Book Description

This document is part of a series of units in United States history. It is designed for teachers to use in teaching colonial history and the American Revolution in greater depth than that provided in many textbooks. The unit contains 16 chapters, the first of which explains the unit's focus on four kinds of questions of interest to historians. These questions are: (1) contextual questions, (2) factual questions, (3) moral or value questions, and (4) questions of explanation. Chapters 2-4 look primarily at contextual questions, introducing students to the social, political, economic, and ideological settings of the Revolution. The central section of the unit, chapters 5-15, is concerned with both factual and moral or value questions. Students not only learn about the events that led up to the Revolution, they also compare conflicting accounts of these events. They learn a three-criterion test for determining whether specific acts of protest are justified and apply this test to a number of examples of colonial protest. A central activity in this portion of the unit is reenactment of the trial of the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. Following this experience, students examine the similarities and differences between the Boston Massacre and the confrontation between Vietnam war protesters and a contingent of the National Guard at Kent State University 200 years later. Other major activities in this portion of the unit include analyzing the Declaration of Independence and debating whether the Revolution was justified. The final chapter invites students to act as historians, choosing among three schools of historical interpretation and writing essays detailing how the interpretation explains the Revolution's causes. (DK)