Welcome to the Triple A Learning blog for DP History. The most recent blog posts are listed below and you can access the blog archive by following the appropriate link in the panel on the left.
2012 is a year of the dragon, as were 2000, 1988 and the auspicious year 1976.
1976 was a year of turmoil and tremendous change in China. Both Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong died, leaving a power vacuum. After the Gang of Four was defeated, the innocuous Hua Guofeng was head of the government as Deng Xiaoping consolidated control.
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Here at Triple A Learning, we’ve always supported the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) cause. With a mission to “empower the world’s poorest children through education“, who could fail to be moved by its ideals.
while it has little to do with IB history, I couldn’t resist commemorating Guy Fawkes Day. Even in places where the day does not contain burnt effigies or fireworks, the Gunpowder plot has become known, due largely to the sci-fi film V for Vendetta, which brings me to something that does relate to IB history: the use of film to convey history.
Most of us make use of documentary film footage where available to give students visual portrayals of what we study to complement lectures, readings and class exercises. Fewer of us make use of cinema, although we may reference it in our classes. However, fiction is often an excellent vehicle for giving students a real sense of the way in which people lived. “Lives of others’ or ‘Dr. Zhivago’ may not have really happened but they are truly reflective of both the times in which they were created and the times that they recall. This makes them doubly valuable – but students need to understand how and why.
After watching a video on the Berlin Wall one of my students commented that the Americans didn’t need any more propaganda than the wall to show the difference between communism and democracy. In a recent post I remarked that August was the 50th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall, but the wall was only part of the story.
In fact, Berlin remained a center of tension in the Cold war, and a number of historians on both sides of the wall saw it as allaying those tensions. With the Wall, all was fixed it would seem.
1956 was an incredible year for the Eastern European bloc. In this year Khrushchev delivered his famous – or notorious – Secret Speech and Poland and Hungary responded with revolutionary actions with possibly disastrous consequences.
When examining the events in Hungary it is important to look at Poland and compare the actions in those two countries. How did Gomulka’s program compare with Nagy’s? Where did their programs differ? Why did Khrushchev send troops into Budapest but turned around those heading to Warsaw?
I recently read Schiff’s “Cleopatra” and it created an amazing lesson for me. The majority of the book is about historical inquiry and the lack of data available on the woman herself. This lack, however, has not prevented people from forming an image of her based on the agendas of those who recorded her life peripherally (through the lens of men who surrounded her). Although there is no reliable portrait of her and perhaps one word by her hand, we all have clear ideas of her. Where do these ideas come from? George Bernard Shaw wrote that most of his information came from William Shakespeare – not exactly a renowned historian.
What does that tell us about what we know about history – especially ancient history? But also – even if we don’t know things definitively does that make us less wrong?
Hmmmmm
Now that it is mid September most northern hemisphere schools are starting up and teachers are fine tuning their lesson plans and reviewing last year’s results. In the southern hemisphere, EE are safely away to the examiners and teachers are preparing for the IB exams that will commence in less than two months. This, then, seems like a time to review the results and think about areas of focus.
In history, the world average is not a simple thing as it depends on Time Zone, Prescribed Subject and HL option. For students doing Communism in Crisis and History of the Americas HL in TZ1, the average was 4.11. For Peacemaking, Europe/Middle East in TZ2 it was 4.55. Others fell elsewhere.
The significance of Berlin is highlighted by its explicit mention in the 20th century world history syllabus – an explanation of how the communists used this to maintain its regime is time well spent for pragmatic reasons.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the closing of boders within Berlin. Berliners went to sleep one night in a united city and work to a city divided by barbed wire and patrolled by guards. Over time, the barbed wire became a wall that was in place until 1989.
Most of us who teach the Cold War cover this event and the ongoing Berlin Crisis but it is more difficult to explain the relevance of the events as our students have been born after the end of communism. Indeed, the idea of a bipolar world is one that they don’t always understand.
Each year, come August, there are ceremonies across the globe to remember and reflect upon the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
While this event marks the end of the War in the Pacific, in Asia the significance of these two dates is buried under other momentous events that occurred in the region around the same time. For Japan and the Japanese these two days and those that followed were truly horrific. They had to cope with the devastation caused by the bombing, the loss of lives and invasions from the Asian mainland and for most, the acceptance that Japan had lost the war .
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