Stuff You Don’t Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About The Crusades

Three Big Things:

1. The Crusades began as a response to Byzantine Emperor Alexius I’s request for military aid, but quickly evolved into a quest to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims – but with politics, greed, and even a little genuine religious conviction thrown into the mix.

2. The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) never reached the Holy Land because the Crusaders were diverted to attack Constantinople instead – the capital of the Byzantine Empire which had first reached out to the west for help. Not surprisingly, this was a major blow to the already shaky relations between Eastern and Western Christianity.

3. After nearly two centuries of largely futile bloodshed, the Crusades ended up connecting the East and West in unprecedented ways – introducing new trade goods, technologies, and ideas which left the West eager for more positive interactions.

Introduction

“The Crusades” have become a rhetorical device and loaded historical allusion for a wide range of social and political ideologies. Those leaning conservative tend to bust them out in the most glorified terms, as an example of passion and devoutness to which modern believers would do well to aspire. Those less interested in holy wars (literal or otherwise) cite them just as often as condemnation – an easy allusion suggesting misguided and destructive passions.

They were both, of course – but also lots of other things as well. To begin with, there were eight or nine separate Crusades, depending on how they’re counted, and in many of these, people participated for a wide variety of reasons and with very different understandings of just what was happening and why. The most recurring themes were a desire to earn God’s favor, limited concern with who or what they actually attacked or destroyed to do so, and a mother lode of one of history’s favorite schemes: “unintended consequences.” Continue reading “H2H: The Crusades (1095-1291)” →

Stuff You Don’t Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About the Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement

Three Big Things:

1. The Xhosa were a South African people threatened by European settlers beginning in the 17th century.

2. In 1856, a young Xhosa girl encountered two supernatural strangers who told her a time of renewal was coming—but only after the Xhosa destroyed all their existing cattle and crops.

3. The resulting Cattle-Killing Movement left the Xhosa devastated and divided. Over 150 years later, they remain one of South Africa’s poorest groups.

Background

The Xhosa were (and are) a major cultural group from the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. The land was fertile with plenty of fresh water sources for their cattle—which were extremely important to them. Like the Zulu, they descended from the Bantu people who had migrated from the northwest centuries earlier. Xhosa is still one of the most-spoken languages in Africa and was the native tongue of Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and the (possibly fictional) Black Panther.

Continue reading “H2H: The Xhosa Cattle Killings (Updated)” →

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007)

The Way To Resolve Racial Disparity Is To Not Despair Over Race

Three Big Things:

1. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007) involved two school districts using race as one factor among many to achieve and maintain integration and diversity in their schools.

2. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that these race-conscious assignment plans violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, effectively limiting how schools could pursue integration.

3. The decision highlighted a fundamental split on the Court about whether the Constitution requires “colorblind” policies or allows race-conscious remedies to address ongoing segregation and promote diversity.

Background

By 2007, it had been more than half a century since Brown v. Board of Education declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” You’d think that would be plenty of time to sort things out, but American public education remained stubbornly segregated in many places. Sometimes this resulted from ongoing resistance — the ugly protests and acts of violence that produced some of the most iconic photographs of the Civil Rights Era. Other efforts were only slightly more subtle, like the sudden proliferation of “segregation academies” that were gradually rebranded as “private religious education.” Often the problem arose as a natural side-effect of related issues: housing patterns, economic inequality, and what social scientists politely call “residential sorting” (and what everyone else recognizes as “white flight”).

Continue reading “PICS v. Seattle SD1 (2007)” →

This is a really long post that probably won’t be of interest to everyone. As an old guy who doesn’t tend to get too enthused about new technology or the latest silver education bullet, however, I thought there might be a handful of others out there uncertain whether or not AI might prove useful in their classrooms, and if so, exactly what that might look like.

There are enough “AI revolutionized my teaching!” articles out there already, and I’m not sure that’s what’s happening anyway – for me, at least. What I have discovered is how useful AI can be in helping me rework content and edit materials. It’s also proven to be a wildly efficient way to clarify content – both for my students, and (if I’m being honest) myself.

Feel free to roll your eyes and dismiss me as intellectually lazy, but world history offers an infinite variety of minutia which is rarely worth pursuing if it means hours of digging through resource books or scrolling through pages of Google results which are mostly publications from scholarly journals you can’t actually read without a student or ID from a university in another country. On the other hand, “Claude, who exactly was Bishop ______ who appears in the trial records of Joan of Arc? He seems to have all this authority but vanishes halfway through the proceedings. What was up with that?” is like asking the History Gods to pour you a fresh decanter of sparkling insight and amusement on your way down the rabbit hole.

In any case, I thought it might be enlightening to simply share a recent conversation I had with Claude, my favorite AI. While Claude is at times a bit TOO encouraging (“That’s a very perceptive question!”), it’s equally willing to act as editor or collaborator. While I’ve been impressed with its ability to create custom content tailored to my classroom needs, I’ve been less thrilled with the results when I’ve experimented with asking Claude to create outlines or create quizzes – but maybe that’s just me.

This is a fairly typical exchange, chosen not because it’s all that exciting but because it’s fairly representative of what I’ve like about this new toy so far. Make of it what you will.

Continue reading “Conversations With Claude” →

The concept of this activity is not new. I first encountered it at an AP workshop several years ago with a fictional high school football game (although I can’t for the life of me find the original activity or the name of the consultant who shared it). The OER Project has a brief version of something similar (involving school lunch policies) as an introduction to their sourcing activities and resources, which are worth checking out all on their own.

This particular manifestation, however, is mine – with a little help from Claude.ai. I’ve been considering a post about my experiences as an old man and presumed classroom veteran using Claude as a tool to prepare for the upcoming year, but it’s been difficult to put into words. I’m far from a transformative educator when it comes to anything technological, so it can’t be one of those “HOW I QUIT WHINING AND REVOLUTIONIZED LEARNING IN MY CLASSROOM WITH AI IN SEVEN EASY STEPS!” posts which seem to be everywhere at the moment. Also, I haven’t actually used any of the materials Claude has helped me develop yet, so – while I’ve learned a great deal and am cautiously optimistic about some of the possibilities – I hesitate to get all preachy about it just yet.

Continue reading “The Basketball Game (A Sourcing Activity)” →