Teaching the Civil War in the 21st
Century
Paul Stuewe
History Teacher
Blue Valley West High School

Presentation Outline
Essential Questions
• What do students need to know to make it
intellectually and economically in the 21st
century?
• In general, how should our high school history
courses prepare students for the 21st century?
• In teaching the Civil War, what should
students know about the causes of that war?

Tony Wagner’s Seven Survival Skills
1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
a. the ability to ask good questions
b. our current system is about getting the
right answers
c. we need to start children as soon as
they are capable of abstract thinking

7 Survival Skills
2. Collaboration Across the Networks and Leading
by Influence
a. Old world school—students used to
having teachers tell them what to do
b. New world school—working in teams
(often virtual) and making own decisions

7 Survival Skills
3. Agility and Adaptability
a. People’s jobs change rapidly
b. What goes on in the classroom today is
the same as 50 years ago

7 Survival Skills
4. Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
a. World needs proactive people, self-
starters
b. Workplace needs self-directed,
achievement orientated workers

7 Survival Skills
5. Effective Oral and Written Communications
a. 21st century skills like writing memos,
letters, complex reports—clearly and
effectively
b. Employers say the lack of these skills
the biggest issue

7 Survival Skills
6. Accessing and Analyzing Information
a. People must handle an astronomical
amount of information in their lives and
work
b. People must conceptualize, analyze,
and synthesize a lot of data

7 Survival Skills
7. Curiosity and Imagination
a. Natural for children, often not
promoted in the classroom
b. Students need both “left-brain” and
“right-brain” skills

THE Essential Question
• How do we achieve these 21st century survival
skills?
• My thesis: “If done correctly, the most
important subject we teach at the high school
level is history because more than any other
subject it hits on all the essential survival
skills.”

The Seven Survival Skills Review
1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
2. Collaboration
3. Agility & Adaptability
4. Initiative
5. Effective Oral & Written Communication
6. Accessing & Analyzing Information
7. Curiosity & Imagination

The New 3 R’s
• R—Rigor
• R—Relevance
• R—Relationships

Kansas 21st Century Readiness
1. Critical thinking and problem-solving
2. Collaboration
3. Communication
4. Creativity and innovation

James W. Loewen
“What Students Should Be Able to Do”
1. Read effectively
2. Read critically
3. Understand the difference between primary
and secondary sources
4. Apply principles of historiography to a source
5. Write a coherent essay
6. Write effectively in other formats, e.g., create
a website

Loewen cont’d
7. Speak effectively
8. Read a map
9. Understand, critique, and create tables of
data
10.Cause change in society

The Four Historical Thinking Skills
for AP History Courses
1. Crafting historical arguments from historical
evidence
2. Chronological reasoning
3. Comparison and contextualization
4. Historical interpretation and synthesis

Motivating Today’s Students
21st century realities:
• growing up digital—the “Net Generation”
• Attention deficient
• differently motivated
• multi-tasking—”continuous partial attention”
• crave constant connection to others
• this makes them less patient

Net Gen Students
According to Wagner and others:
• They want to be part of learning communities
• They want learning to be active, not passive
• They want to know why they are being asked
to do something
• They develop a vital proficiency in
“information navigation”—the ability to be
their own reference librarian

Content vs. Skills
Knowledge vs. Critical Thinking
• A false dichotomy—theoretically and
practically
• One side can’t exist without the other
• Teachers don’t ask students to memorize facts
devoid of context and interpretation
• Critical thinking means the use of knowledge
(facts, content) through application of skills
(research and writing)

Bruce Lesh- “Why Won’t You Just Tells
Us the Answer?”
• Why take the time and effort to teach history
in a different way from the tried and true
methods?
• “Simply because every major measure of
students’ historical understanding since 1917
has demonstrated that students do not retain,
understand, or enjoy their school experiences
with history.”

Lesh cont’d
• “When taught to pose questions about evidence,
causality, chronology, change and continuity over
time, and other ‘categories of historical inquiry’,
students become powerful creators of history
rather than consumers of a predetermined
historical narrative.”
• “The question-driven investigative process
requires students to formulate evidence-based
historical interpretations.”

Summary of the Challenge
• Wide-spread agreement on the need for new
methods of teaching history
• Students have changed but our methods
haven’t
• General agreement on what skills are needed
in the 21st century
• The next part is how do we as history teachers
make the necessary changes?

Where Do We Go from Here?
• Knowing what the 21st century demands and
knowing a little about how students today
learn—how do we apply this to teaching
about the Civil War?
• Due to time constraints we will look at
teaching the causes of the Civil War.
• We will do this using historical thinking.

The Five C’s of Historical Thinking
Flannery Burke/Thomas Andrews
• C—Change over time
• C---Context
• C---Causality
• C---Contingency
• C--Complexity

Teaching Causation
• There is never just “one” cause of an event—
there are multiple causes, not all equally
important.
• Everyone has a point of view and no one is
totally objective—but the goal is objectivity.
• One must examine both primary and
secondary sources.

Historiography
• Historiography means “the study of history”
but not just “studying history.”
• It asks us to scrutinize how a certain piece of
history came to be written.
• Who wrote it, for what reason, to what
audience, for what purpose--what were they
trying to prove?

Analyzing Primary Source Documents
SOAPSTone
S—Speaker
O—Occasion
A—Audience
P—Purpose
S—Subject
T--Tone

Essential Question--
Why Did the South Secede?
• One of the best ways to answer this question
is with primary source documents.
• The Confederate and Neo-Confederate
Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost
Cause” edited by James W. Loewen and
Edward H. Sebesta

“Why Did We Have a Civil War?”
• Loewen posed this question to many groups
who are interested in history—four answers
usually emerge:
– Slavery
– States’ rights
– Tariffs and taxes
– The election of Lincoln

Causes Continued
• In most audiences half to three-quarters
believe the most important cause was states’
rights followed by slavery with a quarter or
less.
• Tariffs and taxes and the election of Lincoln
split the remaining 25% about evenly.

Essential Questions
• Where would one look for the answers to the
question of why the Southern States seceded?
• How about the official record of the Secession
Conventions held in 1860 and 1861?

Essential Questions
Why did Confederates say they seceded for
slavery in 1861 but not in 1891?
Why did neo-Confederates claim in 1999, but
not in 1869, that thousands of African
Americans served in the Confederate armed
forces?
Teachers can use questions like these to do
historiography.

South Carolina Secession Convention
Charleston, December 1860
• Their document, “Declaration of the
Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify
the Secession of South Carolina from the
Federal Union”.
• Lists grievances against the North:
– The North was not enforcing the fugitive slave
clause and listed the 14 states that they felt were
not in compliance.
– Abolitionist societies in Northern states were free
to assemble and speak against slavery.

South Carolina
• In short, South Carolina was against the North
having states’ rights to not enforce the Fugitive
Slave law. The only states’ rights they wanted
was to leave the Union.
• Southern planters had been in power during the
Buchanan and throughout most of our history.
• “The party in power always opposes states’
rights. It’s in their interest to do so.” Loewen
• Lincoln was the trigger owing to his opposition to
slavery.

Documents
• South Carolina and other Deep South states sent
ambassadors to convince other states to
secede—their words were clear—it was first, last,
and foremost about slavery.
• No one doubted in the 1860s that secession was
for slavery—Lincoln’s Second Inaugural—”All
knew that this interest (slavery) was somehow
the cause of the war.”
• He was not trying to convince his audience but
merely state the obvious.

Why Don’t Most Teachers Know This?
• Most teachers continue to teach that states’
rights were the cause of the war because
according to Loewen:
– They don’t know the key documents
– They have read the textbooks but not the
documents
– When textbooks do mention documents they are
often wrong

Why Do Textbooks Get Secession
Wrong?
• First, textbook authors have gotten into the habit
of not quoting anything.
• Second, publishers don’t want to offend.
• Third, authors are too busy to write “their”
textbooks—The American Journey lists James
McPherson as one of its authors—but he
contradicts the textbook in his own Battle Cry of
Freedom.
• Fourth, downplaying slavery got established in
our culture during the nadir of race relations,
1890-1940.

McPherson vs. McPherson
The American Journey (textbook)
-”…would not protect Southern rights and
liberties…”
Battle Cry of Freedom (his book)
-”The right to own slaves; the liberty to take
this property into the territories…”

Loewen Continued
• Loewen argues that teaching that Confederate
states seceded for states’ rights is not accurate
history—it might be termed “white history”.
• Taught in this way it alienates people of color
which is one reason for the racial achievement
gap in history which is larger that in any other
subject.

Summary
• Teaching history in the 21st century is more important
that ever based on the skills necessary to function in
today’s and tomorrow’s world.
• As teachers we need not only to understand our
students but also the discipline and content of history.
• As citizens we need to understand that one of the
important values of history is developing judgment
based on critical thinking and understanding our past.

Summary
• Teaching history is teaching a survival skill.
• History is best defined as an argument about the
past. But this argument must be based on
historical thinking. Remember one can have his or
her own opinions but not his or her own facts.
• As individuals who love history and recognize its
importance we must continue to support it in the
public schools.