{"id":4513,"date":"2019-09-18T20:58:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T17:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/?p=4513"},"modified":"2019-10-10T21:01:58","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T18:01:58","slug":"building-teenage-heroes-into-the-history-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/history-teachers\/building-teenage-heroes-into-the-history-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Teenage Heroes into the History Curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview <\/strong><\/p>\n

A common complaint about History is that it is dominated by white, middle-class, middle-aged men. Or, as Jane Austen put it, \u201cThe quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all \u2014 it is very tiresome”. Much has improved since then in our classrooms, of course. The role and experience of women and racial minorities in particular is being given much more attention. However, whilst sexism and racism are regularly tackled, the issue of “ageism” is largely overlooked: children and teenagers are often relegated to horror stories about child labour in the Industrial Revolution. How can we remedy this to ensure that our students are presented with inspiring and significant role-models in the History classroom?<\/p>\n

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Teenage Heroes<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a start-of-year project, I like to get students to research \u201cWho is your History Hero?\u201d in which they are guided towards identifying a character for research who demonstrates the qualities they admire most (e.g. creative, generous, determined\u2026) in the favourite field of non-curricular activity (e.g. sport, art, music\u2026). An alternative approach is to allocate each student a historical character from a predetermined list based around teenage heroes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Name<\/strong><\/td>\nAchievement<\/strong><\/td>\nAge<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Alexander the Great<\/td>\nFounded His First Colony<\/td>\n16<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Margaret Knight<\/td>\nInvented factory safety device; became first woman to hold a US patent<\/td>\n12<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Joan of Arc<\/td>\nDeclared a saint<\/td>\n19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Mary Queen of Scots<\/td>\nRuled Two Nations<\/td>\n18<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Louis Braille<\/td>\nInvented the Braille System<\/td>\n15<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Mary Shelley<\/td>\nwrote Frankenstein<\/td>\n18<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Annie Oakley<\/td>\nChampion Sharpshooter<\/td>\n15<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Captain Albert Ball<\/td>\nBecame a fighter pilot<\/td>\n19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bobby Fischer<\/td>\nChess Grand Master<\/td>\n15<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Georges Bizet<\/td>\nwrote his Symphony in C<\/td>\n17<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Mozart<\/td>\nWrote the opera, “Mitridate R\u00e8 di Ponto”<\/td>\n14<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Babe Ruth<\/td>\nBegan playing for the Boston Red Sox<\/td>\n19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Faye Hendricks<\/td>\nWent to jail after marching for civil rights<\/td>\n9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Franz Schubert<\/td>\nWrote his First Symphony<\/td>\n16<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Garry Kasparov<\/td>\nWon the U.S.S.R. chess championship<\/td>\n18<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
John D. Rockefeller<\/td>\nStarted his first company<\/td>\n19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Anne Frank<\/td>\nBegan writing her famous diary<\/td>\n13<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Claudette Colvin<\/td>\nRefused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger<\/td>\n15<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Elvis Presley<\/td>\nRecorded his first records<\/td>\n19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Marquis de Lafayette<\/td>\nTurned the tide of the Revolutionary War<\/td>\n19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Nadia Comeneci<\/td>\nAchieved the first perfect \u201810\u2019 in the Olympics<\/td>\n14<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Michelangelo<\/td>\nSculpted the \u201cMadonna of the Steps\u201d<\/td>\n17<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
JMW Turner<\/td>\nGained admission to the Royal Academy of Arts<\/td>\n14<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Srinivasa Ramanujan<\/td>\nGenerated his own theorems in number theory<\/td>\n13<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Steve Jobs<\/td>\nBegins collaborating in electronics with Steve Wozniak in electronics<\/td>\n19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This research can then be presented as a Knowledge Cube, and \/ or followed up with a Balloon Debate. Students could also produce a poster of their \u201cTeenage Hero\u201d consisting of an arresting image, a key quote, and a short biography focusing on his or her achievements.<\/p>\n

You could also consider naming your classrooms for the term after the characters which the class agrees are the most significant and heroic overall after a discussion based around the qualities they displayed and what lessons they give us about how young people can change the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overview A common complaint about History is that it is dominated by white, middle-class, middle-aged men. Or, as Jane Austen put it, \u201cThe quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all \u2014 it is very tiresome”. Much has… <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1162,1175,1174,183,1173],"class_list":["post-4513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-teachers","tag-building","tag-curriculum","tag-heroes","tag-history","tag-teenage"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1487,"url":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/uncategorized\/improve-history-in-schools-put-simon-schama-in-every-classroom\/","url_meta":{"origin":4513,"position":0},"title":"Improve history in schools? 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