How far back in history do you need to go in order to be able to fully understand a modern-day issue?
This is a question that I have been wondering ever since thinking about how to bring up the situation in Ukraine to my frosh history students. How far back in history do you need to go in order to understand the root of a modern-day issue or conflict?
My students know that Russia invaded Ukraine and outside of that save for a few outlier students that is all they really know. On top of that most of them are learning about the conflict via jokes on TikTok.
- As I thought about how to present current events to them I wondered:
- How much do they need to know about NATO?
- What about the Warsaw Pact?
- Do they need to have a working understanding of the Soviet Union?
- What about the Cold War?
- What do they need to know about Vladimir Putin?
- Should we talk about Belarus?
Thankfully I learned in my Big History planning meeting today that Joanie and Gaeby are way ahead of me and already created some awesome context slides about what is going on and saved the day and I am looking forward to sharing them with my class this week.
So while their slide show saved me from going down a long Eastern European rabbit hole the question still remains:
- When can I simply put on the news and show my students what is going on and when is added context critical?
- The classroom aside, how far down the rabbit hole do you go in a world where the news cycle turns almost completely on a daily basis?
Ok so… I love the slide show, I honestly learned some stuff so Shout out to Gaeby and Joannie on creating that…
thought: at the end of the day, if you look at the ISOs, wouldn't our goal be for the students themselves to asking the very questions that you are asking in this blog but applied to themselves? i.e. what DO I NEED to know to properly understand what is going on? where do I go to get the answers?
wondering: is what you guys just did form them not a great to model what you need to know to understand… so is the question more about: do we need to set up other situations where they get a chance to flex that same muscle?
Russia/Ukraine is a great example of why Geography is so important in studying history. This is a long-lasting issue over warm-water ports for Russia (google Sevastapol). This topic always fascinated me when I taught World Civ.