other students make up multiple-choice questions on the same topic with rationales for the correct answers. After the timeline and documents are presented, the three students hand out copies of their multiple-choice questions.
- Making Lists. One way to provoke a debate about what is important in history is to make up a list of approximately 20 significant items that belong to an era or century. Make the list diverse. For example, a list for the latter half of the nineteenth century could include such items as the Berlin Congress of 1878; the Franco-Prussian War (1870); Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859); the International Working Men's Association (1864); Robert Koch's discovery that germs are the cause of disease (1880s); the opening of the Suez Canal (1869); Gottlieb Daimler's invention of the internal combustion engine (1886); and Queen Victoria's Jubilee of 1887. For homework, students identify each of the items. In class, they select about half of the items for a timeline of the most important events of the era and defend their choices in a class discussion.
- Trials. Most controversial historical figures can be put on trial. Trials require a judge, a defense team, a prosecution team, and witnesses. Some teachers do not include the actual figure, the defendant, because that person's testimony could unduly sway the jury. It also takes more skill to weave a case or a defense out of the testimony of other participants and bystanders to the events. A clear charge against the accused avoids confusion. Broad, amorphous charges, such as "crimes against humanity," are difficult to prove or refute. Seizing power, persecuting minorities, and waging unjust wars are more fruitful topics for budding barristers. "What is a crime?" is a useful preliminary question. Are crimes culturally or politically defined? Is the crime defined by the victor?
- The French Revolution: Trial of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Students play the roles of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, a prosecuting attorney, and a defense attorney. The remaining students play nobles, clergy, bourgeois, urban poor, and peasants.
All groups conduct research on the French Revolution. The nobles and some of the clergy develop arguments in defense of the monarchy and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as rulers. The bourgeoisie, the urban poor, the peasants, and the rest of the clergy develop arguments against the monarchy. The attorneys are responsible for organizing the trial. The prosecution gives an opening statement, questions witnesses, and eventually gives a final argument. The defense also gives an opening statement, questions witnesses, and gives a final argument. Group members must submit a five-page paper describing the testimony they would give. Papers are graded on the quality of the research, the quality of the writing, the use of primary sources, and the use of logic, examples, and supporting statements.
- Debates. Debates sharpen verbal skills and encourage students to think quickly. When you think about it, history is debate topics. Historians argue over causation, responsibility for events, missed opportunities, and just about everything else. The essential elements of a debate are a clear topic, two teams (affirmative and negative), and a format that includes opening arguments, a rebuttal, and concluding arguments. (AP students usually like to do some free-form questioning as well, but that is not debate.) The remaining students in the class serve as voters. Some teachers schedule several debates over a semester or year and require each student to play a principal in one debate.
- The Renaissance. A Massachusetts teacher helps his students grapple with significant historical questions by having them use their textbook and their general knowledge to define the Renaissance. Then he divides the class in half and assigns one half The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, and the other half Utopia, by Thomas More. He has them analyze the book they are reading by answering the following questions:
- What did Machiavelli or More say? What were their basic ideas?
- How did they say it? What was their style? How did they support their ideas?
- To what extent do the books fit the characteristics of the Renaissance?
Then each half of the class teaches their book to the other half by answering the questions in class. In this way, students practice analyzing serious texts and dealing with historical periodization.
- The Late Nineteenth Century: "The Talk Show of the Century." When studying the intellectual movements of the late nineteenth century, a Connecticut teacher has her students participate in "The Talk Show of the Century." She tells her class that some historians claim the ideas of the late nineteenth century revolutionized attitudes and that most of the twentieth-century trends had their roots in the theories of key thinkers of the late 1800s. Students are responsible for understanding and teaching the core ideas of a nineteenth-century intellectual; they must discuss how the ideas have been manifested in the twentieth century. Then her students debate the merits and demerits of the theory and its twentieth-century results. For the purposes of the role-play, the setting she chooses is the Paris Exposition of 1899, but she requires students to include twentieth-century implications. She offers the following examples to stimulate students' thinking:
- Karl Marx: Why are the Russians electing Communists again? Our Communist Party is tiny. Why?
- Emmeline Pankhurst: Has the evolution of women's rights contributed to the "breakdown of the family"? In what ways has society benefited from the women's movement?
- Charles Darwin: Could the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia be justified as "survival of the fittest"?
- Friedrich Nietzsche: Can we "will to power" or be anything we want as long as we work hard and have some ability? Does it matter how we accomplish our goals? Was Ayn Rand right?
- Vincent van Gogh: Is modern art "garbage"?
- George Bernard Shaw: Is "theatre of the absurd" absurd?
- Sigmund Freud: Has psychology helped us or made us neurotic about our neuroses?
- Max Weber: Is the study of sociology a valid discipline or just biased observations?
- August Comte: Can reason alone create harmonious societies?
- Imperialism: Are multinational corporations just a form of "economic imperialism"? Why should Eastern Europe and China welcome IBM?
Summer Reading. Students read the chapter on the medieval mind from William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance-Portrait of an Age (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992). They are required to write a one-page summary of the chapter. Then they select three topics mentioned in the chapter and write a one-page report about each topic. From the list of individuals on the last page of the chapter they select three and complete a one-page summary on each. The typed and completed assignment is due on the first day of school.
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