Teaching with Primary Sources: Arkansas State Archives Lesson Plans & Activities
So often it is important to tie past events to the lives of students today. Students are eager to learn about the past if we can make it relevant to their lives. Quoting the old saw about the past repeating itself if we do not learn it leaves most students unconvinced. Instead, showing specific examples of this phenomenon occurring can be much more meaningful.
An example of tying a past event to current events can be found in the Arkansas State Archives’ lesson plan about Reconstruction, “Changing Rights in a Time of Turmoil.” In the included activity, students are asked to analyze news coverage of an event from history to better understand news bias.
This is a timely lesson, given the increasing amount of “fake news” found online. We often think of today’s students as being highly tech savvy. This, however, comes at a cost. While students are more able to find information on the web than their aged counterparts, they are more trusting of the material that they read.
The main goal of a media literacy program should be to give students the tools that will help them determine the veracity of a news story. Literacy at any level is an acquired skill that is developed through practice.
Teaching Reconstruction through Primary Sources
Old newspapers provide a great laboratory to exploring the idea of fake news. In the nineteenth century, newspapers were not unbiased reporting about events in a non-passionate manner. Instead, news editors crafted stories that upheld their preferred narrative, and it was expected. People read newspapers that fit their political point of view. A Whig in Arkansas would read The Arkansas Banner long before he would read the Arkansas Gazette, which catered to Democratic readers. Papers would often report stories in drastically differing ways. Editors used the paper to push their political agendas and readers chose newspapers which aligned with their preconceived political stances. While we may scoff at such partisan myopias, teachers can have students consider existing stereotypes like liberals tuning into cable news watch MSNBC while conservative viewers find themselves plugged into Fox News almost exclusively.
To explore how this dynamic works, the Arkansas State Archives developed a lesson plan based around events during Arkansas’s tumultuous Reconstruction era. One of the activities in the lesson plan explores this idea of media bias by looking at a riot that occurred in Conway County in 1868. The lesson plan takes two accounts of this event, one from the Morning Republican, a Republican newspaper based in Little Rock, and one from the Arkansas Gazette, which favored the Democrats in Arkansas. Students will find trying to describe what happened in objective terms is almost impossible due to the amount of editorial flourish the newspapers added to the bare facts.
Arkansas Standards in This Activity
Arkansas History:
Era3.3.AH.9-12.4 – Examine effects of Reconstruction in Arkansas using multiple, relevant historical sources
U.S. History:
Era5.2.8.6 – Evaluate successes and failures of Reconstruction
African American History:
CD 3.AAH.2 – Examine regional perspectives toward the political rights of African American men and women between 1820 and 1877
Reading Standards for Informational Texts
RI.11-12.1 – Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
RI.11-12.6 – Determine an author’s point of view, perspective, or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.
Questions to Guide Discussion
Although the stories from the two articles are much the same as far as narrative, it is the interpretation that offers the most variation. This variation is the key to unlocking how the stories were shaped. After reading both articles, students are asked to consider some questions. For instance, students are asked to speculate about who the sources for the articles were.
Were the sources eyewitnesses to the events they described?
Were they secondhand accounts that were further embellished by the articles’ authors?
Why would this matter?
Were the stories written to influence readers to take action?
In the end, what really happened in Conway County in 1868? Can we really be sure of what we read about the event?
Wrapping Up
Lessons like this and others provided by the Arkansas State Archives will give students the skills to evaluate what they read. The complete lesson and activity guide for the “Changing Rights in a Time of Turmoil” curriculum can be found at https://digitalheritage.arkansas.gov/lesson-plans/4/.
