Modern History I: "The American Revolution"

Because of my interest in modern history as opposed to ancient history, I move up about a thousand years or so in the timeline, to the late 18th century, where something that would change the world forever happened...

Dissent is brewing in the British-American colonies...

The battle cry for some was "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!", a catchy little phrase that sounds more like a string of syllables than anything that actually makes sense. It was really a protest against taxes set by an English Parliament that refused to give any of the colonies a seat in its houses. (However, the colonists were, in reality, paying much less that most other English citizens.) Formerly profiting British-American merchants and the day-to-day, practical, economical (read: money-minded) colonists didn't see things that way. Some cried democracy, some religon, some something else altogether...
The stage was set- the colonial tea pot had been left on the stove to boil too long, and it was about to blow its lid. Lift the curtain; let the play begin; change the course of history.

Lining Up the Odds

The colonies weren't, as some of the old histories tell us, an association of united, militant patriots heroically fighting against overwhelming odds, but rather a mixed bunch of various, allied groups determined to win on their home ground for their own reasons. So how did they end up winning, anyway?


The Odds:

The Patriots' Top-Five Advantages

1. It was their home ground. The Patriots knew the land better than their opponents; the Loyalists might have known it as well, but the Redcoats were mostly British. They didn't know the colonies, the ground, and the way it could be turned to a fighting advatage as well as the Patriots did.
2. The Redcoats were overconfident. They thought the Patriots could be brought back under control in a few months or a year and didn't plan for a long campaign in unfamiliar terrain. Also, they thought the "average colonist" was on their side, not that of the "Rebels".
3. Supply lines. The Patriots lived next to where they fought, giving them short supply lines. The Redcoats had to have their supplies shipped all the way from England, which could take from two weeks up to more than a month.
4. Support. Your average person was more likely to look the other way if a Patriot "appropriated", say, some corn from their field than they were if a Redcoat did the same thing. Also, the French threw their hats in with the Patriots later in the war. They helped with training, fighting, and so on.
5. And their biggest advantage... The Patriots "invented" a new style of fighting for the Western world- guerrilla war. The Redcoats were used to fighting a battle by marching out onto the field (marching band, polished calvary officers, infantry, and pretty, clean uniforms and all), and beginning the "required" regimen for a battle prior to this time: saluting and being saluted, pacing backwards a certain number of steps, waiting for a saber to drop, and then firing while the other side fires, and each waiting politely for the other side to fire again. Then the battle is joined. In contrast, guerrila tactics actually capitalized on the disorganized nature of the Patriots' forces and on their knowledge of the land.

The Patriots' Top-Five Disadvantages

1. They were unruly and disorganized. These people weren't Americans yet; they were Pennsylvanians, or New Yorkers, or Virginians, or whatever-colonists. They thought of the colony first, and the country second. And, whilesome of them may have fought in the French and Indian War, they weren't professional soldiers. In reality, these people had no training, and were very likely not to have someone to train them.
2. They were overconfident. One estimate for death tolls and monetary costs, by a Patriot, counted on only a six-month war before an easy victory. (That was Thomas Jefferson's count, by the way.)
3. Lack of support. At the height of patriotism, about 33% of the population of the colonies were Patriots; about 33% were Loyalists; and about 34% were undecided, didn't really care one way or the other, or were pacifists like the Quakers of the day.
4. Lack of proper supplies. The colonies weren't really prepared to outfit, clothe, feed, pay, and otherwise provide for an army. Patriots deserted for lack of pay and/or food, died from diseases/cold/hunger, etc., and had a number of other problems.
5. There weren't really very many of them. The Redcoats were the largest, most well-organized (and most undefeated) army in the world at the time. In contrast, the Patriots were lacking in numbers, organization, and any experience at all, let alone experience winning (aside from hunters shooting at animals or borderline patrolers).

The Patriots- the Americans- won, as we know. They were determined, had the home ground, and fought with guerrilla tactics. Now all they had to do was create a country from scratch.


Vocabulary:

• Patriots- Noun. Historically, in the American Revolution, the Patriots were the colonists, the Americans. Linguistically, a patriot is someone who loves their country.
• Loyalist- Noun. In the American Revolution, a colonist who was on the side of the British.
• Rebel- Noun. Degrogatory name for a Patriot, used by the Loyalists or Redcoats
• Tory- Noun. Derogatory name for a Loyalist, used by the Patriots.
• Quakers- Noun. Proper name is "The Society of Friends". A pacifistic religious group dedicated to nonviolence and living peacefully. Singular- Quaker.
• Redcoats / Lobsterbacks- Noun. Derogatory Patriot name for the British soldiers. Given because the British uniform was covered by a bright red long coat, making the soldiers look something like cooked lobsters.
• Guerrilla war / Guerrilla tactics- Strategy where the attacking party fires, fights, and fades back into the surroundings before the attacked party can retaliate. Gives the advantage to the attacking party.
• French and Indian War- War fought just prior to the American Revolution with the British and their few Native American allies versus the French and their larger number of Native American allies. The British won.

Connection to History, Part III

Reference Point:
Toppo, Greg. "10 years later, the real story behind Columbine". USA Today magazine
Find it, read it, and judge for yourself, all here.

This is one of the things I dislike most. Historical events and personas are so often maligned because, sadly, someone started a rumor or just passed one on and on and down through time and memory.


For instance, the much-played up "first Thanksgiving of America" never actually happened. The governor of the colony, William Bradford, wrote Of Plymouth Colony (a portion of which can be found here, although unfortunately not the portion with which we are concerned) and nowhere in the first year or so does he make mention of a great gathering to give thanks- let alone one in peace between the Native Americans and colonists, who coexisted in an uneasy truce.

In the same vein, I have to wonder if Henry Wadsworth Longfellow intended to perpetuate such a falsity or simply attract attention to an overlooked event he believed pertinent to America's people and its history. Paul Revere's Ride (a massively inaccurate, and yet hugely popular, poem from the 1800s, a copy of which can be found here, although if "...on the eighteenth of April in '75..." sounds familiar, you've probably already read it) is so far off-track it isn't even funny. First of all, two other riders rode that night. Second of all, Revere was caught by the British and sent home in disgrace less than halfway through the ride.

To use an example that is unfortunately much closer to our time and more familiar to us, one word: Columbine. Columbine High School and the Columbine shootings have become embedded in the national consciousness, a reminder of what could happen and a symbol of something that had become all-too-common in our society.
Sadly, most of the "facts" we have come to know about the events at Columbine, in the past years are wrong, according to Mr. Toppo. A re-revealing of evidence and more objective studying of the facts, such as the shooters' journals and other forensically conclusive evidence, reveals facts contrary to popular "knowledge", such as:

1. The shooters were actually bullies; not so much the bullied ones.
2. The plan was not to kill specific people using guns; it was a plan to kill as many as possible, possibly over a thousand people, using guns and bombs.
3. The shooters were not righteous victims of a school and parental system gone wrong; one was actually an intelligent, "psychopathic" predator with a megalomaniacal view of the world (Eric Harris, who conceived the plan) and the other was a "suicidal,... lovelorn" individual with a incredible paranoia (Dylan Kleblod).

While the last is surely one of the most horrible tragedies, it truly irritates me that what we as a society accept as "fact" can, in fact, turn out to be so far from the truth it's not even funny any more.

L.P.

Connection to History, Part II

Please note before reading:
REFERENCE MATERIAL USED: Curtis, Diane. "Building Online Learning Communities: A worldwide audience may be the motivation students need to succeed." I.E.: Interactive Educator magazine. SMART Technologies. Vol. 2, No. 2, Autumn 2006. Hardcopy, page23.
Find it online to read and judge for yourself here, in PDF format.
Enter page number 23 at the top, search the PDF, or scroll down until you find it. (You will need a PDF reader, such as the one provided to the public by Adobe Acrobat. If you do not already have a PDF reader installed on your computer, the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, version 9.1, can be downloaded for free here.)

History, like most relevant disciplines, has many practical applications in other disciplines. History is particularly relevant in integrated technology, and I'm not talking about simply studying the days when computers filled rooms and spilled out into hallways, today's eighth-grade maths was the greatest usage for them, and "debugging" a computer meant getting out a flyswatter and killing some giant moths in-between the foot-across wires. Instead, I find it interesting how far we've come- exactly how "integrated" today's modern world is, especially in the modernist classroom.

Diane Curtis's article in I.E. magazine for Autumn 2006 (see above for full reference information) highlights the use of current- if not cutting-edge- technology in the American classroom, to study everything from English to the maths, from history itself to the modern-day sciences. Curtis also examines the positives and negatives of said use.

There are many positives, she contends. With the rising job turnover, today's students will likely hold "ten or more jobs" in tomorrow's workforce. Being able to interact with technology and teach themselves new concepts easily will be a plus. "Self-directed learning", a education experience wherein students as individuals and classrooms as wholes develop a basic curricula, with minimal input from teachers other than the essential directive, guides this process of self-taught instruction, while keeping students on-track to success.
International exposure, exposing students to the wider audiences of that technology makes available, encourages them to do better work in the first place and think more about what they are doing. Students, Curtis and other involved educators say, tend to think more about what they are writing when it's for more than just their teachers' eyes.
Teachers have begun to use such diverse technological tools as blogs, e-mail, MeneMAC (a program that creates a integrated "school-within-a-school"), chat rooms, podcasts, websites, videoconferencing and Blackboard (an online discussion forum).

However, the educators involved in such programs are also aware of their drawbacks, contends Curtis. Educators must be aware of the content of these programs before committing to them. The content must add to the direction of the class, not detract from it.
Also, a major concern is, as always, security. A program used in such a way must- with great certainty on all parts- be secure, not only for the students. It must be safe enough for teachers, other students, the school and the parents to trust in it.
A third concern for many teachers is the cohesion or lack thereof of the student body, and therefore the classroom in question. Students, they claim, must be a cohesive and coherent whole in the real world before venturing into the virtual one, or the communication of the program among the online community may be lost, as well.

However, says Curtis, the positives of the situation of integrated technology in the modern classrooms of America certainly outweigh the negatives of the situation, if and when said technology in question is used properly.

What is your opinion on integrated technology in the modern, American classroom? Do you agree with Curtis, or disagree? Why do you believe that?

L.P.