Archives For Gettysburg Address

Missing the Context Misses the Purpose of Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”

April 15, 2013 — 3 Comments

Here is an educational policy riddle: How much background knowledge does a student need to read a historical text?

According to New York Engage website: None.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are being implemented state by state, and there is an emphasis from teaching students background knowledge to teaching students skills, specifically the skill of close reading.

The pedegogy is explained by The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC):

Close, analytic reading stresses engaging with a text of sufficient complexity directly and examining meaning thoroughly and methodically, encouraging students to read and reread deliberately. Directing student attention on the text itself empowers students to understand the central ideas and key supporting details. It also enables students to reflect on the meanings of individual words and sentences; the order in which sentences unfold; and the development of ideas over the course of the text, which ultimately leads students to arrive at an understanding of the text as a whole. (PARCC, 2011)

There are many lessons that strongly advocate the use of close reading in teaching historical texts on the EngageNY.com website, including a set of exemplar lessons for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address promoted by CCSS contributor and now College Board President, David Coleman. The lesson’s introduction states:

The idea here is to plunge students into an independent encounter with this short text. Refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset. It may make sense to notify students that the short text is thought to be difficult and they are not expected to understand it fully on a first reading–that they can expect to struggle. Some students may be frustrated, but all students need practice in doing their best to stay with something they do not initially understand. This close reading approach forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge, and levels the playing field for all students as they seek to comprehend Lincoln’s address.

Photo of Lincoln delivering Gettysburg Address- (www.wikipedia.org)

Photo of Lincoln delivering
Gettysburg Address- (www.wikipedia.org)

The lesson plan is organized in three sections. In the first, students are handed a copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and perform several “cold” readings, to themselves and then with the class.

Lesson Plan SECTION 1 What’s at stake: a nation as a place and as an idea

Students silently read, then the teacher reads aloud the text of the Gettysburg Address while students follow along.

  • Students translate into their own words the first and second paragraph. 
  • Students answer guiding questions regarding the first two paragraphs

Please note, there is no mention of any historical context for the speech. Students will come to this 273-word speech without the background knowledge that the Battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, and this battle is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. They will not know that the battle resulted in “Union casualties of 23,000, while the Confederates had lost some 28,000 men–more than a third of Lee’s army” (History.com). They will not know how the Army of Northern Virginia achieved an apex into Union territory with “Pickett’s Charge,” a failed attempt by General George Pickett  to break through the Union line in South Central Pennsylvania, and that the charge resulted in the death of thousands of rebel soldiers. They will not know how the newly appointed Major General George Gordon Meade of the Army of the Potomac met the challenges of General Robert E. Lee by ordering responses to skirmishes on Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, and in the Devil’s Den. They will not know that Meade would then be replaced by General Ulysses S. Grant in part because Meade did not pursue Lee’s troops in their retreat to Virginia.

Instead of referencing any of this historical background, the guding questions in the lesson’s outline imagine the students as blank slates and mention another historical event:

A. When was “four score and seven years ago”? B. What important thing happened in 1776?

The guiding responses for teachers seem to begrudge an acknowledgement that keeping students bound to the four corners of a text is impossible, and that, yes, a little prior knowledge of history is helpful when reading a historical text:

This question, of course, goes beyond the text to explore students’ prior knowledge and associations. Students may or may not know that the Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776, but they will likely know it is a very important date – one that they themselves have heard before. Something very important happened on that date.  It’s OK to mention the Declaration, but the next step is to discover what students can infer about 1776 from Lincoln’s own words now in front of them.

In addition, there are admonishments in Appendix A of the lesson not to ask questions such as, “Why did the North fight the civil war?”

Answering these sorts of questions require students to go outside the text, and indeed in this particular instance asking them these questions actually undermine what Lincoln is trying to say. Lincoln nowhere in the Gettysburg Address distinguishes between the North and South (or northern versus southern soldiers for that matter). Answering such questions take the student away from the actual point Lincoln is making in the text of the speech regarding equality and self-government.

The lesson plan continues:

Lesson Plan SECTION 2  From funeral to new birth

  • Students are re-acquainted with the first two paragraphs of the speech.
  • Students translate the third and final paragraph into their own words.
  • Students answer guiding questions regarding the third paragraph of the Gettysburg Address.

Please note this does not provide the context of the speech that was given that crisp morning of November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the National Cemetery on a damp battlefield that only months before had been dampened red with the blood of tens of thousands of soldiers from either side. The students would be unaware that Lincoln had taken the train from Washington the day before and was feeling slightly feverish on the day of the speech. There is some speculation that he may have been suffering from the early stages of smallpox when he delivered the speech reading from a single piece of paper in a high clear voice. The students would not know that Lincoln’s scheduled time at the podium followed a two hour (memorized) speech by Edward Everett, who later wrote to Lincoln stating, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.” The students would not know that many of the 15,000 crowd members did not hear Lincoln’s two minute speech; the 10 sentences were over before many audience members realized Lincoln had been speaking. The students would not know that this speech marked Lincoln’s first public statement about principles of equality, and they would not know that he considered the speech to be a failure.

Lesson Plan SECTION 3  Dedication as national identity and personal devotion

  • Students trace the accumulated meaning of the word “dedicate” through the text
  • Students write a brief essay on the structure of Lincoln’s argument

The lesson provides links to the five handwritten copies of the text, in the “Additional ELA Task #1: Comparison of the drafts of the speech” so that students can see drafts of the speech and the inclusion of “under God” in the latter three versions. There is also an additional Social Studies task that incorporates the position of respected historian Gary Wills from his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Worlds that Remade America. This activity suggests students use excerpts from Wills’s book and an editorial from the Chicago Times (November 23, 1863) to debate “Lincoln’s reading of the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution”. One excerpt from Wills’s book includes the statement,”The stakes of the three days’ butchery are made intellectual, with abstract truths being vindicated.” Finally, here is information about the battle itself; the battle lasted three days and soldiers died.

The enterprise of reading the Gettysburg Address without context defeats PARRC’s stated objective of having the students “arrive at an understanding of the text as a whole”. The irony is that in forwarding their own interpretation of the speech, David Coleman and the lesson plan developers have missed Lincoln’s purpose entirely; Lincoln directs the audience to forget the words of the speech, but never to forget the sacrifices made by the soldiers during that brutal conflict:

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

Lincoln wrote and delivered the Gettysburg Address to remind his audience “that these dead shall not have died in vain”. Analyzing the language of the address isolated from the Civil War context that created the tone and message is a hollow academic exercise. Instead, students must be taught the historical context so that they fully understand Lincoln’s purpose in praising those who, “gave the last full measure of devotion.”

“It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

Continue Reading…

In 10th Grade, 9th Grade, Common Core, Common Core-CCSS, Curriculum, Education, Education reform, Non-Fiction-Informational Texts, Social Studies , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Informational Texts: Speeches Delivered with Love from Bruce and Steve

March 31, 2012 — 2 Comments

For teachers who are looking for guidance on how to teach informational texts at the high school level, there is a model lesson on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address at the EngageNY website. The text of the speech delivered by Lincoln on November 19, 1863, is short enough to fit on two pages or two bronze plaques on a memorial on the battles grounds in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. With 272 artfully crafted words Lincoln reframed the objectives of the Civil War while restating the principles of the equality of man. The opening six words are iconic, the closing asyndeton, “and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” is inspiring. The choice of the Gettysburg Address is laudable and non-controversial as a selection as an informational text. However, this speech is nearing its 150th birthday, and while an understanding of this speech helps students understand who we were as a nation, there are more contemporary speeches that address who we are as a nation today. What other speeches can we offer our students to review for content and style?

I can think of two speeches that have impressed me this school year. One such speech is a commencement address to college students, the other an address of how the power of rock and roll “commenced” and what that meant to an artist. The first speech is formal, running a little under 15 minutes in length, and delivered by Steve Jobs on June 12, 2005, at Stanford University. The second speech is a full 50 minutes delivered on March 15, 2012, by Bruce Springsteen as the keynote address at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

While Jobs engineered his speech into three separate and distinct parts (“Connecting the dots”, “Love and loss”, “Death”), the “Bruce’s” rollicking retelling of his life as a musician is part-explanatory, part-stream of consciousness, and wholly poetic. While Jobs formally and frankly narrated his stories of failure and ultimate redemption in the computer industry, Springsteen peppered his observations with epithets and musical interludes. Both speeches should get a “look-see” by teachers looking to engage students with meaningful informational texts.

Steve Jobs’s commencement address received a great deal of attention after his passing in October 2011. Stanford University has a page on its website that has both the text of the speech and a video of Jobs reading the speech , standing at the podium with his black graduation robe swirling in the breeze. He opened with the story of his adoption and his bold admission that he had dropped out of college because he “didn’t see the point” –this before a crowd of parents and new graduates who had just completed four or more years at one of the country’s more expensive universities!

Shortly after this startling confession, Jobs deftly described how he followed the “dots”, crediting a calligraphy class at Reed College with being the inspiration in developing his sense of sleek design. These “dots” led him to the computer industry when “Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20” and that “in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.” He professed his failure, the subsequent firing from the company he had founded, as entirely necessary. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
In contrast to Jobs’s formal delivery, the video of Springsteen’s speech (video with text link on the NPR website) shows him blinking at the cameras wondering why he is up so early (it was noon) gripping the podium and addressing other musicians saying, “Every decent musician in town is asleep, or they will be before I’m done with this thing, I guarantee you. I’ve got a bit of a mess up here.” Several minutes (and epithets and expletives) later, Springsteen states his thesis:

“So I’m gonna talk a little bit today about how I’ve put what I’ve done together, in the hopes that someone slugging away in one of the clubs tonight may find some small piece of it valuable. And this being Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday, and the centerpiece of this year’s South by Southwest Conference, I’m also gonna talk a little about my musical development, and where it intersected with Woody’s, and why.”

Springsteen’ s “dots” began with Elvis and television:

“Television and Elvis gave us full access to a new language; a new form of communication; a new way of being; a new way of looking; a new way of thinking about sex, about race, about identity, about life; a new way of being an American, a human being and a new way of hearing music. Once Elvis came across the airwaves, once he was heard and seen in action, you could not put the genie back in the bottle. After that moment, there was yesterday, and there was today, and there was a red hot, rockabilly forging of a new tomorrow before your very eyes.”

Inspired by Elvis, the six-year-old Springsteen wrapped his fingers around a guitar neck for the first time, and when they wouldn’t fit, “I just beat on it, and beat on it, and beat on it — in front of the mirror, of course. I still do that. Don’t you? Come on, you gotta check your moves!”

Both of these speeches center on the importance of love and the love of one’s profession. Springsteen’s love of music, and his embrace of all musical genres, is lyrical as evidenced by his professed love for Doo-wop, a passage in the speech which aches for an accompanying melody:

“Doo-wop, the most sensual music ever made, the sound of raw sex, of silk stockings rustling on backseat upholstery, the sound of the snaps of bras popping across the USA, of wonderful lies being whispered into Tabu-perfumed ears, the sound of smeared lipstick, untucked shirts, running mascara, tears on your pillow, secrets whispered in the still of the night, the high school bleachers and the dark at the YMCA canteen. The soundtrack for your incredibly wonderful, limp-your-ass, blue-balled walk back home after the dance. Oh! It hurt so good.”

Jobs’s love of his work at NeXT, at Pixar, at Apple, is less descriptive but equally impassioned, and he challenged the graduates to recognize the importance of loving one’s work:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

Both speeches also focus on change. In the last portion of his speech, Jobs introduced death; in a moment of cheer and celebration, he bluntly talked about death. He was honest with his beliefs, stating how he did not want to die, and he described how the prognosis of pancreatic cancer drove him to seek surgery. His statement, “and I am fine now” is delivered with such confidence, a poignant moment now that he has passed away. However, Jobs was not trying to be maudlin in discussing his, and our own, imminent fate; he deliberately summed up his feelings about death as “the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” Jobs is right about death as a change agent, but as he stood before that crowd gathered for Stanford’s graduation in 2005, he was a live example of a change agent in our lives and the lives of our students.

Springsteen introduced the legacy of Woody Guthrie as his change agent. He explained how in his 20s he read Joe Klein’s Woody Guthrie, A Life, noting that, “Woody’s gaze was set on today’s hard times” and that “Woody’s world was a world where fatalism was tempered by a practical idealism. It was a world where speaking truth to power wasn’t futile, whatever its outcome.” Springsteen explained that although he would cover Woody’s infamous This Land is Your Land, he was never “going to be like Woody” because he was too fond of Elvis and the pop simplicity of his Pink Cadillac, that is until he and Pete Seegar stood up in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 2009 to sing (with the crowd) From California/ To the New York island/ From the Redwood Forest /To the Gulf Stream waters /This land was made for you and me:

“On that day Pete and myself, and generations of young and old Americans — all colors, religious beliefs — I realized that sometimes things that come from the outside, they make their way in, to become a part of the beating heart of the nation. On that day, when we sung that song, Americans — young and old, black and white, of all religious and political beliefs — were united, for a brief moment, by Woody’s poetry.”

Both Jobs and Springsteen ended their speeches with a clarion call. From the industrialist,” Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.” From the musician: “Don’t take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have ironclad confidence, but doubt — it keeps you awake and alert.”

Could these speeches be “informational texts”-the new CCSS term used to cover all manner of writing other than fiction? While these speeches are most certainly not equal to the eloquence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, do they have a place in the study of contemporary history? Is the speech that details the development of the Mac with its sleek design and easily used graphic interface, as told by its founder, an informational text? Does the speech that chronicles a musician’s experience with the birth of American rock’n roll and the influence of pop culture qualify as an informational text? Could either speech be a springboard into student research? Could either speech be analyzed for rhetorical structures, word choice, and imagery? Do these speeches inspire the reader?

For students in the upper grades of high school, grades 11 and 12, for whom the CCSS suggests 70% of reading should be in the form of informational texts, the answer is a yes, yes, most assuredly yes!

In Common Core, Education , , , , , , , , ,
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