Cold Vs. Hot War: a Model for Building Conceptual Knowledge in History Geoffrey Scheurman

Students often report that social studies is their most boring and least favorite subject. habits of mind unfolds, a by-product is As a child, Woodrow Wilson was bored by history, later describing his early studies the development of human intellectual as “one damn fact after another.” Of course, Wilson went on to become an eminent constructions we call concepts. In his- historian, but only after he learned to reach beyond the “closed catechism” of “ques- tory, a concept such as “revolution” is tions already answered”1 to the exciting themes and processes that gave those facts seldom black or white. Asking the right meaning. Central to Wilson’s discovery were questions that guide inquiry in the field, analytical questions leads to a continuum procedures that experts use to carry out this inquiry, and generalizations, principles of generalizations about revolutionary or theories that frame the results of that process. Together, these big ideas comprise conditions. Furthermore, it invokes a the conceptual backbone that holds the narratives of history together. Taking time to set of disciplinary processes which identify the big ideas in a lesson, unit, or course, insures that teachers do not drown themselves exist along a continuum. For students in too much minutiae. And coming to grips with essential concepts provides example, sources do not exist as simply the best chance for students to construct deep knowledge structures that will transfer credible or not credible; they are “more to contexts beyond the classroom. or less” credible relative to each other. By examining historical phenomena along Conceptual Knowledge in History ciples, or generalizations one can dimensions such as these on a regular and Other Fields extrapolate from content within basis, students will develop a disposition Although concepts abound in history, it the discipline—the products of the for understanding human disagreement is often more difficult to provide con- disciplined inquiry (e.g., “compo- as it really exists, not as a simple either/or crete examples for students than it is in nents a, b, and c reflect a reasonable but as “degrees of dissent” ranging from the physical sciences or even the social recipe for revolution in a society of “simple protest” and “riots” to “civil dis- sciences. To help in this process, the type A”). obedience” and “insurrection” leading teacher might wish to consider the nature to “revolution.” Constructing an effective of conceptual knowledge (CK) as it has • CK involves habits of mind—in continuum for a complex series of events been alternatively described by social this case, a set of disciplinary dis- enables a teacher to guide students away studies experts: positions and procedures held or from the rote learning of events toward employed by experts (e.g., “when a genuine understanding of historical • CK includes a set of analytical ques- studying a revolutionary event, processes. tions that guide inquiry within a never take a source of information at In any field of inquiry, we come to structured discipline (e.g., “what face value; always consider the per- understand what a concept IS in relation conditions existed when Revolution spective, motives, and credibility to what it IS NOT. For example, humans A began and how does this compare of eyewitness, contemporary, and would never understand a phenomenon with Revolutions B and C?”); secondary sources”). as basic as “light” if they never experi- As the process of framing questions, enced “darkness,” even though light and • CK includes the theories, prin- deriving generalizations, and forming dark exist as dichotomies only in theory.

Social Education 32 In reality, they exist by relative degrees. both social decline and shifting values, principles, and rules that provide the In science, an object is not merely “buoy- depending on perspective. Another stu- springboard for further learning. There ant” or “not buoyant.” It exhibits a degree dent exploring the Industrial Revolution is a nice byproduct of this process as well: of buoyancy based on certain attributes in England established a continuum of students are more likely to remember and under certain conditions. In geogra- wants and needs. This inquiry led to the facts! phy, a peninsula is identifiable at least questions about whether needs lead to The following is a specific example of partially because it is not an island or wanting more, or wants lead to needing how a teacher can help students develop a continent. In economics, a product more, and inspired a robust debate on the deep knowledge of the concept known as is not merely “elastic” or “inelastic.” It connections between invention, industry, “Cold War” by collaborating with stu- responds to market forces along a con- expansion, advertising, and the notions of dents as they build a “degrees of coopera- tinuum of elasticity. In political science, actual versus perceived demand. Finally, tion” continuum between the USA and labeling people as simply “democrat” or a middle school colleague often builds USSR from 1942 to 1974. “republican” sacrifices the complexity continuums by drawing parallels between of each concept and loses the richness romantic and classical impulses, gather- Specific Example: Degrees of that such conceptual designations hope ing and domestication, self-sufficiency International Cooperation to convey. It is more beneficial to think and specialization, monotheism and Description: The conceptual continuum along a continuum of ideological views, polytheism, totalitarianism and democ- has many variations, but the essential ranging from “radical” to “reactionary” racy, and republicanism and empire as idea is that students are provided materi- with gradations of “liberal,” “moder- means for building conceptual founda- als from which they must derive “anchor ate,” and “conservative” in between. tions beneath the content of his middle points” along a single discernible dimen- Similarly, in the ebb and flow of social school world history courses. sion and then place additional examples history, people can seldom be identi- between them. In this case, the materials fied by such terms as “fundamentalist” The Conceptual Continuum are short descriptions of events pertain- or “progressive” without losing the rich By leading students to view concrete ing to U.S. – Soviet Relations between textures of historical interpretation. It artifacts and events, as well as people 1942 and 1974. is more useful to identify the degrees to and social phenomena, in terms of fluid Purpose: Building conceptual contin- which people exhibit these characteris- conceptual categories, we enhance their uums helps students and teachers identify tics in particular situations where one ability to discriminate the qualities the deep unifying structures that give disposition is defined at least partly in reflected by people in a given context. meaning to facts and figures contained in reference to the other. The more we practice this mental exercise, course content. The secret to understand- Once you train your eye, continuums the more we enhance our ability to carry ing a concept is to discriminate between appear everywhere in world history. on substantive conversation about the what something “is” and what it “is not.” Concept pairs such as pragmatic vs. content of the discipline in general and The concept “Cold War” in this exer- visionary, or conservative vs. innovative, to transfer understanding to contexts cise will be distinguished from related serve as valuable criteria for interpreting outside a particular academic setting. ideas such as “Peaceful Coexistence” and ideologies and evaluating the goals and The “conceptual continuum” describes “Détente.” policies of governments in different times an array of classroom strategies designed and places. Another favorite of mine is to help teachers and students grapple When to use this Strategy: comparing nation-states as relatively effectively with big ideas without sacri- This strategy can be used to begin a unit isolationist or internationalist in foreign ficing inordinate amounts of time in the on international relations (setting the policy as well as distinguishing differ- curriculum. The goal of the strategy is for stage for later content), in the middle of ent types of protectionist or imperialist students to take the “stuff” of history— a unit (when the teacher wants students practices. One of my students recently people, places, and events as revealed to see connections or build generaliza- based a continuum around whether through secondary texts, artifacts, and tions from among factual tidbits), or at the Middle Ages should be viewed as a primary documents—and manipulate the end of a unit (as a means to process period of collapse where human prog- them until underlying concepts and orga- or synthesize lots of information into a ress was severely hindered, or a period nizational structures emerge and evolve meaningful mental scheme, or as an ap- where new values rose to prominence into mental constructions. By observing plied assessment). and Europe simply embraced a new these abstract constructions along a con- Materials: Student Handout—Graph lifestyle. In between these negative and crete dimension and then holding them of events for rating relative degrees of positive poles, instances under investiga- at intellectual arms’ length, students are cooperation. The source used is “How tion were interpreted as a relative mix of more likely to arrive at generalizations, We Got Here: Moments that Shaped

January/February 2012 33 (AP Photo/Ed Bailey)

The Russian Vice Consul to New York, Vage Engibarian, second left, speaks at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, NY, Oct. 4, 2002. The museum commemorated the 45th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik. Looking on, left, is Paul Dickson, author of Sputnik, The Shock of the Century, and Vincent Suozzi, right, former mayor of Glen Cove, NY. A model of Sputnik is in the foreground.

U.S. and Soviet Views” Time Magazine, to each student, who first reads and event descriptions located between January 22, 1979. www.time.com/time/ then summarizes his or her event for them. magazine/article/0,9171,920031,00.html the group. Remind students they are Note: It is assumed that the idea to look for what the three events have of a “continuum” has already been in common even as they vary along a introduced and that students know Procedures: particular “dimension” or “continu- the “rules” of this exercise, namely um.” It is important to note that in this that some conceptual dimension is 1. The teacher selects three of the case, there is a discernible dimension the target we are seeking and that we events, making sure they fall on vari- and a relatively predictable set of stu- must name the “anchor points” (i.e., ous spots along the continuum he or dent responses. The teacher facilitates extremes) of the continuum. The first she has in mind—in this case: “De- the process of eliciting those respons- time you do something like this, a ge- grees of International Cooperation.” es. However, sometimes a continuum neric example or two should be used The table on the facing page presents may be derived from raw materials to describe both the concept and the an example of three I have chosen, where obvious “answers” are not ap- process. revised for student readability from parent and the teacher serves as au- the original Time article. thentic collaborator with students. 3. Survey the class and write various Adaptations: The teacher may titles for the continuum on the board. 2. Divide students into triads and give prefer having all students skim each Then ask a spokesperson from one each group a copy of the three event description during a “read-around” group to come forward and describe descriptions. Do not tell them the activity. Also, to enhance visual and their placement of “Stalingrad,” of- title you have in mind for the con- kinesthetic engagement, you may ask fering clarifications and inviting ques- tinuum. The objective is for them students to write names for the con- tions from the class as you go. Repeat to discover a suitable descriptor for tinuum on index cards and place them this until “U-2” and “Nixon Détente” themselves. One event is distributed at end points on the table, with the are also on the continuum. With three

Social Education 34 events already placed, probe the class 4. Once a draft of the continuum is in for possible terms to define the anchor place, distribute the entire article and points (e.g., “friends” and “enemies”). assign one more event to each group. Guide the class to a consensus on After the groups discuss their respec- names and fill in some intermediate tive event, ask a different spokesper- terms if you can. son to come forward, summarize the event, and place it on the continuum in relation to the first three examples.

Table 1 The U-2 The Nixon Détente Stalingrad

Description: Description: Description:

On May 1, 1960, Pilot Francis Gary Powers It was an encounter unlike anything the So- By the summer of 1942, the German armies climbed aboard his low-slung, black Lock- viets had ever seen. Vice President Richard had driven deep into Russia, and in August, heed U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance Nixon, who had built a whole career on op- General Friedrich Paulus’ Sixth Army closed plane in Peshawar, Pakistan. As he traversed position to Communism, came to Moscow in on Stalingrad on the Volga. The Soviets the Soviet Union at about 65,000 feet, sup- in 1959 to open the American National Exhi- resisted fiercely. As fall and then the- bit posedly beyond the range of Soviet inter- bition, and there, amid the shiny appliances ter winter set in, Paulus’ men inched into ception and missiles, his infrared cameras of a model kitchen, he got into an increas- Stalingrad, fighting house to house. But photographed potential targets below. But ingly heated argument with Nikita Khrush- like Napoleon, Hitler had come too far into above Sverdlovsk, according to the Soviets, chev. “You don’t know everything,” Nixon Russia and reckoned with the Russian cold. a ground-to-air rocket brought down the charged. Khrushchev retorted, “You don’t The suffering and bravery of Stalingrad in U2; Powers parachuted to Earth unharmed. know anything about Communism except that terrible winter became a new myth of At first the U.S. claimed that the plane was fear of it.” an enduring Soviet Union. The Red Army, on a weather reconnaissance flight and had under Georgi Zhukov, managed to encircle strayed over the U.S.S.R. But Khrushchev The odd meeting helped persuade Nixon Paulus’ 200,000-man army and batter it into had captured Powers, the wrecked plane that he had a special knack for face-to-face submission. The German surrender on Feb. and the film, which he mockingly bran- bargaining with the Communists. As Presi- 2, 1943, was a turning point of the war. dished before the Supreme Soviet. dent, he decided, even in the midst of the Viet Nam War, to fly to Peking in February It was an urgent time of shared suffering The Eisenhower Administration suffered 1972 and open diplomatic discussions. and purpose. America delivered $11 billion the acute embarrassment of being caught Three months later he went to Moscow to in arms, grain and other supplies to keep lying. Two weeks later, at the previously reassure the Russians of their tremendous the Soviets going. Allied convoys bringing arranged Big Four summit conference in stakes in a Soviet-American partnership. supplies into Murmansk and Archangel Paris, Khrushchev demanded an apology. through the Barents Sea sometimes lost as Eisenhower refused it, though he assured The point of Nixon’s trip was mutual self-in- many as three-quarters of their ships to Ger- the Soviets that the overflights had been terest: the President and Brezhnev signed an man dive-bombers. Toward the end of the suspended. The summit collapsed in an at- arms limitation agreement, both sides now war, with the Americans rolling into Germa- mosphere of anger and accusation. Later in seeming ready to scale down their profli- ny from the West and the Soviets from the the year, Khrushchev came to New York for gate arms competition. They agreed to save East, Winston Churchill remarked: “I deem a meeting of the UN General Assembly and money and pool information by embarking it highly important that we should shake left a vivid image in the world’s memory: on a joint space venture—the Apollo-Soyuz hands with the Russians as far to the east as as a Filipino delegate spoke, Khrushchev linkup that came to pass in 1975. possible.” The Allies had to settle for the Elbe removed his own shoe and pounded it on River, where Americans and Russians at last the table. embraced on April 25,1945.

January/February 2012 35 Students from Tanja Christiansen’s English class at Oppegard Upper Secondary School near Oslo, Norway, work on the Cold War continuum in 2010, when the author taught American Studies in Norwegian schools as a Fulbright Roving Scholar.

Table 2 The Rosenberg Trial Sputnik

Here is a complete list of the events described in the original Time article, followed by two more examples of student handouts, revised once again Description Description for readability, in Table 2: The U.S. monopoly on atomic power ended It was the Earth’s only other satellite except • Stalingrad in 1949 when Americans learned, to their the moon, a polished metal sphere the size dismay, that the Soviets had cracked the of a beach ball, hurtling around the planet • The Berlin Blockade secret. They suspected that spies were at 18,000 m.p.h. An NBC radio announcer • The Rosenberg Trial to blame. In April of 1951, Federal Judge that October in 1957 bade his audience: Irving Kaufman looked down at the de- “Listen now, for the sound which forever • The Hungarian Uprising fendants. “Plain, deliberate, contemplated separates the old from the new.” And over • Sputnik murder is dwarfed in magnitude by com- thousands of radios, from somewhere in parison with the crime you have commit- space, came an eerie beep ... beep ... beep. • The U-2 ted,” he told Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. “I The Soviet Union astonished the world • Cuban Missile Crisis believe your conduct in putting into the with the sophistication of its Sputnik. The hands of the Russians the A-bomb... has al- technological surprise plunged the U.S. • The Invasion of Czechoslovakia ready caused the Communist aggression in into orgies of introspection. It prompted • The Nixon Détente Korea ... and who knows but that millions the National Defense Education Act to pro- • The Solzhenitsyn Affair more innocent people may pay the price of vide $1 billion for more science teaching your treason.” and student loans. The satellite gave the The trial, falling in the midst of the Ko- impetus to John Kennedy’s promise four rean War and the red-baiting campaign of years later to put a man on the moon by Adaptation: For visual enhancement, let Wisconsin’s Senator Joe McCarthy, embod- the end of the 60s. students stand on the continuum hold- ied the polarizations and anxieties of the ing placards with the name of each event era. The Rosenbergs were executed at Sing (see photo). Sing two years later.

Social Education 36 U.S. — Soviet Degrees of Cooperation War New Event (Partially Completed Student Product) Cuba 1962 Hungarian

uprising 1956 U-2 1960 Czechoslovak Cold War uprising 1968 Rosenberg trial 1951 Sputnik 1957 Solzhenitsyn Peaceful 1974 Coexistence Berlin blockade 1948

Détente

Nixon 1972

Alliance Stalingrad 1942

Each student is given a unique event in U.S—Soviet history that happened after 1974 (see “New Event” in final column). He or she should decide where it fits on the graph, and explain that decision in terms of the continuum. Students should consider what could have happened to cause this event to move up or down on the rating scale.

5. At some point (during or at the end (see sample graph). You may also ask students view a social or historical issue of the exercise), flesh out the concep- them to demonstrate understanding through a sort of lens or filter anchored tual vocabulary you want students to by adding an additional event and by concepts that have special meaning use. It is almost always better to gen- asking students to independently de- to experts in a particular field, in this erate student vocabulary first in or- cide and describe where they would case world history. By leading students der to assess whether students have place it on the continuum. to view people, events, or other social established a grasp of the conceptual phenomena in terms of these dynamic categories. However, you may want Conclusion conceptual categories, we enhance their to substitute some disciplinary jar- Teachers have maintained a persistent ability to carry on substantive conversa- gon (such as “détente”), hopefully debate over the relative importance of tion about the content of the discipline without destroying students’ sense more or less dichotomous goals in so- in general. of confidence at having discovered cial education. Such debates include the conceptual dimensions on their concerns about breadth vs. depth, pro- Note own. General discussion about cess vs. product, acquisition of skills vs. 1. A good publication dealing with these issues is Tom Holt’s Thinking Historically (New York: College where to place words in relation to coverage of content, and construction Board Publications, 1990). events will reinforce sub-concepts of knowledge vs. inculcation of disposi- and the overall idea of “degrees of tions. It is more than mere coincidence international cooperation.” that the views expressed during these debates exist along a continuum of per- Geoffrey Scheurman is professor of Teacher 6. Since disagreements will remain fol- spectives. In just about any conversation Education and Coordinator of the Secondary Social lowing a class discussion, wrap up in social studies, a conceptual dimen- Studies Block at the University of Wisconsin—River the exercise by asking each student sion can be identified and placed on just Falls. He recently returned from Norway where he to create a unique “graph” showing such a scale. taught this lesson while serving as Fulbright Roving where the events would rank on the As demonstrated here, the develop- Scholar in American Studies. continuum, in their final opinion ment of a conceptual continuum helps

January/February 2012 37