The National Archives refurbs the Magna Carta

One of the really cool things about our National Archives is that it owns a copy of the Magna Carta, aka, The Great Charter of Liberties (thanks to a wealthy philanthropist).  Sadly, if you visit right now, you won’t be able to see it.  The 13th century document is currently getting a makeover of sorts.  Kindly, however, the National Archives has provided this cool looksy at the process.

So, why should you care about a 13th century document that is older than our country?  Well, when the barons had finally had enough of King John–yes, that King John–of King John’s taxes and other policies, they cornered him at Runnymede meadow, and handed him a document that they had written up with some aid by a few bishops on hand.  While they were primarily concerned with looking after themselves, the barons put a few lines in that most important of all legal documents that have become the hallmarks of the Rule of Law and of our dearest-held rights.  It wasn’t much aid  to a woman who wished to bring a rapist to justice (“54: No one shall be arrested or imprisoned upon a woman’s appeal for the death of any person other than her husband.”)–although, it does do some mighty fine things for the rights of widows–it nevertheless extended and insisted on the these rights for all free men in the kingdom, regardless of rank (other than that free part).

Try to think about this for a moment: imagine that France had secured a similar document and protected as the English lords would do (several successive kings attempted to do away with it, only to have it be reestablished by the combined might of the aristocracy), would there have ever been a Sun King, a Versailles, a vast centralizing of power in the king, a Marie Antoinette, a French Revolution, and a handful of blood baths?  Would the successive events have been possible if the power had been forcibly decentralized and the early stirrings of a parliament founded when France was still medieval, as happened in England?  Quite plausibly not!

Regardless of France, these United States of America referenced the legacy of the Magna Carta at length both in arguments for fair treatment while still a colony under Britain and in the construction of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Ultimately Successful: a Jesse Owens Fake Wall

Jesse Owens (James Cleveland Owens) Fake Facebook Profile - MyFakeWall.com

After the challenges experienced with the librarian in our library class, we were able to regroup and recoup our losses.  Following the in-class debacle, I sent out e-mail with instructions, including the following:

1. Find 5 facts: birthplace, education, people in his life (family, friends, coaches, mentors, opponents, etc.)
2. Find a photo (either find one online and e-mail it to me or take a photo with your smart phone ans send it to me)
3. Find 3 primary sources–from those sources find a) America’s impression of Germany in 1936, b) America’s impression of Jesse Owens, c) Germans impression of Jesse Owens, d) Marylanders impressions of Jesse Owens

Out of this we have a great a product in the form of a Jesse Owens wall at MyFakeWall.com that didn’t have as much student collaboration as I would have liked, but is a nice finished piece that they helped build more indirectly.  The wall posts focus narrowly on the American track teams’ experience in the 1936 Berlin Olympics–commonly referred to as Hitler’s Olympics, with good reason.

Students dug up sources that provided the profile information and some of the pictures.  The wall posts were built up mostly from primary sources, in the end only three of these references was found by the students.  Most of the wall posts came from a series of interviews that were done in 1986 as part of the LA84 Foundation’s legacy project which interviewed past Olympians, including those who participated in Berlin in 1936.

It was a successful learning process.  The students will come out of this with a clearer sense of what constitutes a primary source versus a secondary source.  They will also have learned the possibilities and limits of internet searching for research material.

I learned some more about MyFakeWall.com as well.  It is pretty stubborn about pictures.  A lot of the offered features didn’t work very well.  If the site has a preference for a media type it does not specify such a one anywhere!

What we missed out on as a class was asking the students to assume those roles of the various sources.  That creativity of trying to think from the perspective of someone who is foreign to you by means of time and geography, is an essential skill for thinking historically.  It also working through the challenge of recognizing what is justifiably familiar versus what shows up as a “false-friend” and leads your analysis astray.  That opportunity was missed because we did not end up working on the wall together in class.

I do want to thank Glenn Wiebe!  His Tip-of-the-Week post put me onto this opportunity.