Chauncey Monte-Sano - Reading, Thinking, and Writing About History: Teaching Argument Writing to Diverse Learners in the Common Core Classroom, Grades 6-12

Teaching Argument Writing to Diverse Learners in the Common Core Classroom, Grades 612

Foreword by Sam Wineburg

W HO OWNS BRAGGING rights for the American form of constitutional government? If the names Jefferson, Adams, or Madison come to mind, think again. The Founding Fathers, according to some historians, were rank imitators. It is not the Founding Fathers who invented this system, these scholars claim, but our Forgotten Fathers. Long before the Articles of Confederation and the drafting of the Constitution in Philadelphia, the sachems of the Iroquois League had invented a system of sovereign units united into one government. We now refer to this as the federal system. The anthropologist Jack Weatherford wastes no time: the Indians invented it.

Did they? The historian, Samuel B. Payne, Jr., says no. In an article that challenges the Iroquois Influence thesis, Payne first examines the most detailed and authoritative statements of scholars like Weatherford and others. He then tells us he will prove the Forgotten Fathers thesis false. Next, he lays out the evidence for and against the Iroquois influence on the colonists. He concludes that the entire thesis is unfounded.

The path this argument takes seems straightforward, even linear. But if you have ever watched middle school students trying to traverse it, you know it is anything but. How do young writers select evidence most relevant to their argument? How do they provide warrant for the facts presented, explaining how each fact supports their overall argument? In what order should points be arrayed? Each compositional decision demands subtle judgment. Historical writing is harder than it looks.

How does Payne do it? He begins by telling us of the establishment of the New England Confederation in 1643, which wedded Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven into common bond, with each colony sending representatives to yearly meetings to forge agreements and public laws. The group authored a document with the prescient title Articles of Confederation, formalizing its governing structure.

The New England Confederation of 1643 is a historical fact. But why does Payne bother? Because it wasnt until 1672, 29 years after the establishment of the New England Confederation, that colonists first made contact with the Iroquois. How could the Iroquois have bequeathed notions of confederation to the colonists if the colonists themselves were already practicing it? Indeed, multiple models of confederation, from the Swiss system of canons to the United Provinces of the Netherlands, had long been a fixture in the European conceptual universe. Political writings of the 17th and 18th centuries abound with references to confederated systems, some tracing back to the Achaean League (266 B.C.E.) in ancient Greece. Just as the Iroquois did not need the Europeans to come up with their idea of confederation, so the Europeans did not need the Iroquois to come up with theirs.

How can we teach students to make arguments like this? Sadly, our assignments often have the opposite effect. We throw young writers to the wolves, expecting them to absorb complex skills by osmosis. We hope that by providing many examples, the inner structure of argumentation will seep into young peoples brains. For a lucky few, this may happen. Most others will struggle. But if anything is struggling here, it is a pedagogy that perpetuates inequality and widens the disparity between have and have-nots.

Learning to write, as Chauncey Monte-Sano, Susan De La Paz, and Mark Felton argue in this important book, is a complex act of cognition with many moving parts. At the heart of their approach is the idea of cognitive apprenticeship. Writing differs a great deal from dance. In dance, for example, we can see and feel the moves we are supposed to make. In writing, however, the most important moves are invisible to the naked eye.

How, then, are students supposed to master something no one has ever explicitly modeled for them? Ask yourself: As a teacher do you explicitly explain to students how you approach a historical document, how you make choices about which facts to include and which are expendable? Do you let students in on the reasoning behind your written choices? Our students can only become apprentices of our thinking if we, as teachers, make what is normally tacit explicit. Our own inner thoughts, hidden from view, must become part of our curriculum.