Tricotomania and more

I picked up Donna Jo Napoli’s Fire in the Hills at the library the other week. We’ve read some of her work before (The King of Mulberry Street) and really enjoyed it. Excellent historical fiction. This one is shelved in the teen section and refers to things younger kids might not be ready for (like rape and prostitution; no vivid descriptions or anything, but recognition that it happened). But this is another excellent book about WWII that focuses on something that I certainly haven’t come across much.

The main character is an Italian boy, Roberto, who is 14 at the beginning of the story and 16 by the end. The novel covers the period from 1943 to the end of the war and tells the story of Roberto’s return to his home city of Venice. Through flashbacks you get some of the story of how he came to be on an American ship attacking Sicily at the beginning of the book and some idea of what he’s seen of the war before this story begins. I notice on the jacket that it is a sequel to Stones in the Water. We haven’t read the first book and that didn’t affect our enjoyment of this at all.

The bulk of the book deals with Roberto’s involvement with the Italian resistance, the partigiani. This is fascinating material and gives a very interesting perspective on the war. First of all it indicates how complicated allegiances were and how and why they might have shifted. You get a view of the war from the ground but kind of from the margins.

But you also get a very good sense of both the horror of war and how people might respond to that. It is interesting that Roberto has seen a lot of horror and this has made him more pacifist. He doesn’t want to kill anyone. This is treated as a valued option within the story and he finds many ways to help the resistance that don’t involve killing anyone. This aspect of the story provides a realistic treatment of some very complicated ethical dillemmas. And they are treated well. We see the necessity of fighting back against brutality. We see the illogic of much of the violence. And we see a very human character grapple with notions of honour and pacifism. There are no easy answers and the book doesn’t give any. There is no Hollywood ending.

For people who want to avoid representations of violence and brutality, you won’t want to read this book. We all respond to representations of violence differently and we need to make our own judgements. For those who are prepared to read about violence if it is dealt with well, I recommend this book. It certainly doesn’t pull any punches on the brutality of war. But it doesn’t glorify violence either or provide unnecessarily graphic detail. There is no attempt at some kind of sado-masochistic pleasure and the violence is not there to entertain. But war is brutal and this is not glossed over.

Tigger did not seem upset by the book though we haven’t talked about it in detail. She did say that it was definitely a daytime book. I would not recommend this as a bedtime read aloud.

As with many of the best historical novels, there are some notes at the end providing some of the basic facts. In addition, the songs of the partigiani are an important part of the story and the author directs you to websites where you can hear some of these songs and learn the lyrics. She states that the most well known of the resistance songs is Bella Ciao which you can learn here. The music is one of the things that Roberto uses to conquer his fear and keep himself going in hard times. It might be interesting to learn some of the songs and talk about them in relation to how music can help us through difficult times.

For those who want their children to learn about war without glorifying it and to address the complex issues war raises, this would be a good addition to your library. I might now have a look at Stones in the Water, too, though I think it might deal with the more well worn issues of deportation and life in the camps.

Writing blog posts seems to send me off on internet research trips. Here are some of the things I’m finding. Some will be suitable for Tigger directly (age 11) and some will be more for my own learning. I’d never read any Dickens until Tigger and I read A Christmas Carol together last year. And my historical knowledge is generally woeful.

BBC animated biography of Dickens: This looks good. Basic. And just the sort of thing Tigger likes. Links at the bottom of the page to other kid-friendly resources.

BBC History Victorian England: Lots and lots of relevant historical information. And a Victorian history trail, with activities, games, etc. I suspect, our whole study could be based on materials found on these two pages.

Some interesting looking links from Web English Teacher to resources for teaching Dickens, including detailed lesson plans and vocabulary guides that I probably won’t use.

And another link-fest from the Innovative Teaching News.

There are some very useful things available as supplements to the Broadview Press Anthology of British Literature. Most of the links associated with this are secured to people who own the text but (under Extra Materials in the side bar) there is a useful article on British money, and a slew of short audio clips that give a sense of the sound of British literature. They obviously don’t go back far and the Florence Nightengale one is pretty scratchy, but still… There is also a very handy chronological chart available for Vol 5 (The Victorian Era). It is presented in two columns with literary works on the left and historical events on the right.

I like to listen to In Our Time while doing things in the kitchen that don’t require much intellectual engagement (it is not the sort of radio that works well if you are distracted). The following programs from the History archive are relevant to the period: Victorian Realism (about novels and the reaction to romanticism), The Riddle of the Sands (on English-German relations from Waterloo to WWI), The Enclosures, The Charge of the Light Brigade (Crimean War), The Opium Wars, William Wilberforce, The Great Exhibition, and The Peterloo Massacre (and it’s relation to the Reform Act of 1832). Two programs that cover a longer period but address very relevant themes are The Aristocracy and Slavery and Empire.

This reminds me that we have touched on this period before. Tigger has a biography of Florence Nightingale from the Usborne Famous Lives series that she enjoyed so much she dressed as FN for Halloween a couple of years ago. We also have The Villainous Victorians from the Horrible Histories series. And Mill Girl from the My Story series of fictional diaries is also relevant. It looks like there are also volumes in that series on the Victorian Workhouse and the Irish Famine though we don’t have those.

And that reminds me that we have read about the Irish famine in the past, mainly historical fiction: Nory Ryan’s Song and Maggie’s Door by Patricia Reilly Giff. But Myra Zarnowski recommends the non-fiction account Black Potatoes by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (which is in our library system). I suspect we won’t go into that in great detail at this point, except to point out that it was happening at the same time. Maybe now is the time to get the whole time-line thing going around here.

I am running into a bit of a periodization issue in this search for resources. The Very Short Introduction uses a long 19th Century — 1789 (French Revolution) to 1914 (WWI). The literary material and the BBC site use The Victorian Age (she reigned from 1837-1901) and thus a short 19th century. I might have to think more on this and talk to Mat about the possible consequences of each approach (since he actually studied history at university, though perhaps not this period). Any thoughts from readers about this would be most welcome. I have access to, and am happy to read, academic journal articles. So if there was something you read as a student that addresses this issue, do let me know.

My approach to any topic is increasingly to consider my own education alongside Tigger’s. As such, I am interested in good books for myself as well as books accessible to her. I’m not going to read all of this stuff. But I like to have a sense of the shape of the terrain before deciding on the particular path we will follow.

My planning is often serendipitous. Finding good books. External activities going on. Taking a 3 month trip to Europe. That kind of thing drives the kinds of subjects that we might study around here.

This year’s serendipitous activity is that Tigger is auditioning for the Junior Performance Company at the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama. We have a back-up plan in case she doesn’t get in, but Mat and I have been thinking about what topics that might suggest if she does. They will be performing Dickens’ Great Expectations. So we’ve been thinking that 19th Century British history would be a good idea.

When sorting out the books from my former life as an academic recently (did I tell you that I took a whole bunch to a friend who is a recovering 2nd hand bookseller?) I found Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction which I must have got as an inspection copy from Oxford University Press.  I’ve skimmed it a bit and think it might make a good read aloud and general survey spine. (I also had their Sociology book from this series which I’ve sent to a good home. To see what else is available in this series, check the Very Short Introduction page at OUP.)

Mat and I are reasonably knowledgeable about some of the origins of social science in this period and have been thinking about introducing Tigger to early sociology and political economy alongside the more general history. I’m going to see if I can find copies of Harriet Martineau’s Illustrations of Political Economy, which was also serialized and actually sold more copies than Dickens at the time. They are an attempt to educate the masses in the principles of political economy using fables. (It appears that they are available online. However, some have been reprinted with an introduction and other supplementary material. The reviews of that Broadview edition suggest that it makes direct connections to the literature of Dickens, which might be quite handy. For me, anyway.)

There are also some very famous large-scale surveys of living conditions in this period, including Engels survey in Manchester and Booth’s in London. (In the US, there is an excellent study of Philadelphia around this period by W.E.B. DuBois titled The Philadelphia Negro that is a similar scope.) I’m not sure how accessible this stuff is or whether there are good books about it that we could read together but just finding links for this post has revealed some interesting possibilities. (That Booth link looks fabulous.)

My goal would be to give some context to Dickens commentary on social change, social status, and living conditions at this time. He used fiction to address these issues, but there was plenty of debate going on at the time with which he must have been engaged. Right now, that sounds like a pretty hefty goal for an 11 year old but I just want to get a sense of the range and then choose some items to explore throughout the year.

So here is my request to you: do you know of any resources about this period that would be suitable for a bright middle-schooler? They don’t have to be things she would read herself. Our preference is for well-written, engaging non-fiction. I’d also be interested in video resources if you know of any. Thanks.

Read alouds have also tailed off a bit in the past several weeks. We still read at bedtime but that is dominated by the Agatha Christie marathon that Tigger and her Dad are on. Day-time non-fiction read alouds have been few and far between. So it has taken us a while to finish The Road to There: Mapmakers and Their Stories by Val Ross, which I tempted you with back at the end of June.

Tigger is the grand-daughter of a high school geography teacher (retired) and her dad is kind of into maps. So a history of maps and map-making was likely to be popular around here. There are 13 chapters beginning with one about forgery and the Vinland map as a way to introduce the importance of maps. The following chapters are arranged chronologically and take us from the 12th century through to the present day. Each chapter begins with a short anecdote (in bold text to set it off from the rest of the narrative) before providing a detailed narrative of this particular contribution to map-making. There are relevant illustrations, often in colour, and text boxes providing extra detail on particular elements of the story. The early chapters focus on particular individuals considered important, including Cheng Ho, Gerard Mercator, Captain Cook, and others. But the history of maps is as much about technology and changing economic and political landscapes as it is about individual mapmakers.

Ross weaves the story of mapmaking into a broader history in an interesting way. There are plenty of points of connection to other subjects: the sciences of astronomy and mathematics, especially as the link to navigation; exploration and the discovery by Europeans of Australia and the Americas; changing trading relationships; wars and empire building;  the opening up the western U.S; the Cold War. While the book stands on its own, it would also make a good complement to your history studies more broadly.  As such, even those who like to plan out their curriculum might find it a useful addition to the bookshelf, whether its in the plan or just an interesting book someone might pull off the shelf.

Highly recommended.

There hasn’t been as much reading going on around here while the kitchen was in pieces (and I had work on my desk) but I have a couple of things that I have been meaning to write reviews of. First up Margaret MacMillan’s The Uses and Abuses of History.

I found out about this book from a review in the Globe and Mail that a colleague passed to me at a conference recently. (I talked a bit about that here.) We had been talking about kids and things over dinner and one thing led to another. The article was interesting enough that I ordered the book from the library. The length of the wait list was also promising. It was well worth the wait.

MacMillan is a respected Canadian historian, best known to the general public for Paris 1919, and I was expecting a bit of a heavy read. Not at all. This book is a published version of a series of public lectures she gave at the University of Western Ontario. There is a list of further reading at the back but the book is pretty well footnote free and written in accessible language.

MacMillan brings historical knowledge to bear on a series of contemporary debates, elucidating the nature of historical knowledge in the process. As a homeschooling parent, I think it gives a good sense of what we might want our children to know about history, not necessarily in terms of facts and figures but in terms of how we interpret evidence and make arguments using historical knowledge. I’m not sure whether I would assign it to a high school student (if I did things like assign books) but I would certainly recommend it to parents as an aid to thinking about the kinds of questions you might ask your children and the kinds of discussions you might want to have about history in your home. I suppose that would go for any parents who aspire to have interesting discussions with their kids that aren’t about quizzing them on what they are learning in school.

Given that history is often included in state standards and national curriculum because of a perceived need to teach our children who they are, it is particularly helpful that there is a whole chapter in this book about History and Identity and another about History and Nationalism. I’m sure we are not the only family that struggles with these issues.

Overall, this was a relatively quick but satisfying read that will bear reading again in relation to specific needs. I am seriously considering making it one of those books that are on the shelf in case the cat every decides he needs to know some of these things. Or in case I need to remind myself of some of the detail of these arguments. I highly recommend it.

I realized a long time ago that I seem to be raising a historian. Tigger is fascinated by history. Luckily, I am not one of those people who thinks that knowledge of a subject is a necessary precursor to the ability to teach it. My own knowledge of history is what most people would describe as woeful. I recall very little of what I was taught in school and took only one history class in university. My historical knowledge is pretty limited to early Canadian history, which means it doesn’t even extend to much knowledge of the opening up of the West. Homeschooling is fixing that, believe me.

With Tigger, finding a history of whatever we are studying is a sure fire way to spark her interest. We have read some history of mathematics, some general history of the world, studied the American Dust Bowl, and the voyages of Captain Cook. She and her father have been studying botany this spring, using Thomas Elpel’s Botany in a Day as a spine. Her dad found The Great Naturalists in the library and they have started expanding their study with historical study.

So when I ran across this article in the Observer about Darwin and the history of how he developed his theory of natural selection and how he came to publish it when he did, I thought I should make a note. One of the nice things about including history in science studies is that it makes that process of doing science clearer. Although there are rigourous methods and fairly strict rules about how you report your findings, the process of doing science can be a bit messy. And science is always done in a particular social and cultural context at a particular historical moment. When a scientist publishes his or her findings and how they choose to publish them is often driven by these concerns.

Thus the theory of natural selection appeared, fever-like, in the mind of one of our greatest naturalists. Wallace wrote up his ideas and sent them to Charles Darwin, already a naturalist of some reputation. His paper arrived on 18 June, 1858 - 150 years ago last week - at Darwin’s estate in Downe, in Kent.

Darwin, in his own words, was ’smashed’. For two decades he had been working on the same idea and now someone else might get the credit for what was later to be described, by palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, as ‘the greatest ideological revolution in the history of science’ or in the words of Richard Dawkins, ‘the most important idea to occur to a human mind.’ In anguish Darwin wrote to his friends, the botanist Joseph Hooker and the geologist Charles Lyell. What followed has become the stuff of scientific legend.

Darwin had been working on his material for 20 years at this point. But like many of us, he was putting off writing and continuing to research. Unlike 21st century scientists he was under no pressure to publish early and often. But the fear of being scooped pushed him into publishing his findings.

‘Wallace’s letter gave Darwin a good kick up the backside,’ says the geneticist Steve Jones. ‘He had prevaricated for 20 years and would have done so for another 20 if he hadn’t realised someone else was on the trail.’ The summer of 1858 changed everything for Darwin. Although by no means an arrogant man, he knew his worth. He was already a Royal Society Gold Medal winner and was not going to be robbed by a whippersnapper specimen collector in Malaysia. So he sat down, with a board across his knee, on the only chair in his house that could accommodate his long legs, and wrote up the research he had been carrying out for the past 20 years.

The form of what he wrote was also interesting. He did not write for the small audience of his peers but rather for a larger educated public.

Remarkably, it is the only major scientific treatise to have been written, deliberately, as a piece of popular writing, a book whose interlacing story lines have been compared with those of George Eliot or Charles Dickens and which is peppered with richly inventive metaphor. ‘Darwin was creating a lasting work of art,’ as Darwin’s biographer Janet Browne puts it.

They style may not seem that accessible to the 21st century reader but it is no less so than other writers of his time.

The rest of the article is well worth reading. Weighing the evidence of whether “natural selection” is Wallace’s or Darwin’s intellectual property brings in some very important points about the difference between a conjecture and theory. The key to the latter is the weight of evidence in support of it. The fact that Darwin had been working on this for 20 years before publishing means that he had a lot of evidence to bring to bear. Certainly many people can come up with the hypothesis that natural selection might explain a range of phenomena, but that hypothesis needs to be tested across a range of instances. Darwin had that evidence.

Go on, read the whole thing.

For me, the question of which individual should be credited with a particular discovery is the wrong question. All scientific knowledge is the product of many years of investigations, hypotheses, blind alleys, and the careful collection of substantial evidence. Many people are involved working together and separately. New ideas are born of discussion and debate. It is a particular historical and social context that leads to the desire to pin particular discoveries on individuals, and most of those deserve recognition. But one reason we should study the history of science along with the science itself, is to keep those individuals in perspective.

Scientific advances are built on more than genius and “eureka” moments. They are built on long, careful study, debate, discussion, trial and error, and a bit of humility.

Well, that opens up a can of worms. I still think it might be interesting for a high-school level discussion but I think I should provide some other resources I’ve found on this question. There seems to be a lively discussion that has a few underlying issues in it. Issues that might not be apparent or easy to untangle for a novice.

I’ve now read Hidden in Plain View. There are some serious flaws in the argument, including a misuse of fiction in Chapter 4. As I read it, the authors provide a quite open interpretation beginning with one oral testimony that does not reach very firm conclusions. However, from some of what I’ve discovered since, it appears that others have read it as a more solid history. The authors also failed to consider the motives of the storyteller who first started them on this research, a storyteller who was selling quilts. Their failure to consider this means that there is no evidence provided one way or the other about her reliability.

In the controversy as I’ve been reading it since finishing the book (I’ll post links), there seem to be some other genuine disagreements about historical scholarship though that I am also not happy with. One is a privileging of the written word, especially the published word, and a reference to dates when something was first published as if that is its first existence. I know dating is difficult, but the fact that a song or a quilt pattern is first found in a printed publication on a certain date does not seem to me to suggest that it was not widely known before that date. Hard to prove, admittedly. But the date of publication doesn’t seem to me to be irrefutable evidence that it was not known earlier.

I am also not wholly convinced by anyone who dismisses, almost out of hand, women’s studies, African-American studies, and modern literary criticism. Yes, there are debates within any of these areas and shoddy scholarship just like there is an all kinds of disciplines. But I’m not convinced that these areas of study are any more likely to be shoddy than any other. They do, however, challenge some of the basic premises of other scholarship, including what counts as legitimate evidence. And some of that challenge is justified. After all if only the written word, and preferably the published or official written word, really counts as evidence, how can we ever research the perspective of people who did not have access to those means of telling their stories? That doesn’t mean we accept any old story as reliable evidence, but rather that sometimes we need to explore and develop new methods for historical and cultural research.

So, in line with my original purpose in discussing this topic, I think that this particular aspect of Underground Railroad history offers some particularly interesting possibilities for teaching about the discipline of history in that dual sense of both branch of knowledge and rules and codes of behaviour. Key elements of that set of rules and codes of behaviour are: what counts as evidence? what are the valid methods of interpreting evidence? how do we present our claims? how do we indicate to others the source of our information? what are the acceptable ways of using primary and secondary source materials? what are the recognized arenas of debate?

If you choose to pursue these questions, here are some interesting resources (some of them have links to other resources), many of them skeptical (or even dismissive, almost violently so) of the claims Tobin and Dobard make.

Barbara Brackman Facts and Fabrications: Unraveling the History of Quilts & Slavery C&T Publishing. (I like other things about this book and will write a separate post.)

Barbara Brackman’s website, particularly her page of Hot Topics. She links to a couple of other resources including a self-described “diatribe” by a school librarian Deborah Foley that is worth a read. I disagree with Foley’s argument about the responsibility of authors of historical fiction not to mislead people since I think most of the misleading is being done by people teaching historical fiction inappropriately, something I have talked about before and which Myra Zarnowski provides good ideas for countering. Opens up good discussion topics about the difference between historical fiction and non-fiction, and different kinds of truth.

Brackman also links to Kimberley Wulfert’s article on the subject and to Leigh Fellner’s website containing a detailed refutation of the Tobin and Dobard thesis and related arguments. The last page of that website contains links to lots of primary source documents for the study of the Underground Railroad that might be very useful even if you didn’t want to venture into the quilt issue.

In Kimberly Wulfert’s contribution to the debate about whether slaves used a “quilt code” in their escapes, she says:

He [Giles R. Wright, an authority on the Underground Railroad] believes the book has sold well because it is a very appealing idea. I would agree with him on this and note that the popularity appears to be amongst non-quilters and quiltmakers not particularly interested or knowledgeable about the history of quilts. I have had the same impression after talking to elementary school and quilt shop teachers. And, the women I have spoken with are good-intentioned. The schoolteachers think the children will enjoy learning about mid-19th Century Black History in America, and the period surrounding the Civil War, when ‘messages in quilts’ is the leading perspective. Classroom visuals are easy, children’s books are readily available on the subject, and assignments to reproduce the patterns (as shown in the quilt books they use, HIPV, and children’s books) are simple and fun to do, using crayons and paper or fabric.

This is a sound warning to all of us who are sometimes drawn to interesting teaching methods that involve hands on activities like piecing (or colouring) quilt blocks. Barbara Brackman’s book Facts and Fabrications: Unraveling the History of Quilts and Slavery addresses the attraction of this kind of activity and the need to teach (or learn) about slavery and the underground railroad while avoiding the distortions that the use of fiction can lead to.

She begins with an overview of historical evidence and what can be said about the use of quilts as codes by slaves. She puts this in the context of historical mythmaking and of using quilts as a means of representing history. Brackman is a respected quilt historian who has published on quilts of the Civil War era and finds the evidence for a quilt code unconvincing (indeed, absent). However, she allows that quilts can be a good way to commemorate the various events of slavery and emancipation and thus structures the rest of the book around quilt blocks that could be used for that purpose. Brackman is very clear that most of these blocks date from well after the end of the Civil War.

A timeline of relevant events is included along with a chapter outlining what is known about slaves and quilting (unrelated to the use of quilts as codes). The bulk of the book focuses on specific quilt block patterns with historical information about a specific aspect of slavery and emancipation. Instructions are given for cutting and piecing the blocks and for various ways of setting blocks into a quilt. (A separate text would be needed for basic quilting techniques if you are not already familiar with these. Several are suggested.) Templates for all pieces are included and the book is amply illustrated with pictures of finished quilts, usually showing more than one way of piecing or setting the block in question. She also uses historical photographs to illustrate the narrative portions of the book.

For the homeschooling parent, the real beauty of this book is that there is a section near the back of the book indicating how you might use these patterns, designed for adults, to work with children. She indicates which blocks would be suitable to work with children and even talks about “patchwork partners” suggesting which parts of the work even a child of early elementary age could do and which a parent should help with. Brackman suggests working one or more blocks while reading the historical parts of the book and even provides some discussion questions that might be used, depending on the age of the children. A project for a doll’s quilt made of one of the easier blocks is included with detailed instructions.

I am seriously considering purchasing this book, to go with a small collection of quilting books in my sewing room. The mix of history with handwork is exemplary. The history is well supported with detailed source references. The quilt patterns are well illustrated both in diagrams and in finished examples. The teaching suggestions are detailed enough to provide a good road-map without being too “school-y”.

Of course, I think you could also use fiction like Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, as long as you didn’t present it as historical fact. It is a good story. And could open up some interesting questions about why it makes a good story even if it isn’t true. (The author has apparently always maintained that it is a work of fiction.) The details in Brackman’s book would enable you to indicate what evidence we have that refutes the historical truth of the story.

One of the references is probably also worth following up if you were exploring the ways that historical myths are created and perpetuated. Apparently Chapter 3 of Marc Leepson’s Flag: An American Biography provides a summary of conflict between myth and history in the story of Betsy Ross.

Over time some of the stories about the Railroad have become romantic adventures with elements of myth and legend, and it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. (Freedom Roads, pg. ix)

One of those stories is that quilts were an important symbol guiding slaves to freedom. This has been the subject of several fictional accounts of the Railroad, including some picture books. The historical evidence is not very clear though. It makes a great story but is it true?

One of the difficulties is that the kind of evidence historians usually take as “good” evidence is often produced by people in power. We privilege written evidence and particularly official documents. This can mean that the perspectives of subordinated people are excluded from the histories that we tell and teach. And yet, the truth of history is not just the truth of the powerful. How do we uncover the histories of people who did not have access to these privileged forms for preserving their stories? In the case of things like slavery and the Underground Railroad, how do we uncover the histories that were kept secret for very good reasons?

As I was writing the more general post about teaching history, I thought that the story of the use of quilts by slaves and abolitionists on the Underground Railroad might make a good assignment. Asking a keen student interested in the topic to write a research paper on this question might provide a good challenge that would allow you to assess (or demonstrate in a portfolio) the ability to find evidence from a variety of sources, evaluate evidence, and draw appropriate conclusions. Perhaps it would come later in the high school curriculum, once you know that your student has a good grasp of the issues surrounding historical evidence and producing historical arguments and narratives.

The objectives of this project might be:

• demonstrate an ability to evaluate historical evidence
• demonstrate an ability to use evidence from several sources to support an argument
• demonstrate an ability to draw appropriate conclusions from the available evidence
• demonstrate an ability to write a coherent historical essay that addresses the limitations of the evidence and locates the main argument in a wider historical debate

The sources in Freedom Roads and the “people who bought this, also bought” feature on Amazon led me to a couple of promising resources. Hidden in Plain View by Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobar draws on oral history along with other evidence to examine the possibility that slaves used an explicit quilt code to teach each other about routes and other aspects of escaping slavery to freedom. They raise issues about the collection of oral history evidence and the importance of trust. The numerous forewords look to provide some perspectives on the ways that different historians might approach the question. From the perspective of a historian who specializes in quilts, the introduction to Facts and Fabrications by Barbara Brackman is also interesting. She introduces some important ideas about the uses of history and the importance of symbolism in quilt designs, instructions for which form the rest of the book. She is very clear about the historical status of these patterns, though. Those she includes largely date from a later historical period.

I have requested both of these from my local library as I’m now curious about this question. If you were assigning this as a high school history project, further research in the library and using bibliographies of good general histories of the Underground Railroad or of slavery to seek further detail from their own sources could also form an important part of the project. In fact, this might be where Steph’s idea of grading contracts could become really useful. Not so much for the grade, but as a way of developing the learning objectives with the student. As the parent, your role is to guide the process to ensure that your student is taking on tasks that are sufficiently challenging for her level and to guard against taking on too much so that the whole experience is frustrating. Deciding on objectives and then agreeing a plan to meet the objectives might involve you going and finding resources to ensure that she can learn how to do the project well. Maybe add an objective:

• Demonstrate an ability to use a range of library research methods and select appropriate resources

I am also in favour of using the skills of the librarian to help with this sort of thing. No matter how often you use a library, getting a refresher course from a librarian on search skills is almost always worthwhile. With an assignment like this one, the librarian could focus on electronic resources, and on more advanced search skills to really help your student develop the kinds of library research skills that she will need in university. Also, there might be interesting material in your library’s special collections or they might have information about the city archives or other local sources that would enable you to develop other history projects focused on using primary documents.

You know my position on grading a class of one, but it seems to me that an essay that was the product of this kind of project would be just the sort of thing that should be in a portfolio for college admission. If you need to make a transcript that has credits and things then this could be part of an American history course, or maybe of a course called something like “Selected topics in History” where your objectives were the general ones about developing historical skills and conceptual understanding assessed by maybe 2 projects like this.

I do sometimes worry that because my teaching experience is at the university level, I am expecting more of younger students than is reasonable. On the other hand, my colleagues and I found that our goals for the first year students were mainly to retrain them to think in this sort of way instead of just parroting back what they had read somewhat uncritically. These were students from good schools with good grades. And we had colleagues in other departments that thought we were nuts to demand the things we did of first year students (including grappling with the idea of the post-modern city) but we got some great work out of those students. So maybe there is an advantage in aiming high but having realistic expectations of what might be achieved.

I picked up North Star to Freedom by Gena K. Gorrell in the library when I got Freedom Roads. Gorrell is Canadian and this book includes a lot of Canadian material about the Underground Railroad, an important perspective given the history whether you are Canadian or not.

I liked the book. The writing style is suitable for a wide range of children and could be read by kids from about Grade 4 or 5 level, I think. There are lots of pictures and illustrations. The organization of the material is sensible and the writing is interesting.

My one concern is that each chapter starts with what seems like a fictional paragraph, the status of which is never explained. This paragraph is intended, I assume, to give young readers a sense of what it must have been like. As such, it might be a useful tool for giving a sense of the historical context. It is printed in a different typeface, clearly setting it apart from the main text, but the lack of explanation of the status of this material bothers me.

The book does have source notes, though they only give the sources for direct quotations. There is also a suggested reading list, presumably of books suitable for children, and a selected bibliography, presumably of sources used in compiling the narrative. My academic mind would have liked more reference to specific sources for the information contained in each chapter in the source notes but that might be a minor quibble.

Certainly the information contained in this book seems solid. From my reading of Freedom Roads, I think that perhaps she overstates the case for a well organized Underground Railroad, but this might be a genuine historical disagreement. And it is not too overstated. Anyone who wants to have that kind of discussion could easily combine this with Freedom Roads.

For those in Southwestern Ontario, there is some good information about the founding of settlements by blacks and what happened to them. The selected bibliography also contains some interesting looking source and the Acknowledgments has a good list of museums and archives that contain relevant material. A high-school level research project might usefully explore some of those sources in more detail, especially if they were local.

Another good companion to this book would be the DVD Freedom’s Land produced by the CBC. We rented this from Zip.ca recently. It is very well done and includes commentary by historians.

The Afterword to North Star to Freedom raises issues about slavery in the present day. I’m not sure where to find resources on that, though I know I’ve seen something recently or heard it on the radio. There is some information available on the CBC website.

I also frequently thought that links could be made to other situations in which people took considerable risks to hide and transport people to freedom. The Dutch Resistance, as documented in the Dutch Resistance Museum, came immediately to mind. The story of the Danish treatment of Jews during WWII, as fictionalized by Lois Lowry, would also be apt. I am sure there are other good examples.