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As reported in in the Report of Proceedings from the Philadelphia Convention on September 15, , George Mason objected to the original language of Article V as proposed by James Madison, which would have required Congress to propose amendments on application of two-thirds of the legislatures of the several States.
To the modern eye, this original formulation would seem to be a more direct route for the States to obtain desired amendments. Nevertheless, George Mason feared Congress retained too much control over this amendment process. However ironic that rationale may look to modern eyes, it makes perfect sense in light of the technological limitations of the 18th Century.
After all, at the time, communications would take days, weeks or months to travel from state capitol to state capitol, traveling by horse, rather than by telegraph, telephone or email. Ensuring that the States all convened at a central location through their own representatives to propose desired amendments was simply a practical necessity to ensure unity and control over what was proposed.
After all, the states would have had to first organize an informal convention to reach consensus on their desired amendments before delivering conforming applications to Congress. The foregoing understanding that the Article V convention was meant to be directed by the States was further confirmed during the ratification debates. On January 23, , for example, Federalist No. In publications both preceding and following the Virginia ratification convention, this public understanding of Article V was further confirmed by the last of the Federalist Papers, Federalist No.
These representations about how the states would organize and target the Article V convention process did not occur in a vacuum. They reflected the custom and practice of more than a dozen interstate and inter-colonial conventions that were organized prior to the ratification of the U. Simply put, it was usual and customary for states to set the agenda for any such convention and to instruct their delegates specifically on what to advance and address at the convention.
Naturally, the Founders repeatedly represented to the public that an Article V convention would operate in the same way. Most antislavery politicians and the northern voters who supported them, Gara argued, cared little about the sufferings of slaves. Furthermore, the nature of slaves' resistances propelled their uninvited and important intrusions into white men's political upheavals. Without the threat to northern liberties posed by the slave power, most northern whites would not have welcomed the Republican party's moderate strain of antislavery politics.
Although slaves themselves did not always figure prominently in the moderate antislavery argument, slave resistance ultimately made the slave power thesis plausible. The title of this article borrows from Howard K. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Loewen and Edward H. Ayers, What Caused the Civil War? For Edward Ayers's call for reinvigorated debate on the causes, conduct, and consequences of the Civil War, see ibid. For more recent historiographical assessments of specific topics related to the sectional crisis, see Lacy K. Several important bodies of literature are underrepresented in my historiography.
One is work on the five months between Abraham Lincoln's election and the bombardment of Fort Sumter, which addresses the question of why and how secession sparked a shooting war. This outcome was not inevitable, because the causes of disunion were not identical to the causes of the Civil War itself. This essay focuses on the former topic. Mansch, Abraham Lincoln, President-Elect: Biographies are also not explored systematically here.
Recent biographies related to the coming of the Civil War include William C. Thanks in part to the close proximity of Lincoln's bicentennial birthday and the Civil War sesquicentennial, scholarship on the sixteenth president continues to burgeon. Collective biography, particularly on Lincoln's relationships with other key figures, has also flourished.
On Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, see Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: A third body of literature that needs further historiographical analysis relates to gender and the coming of the Civil War. See, for example, Michael D.
Pierson, Free Hearts and Free Homes: For discussions of the classic schools of scholarship, see Kenneth M. For a call for a synthesis of the fundamentalist and revisionist interpretations, see Ayers, What Caused the Civil War? Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union 2 vols. Potter, The Impending Crisis, —, completed and ed. Fehrenbacher New York, , 1—6. On continental expansion and sectional conflict, see Michael A. Morrison, Slavery and the American West: On the divisive influence of sectionalized fantasies of tropical conquest, see Robert E.
For an early work on Haiti's transnational significance, see Alfred N. Hunt, Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean Baton Rouge, On the relationship between the Ostend Manifesto and domestic politics, see Robert E.
Several recent dissertations explore the equally permeable boundary between North and South. The compelling scholarship on global antislavery undoubtedly encouraged the internationalization of Civil War causation studies. David Brion Davis's contributions remain indispensable. For a work that places antebellum southern thought, including proslavery ideology, into an international context, see Michael O'Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life in the American South, — 2 vols. John Majewski offers a different perspective on slavery and free trade, acknowledging that slaveholders were hardly united in favor of protection and arguing that the moderate Confederate tariff represented a compromise between protectionists and free traders.
On the centrality of cotton exports in the economic history of the South—and the United States—see Douglass C. On the Old South's place in world economic history and its dependency on the global cotton market, see Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese New York, , 34— On the early history of the cotton kingdom, see Adam Rothman, Slave Country: For an accessible introduction to the early struggles over slavery, see Gary J.
On slavery's post-Revolution expansion, see Rothman, Slave Country. For the social and intellectual history of early proslavery thought, see Jeffrey Robert Young, ed. An Anthology Columbia, S. Irons, The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: Richards, The Slave Power: From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson, ed.
Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon Athens, Ohio, , 19—46; David L. Lightner, Slavery and the Commerce Power: Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: For a discussion of the temporal parameters of his own work, see William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. Secessionists at Bay, — New York, , vii. Alley, Speech of Hon. Robert Toombs, on the Crisis.
Delivered before the Georgia Legislature, December 7, Washington, , 5. Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism, ed. On the link between collective memory of the Texas Revolution and the growth of Confederate nationalism in Texas, see Andrew F. On the memory of the Civil War, see, for example, David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: Slavery and the Meaning of America Chapel Hill, , 3.
Green, Politics and America in Crisis: For recent studies of the slavery expansion issue in the late s and early s, see Joel H. Silbey, Storm over Texas: Waugh, On the Brink of Civil War: Remini, At the Edge of the Precipice: Also in the late s, antislavery activists shifted away from efforts to abolish the interstate slave trade and toward the restriction of slavery's expansion. See Lightner, Slavery and the Commerce Power, — Johnson, Division and Reunion: Sewell, A House Divided: Ritchie Devon Watson Jr. Susan-Mary Grant, North over South: Green, Politics and America in Crisis, On the ages of representatives and senators in , see Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of New York, , 32, On the deaths of John C.
Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun New York, , For a different psychological interpretation of generational influences on politics, see George B. Forgie, Patricide in the House Divided: For a generational analysis of the rise of immediate abolitionism around , see James L. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Earlier works that emphasize secession's popularity among youthful southern whites include William L.
Barney, The Secessionist Impulse: See also Kevin M. On slaveholders' influence over national policy and their use of federal power to advance proslavery interests, see Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: For a work that argues that the slave power thesis was not mere paranoia and disputes the dismissive interpretation of earlier historians, see Richards, Slave Power.
Works that Leonard Richards disputes include Chauncey S. The painful shift from proslavery American nationalism to proslavery southern nationalism can be traced in the career of the Alabama Whig Henry Washington Hilliard. Henry Washington Hilliard, — Baton Rouge, Huston, Calculating the Value of the Union: Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Margaret Abruzzo, Polemical Pain: Jefferson to Lincoln New York, , esp. On the antidemocratic impulse behind secession in South Carolina and, ostensibly, the rest of the Confederacy, see Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Proslavery Rhetoric and the Tragedy of Consensus Tuscaloosa, On the southern rejection of bourgeois liberalism and capitalism, see Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D.
Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: Genovese, Slavery in White and Black: For the argument that both sections were equally dedicated to liberalism, see David F. Ericson, The Debate over Slavery: For a compelling argument that secession stemmed from a fierce reaction against nineteenth-century liberal trends and from fealty to the true American republic, see McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 12— Pickens to Benjamin F.
Perry, June 27, , folder 3, box 1, B. On the fragility of an antebellum nationalism built on ideals that developed clashing sectional characteristics, see Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: This work expands on a theme advanced in Russel B. Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: On the difficulty of placing antislavery activists on a spectrum of political opinion, see Frederick J.
Blue, No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics Baton Rouge, , Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Maltz, Fugitive Slave on Trial: Steven Lubet, Fugitive Justice: The white defendants Steven Lubet examines are Castner Hanway, charged with treason for his involvement in an Christiana, Pennsylvania, clash, and Simeon Bushnell, a participant in an Oberlin, Ohio, slave rescue.
The third case Lubet looks at is that of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns. Stanley Harrold, Border War: On fugitive slaves and national politics, see R. Secessionists Triumphant, — New York, Freehling, The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War New York, Freehling, Road to Disunion, II, xii, xiii. On the relationship between slave resistance and politics in antebellum Virginia, see William A.
Link, Roots of Secession: On the political consequences of mass panic over suspected slave revolts in , see Donald E. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: Bordewich, Bound for Canaan: The Moral Struggle against Slavery Evanston, Elizabeth Varon mentions the speech but not its impact on northern workers. A Design for Mastery Baton Rouge, , On elite secessionists' heavy-handed efforts to mobilize nonslaveholding whites behind secession and the only partial success of racist demagoguery, see McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 38— The Republicans' First Generation, ed. Engs and Randall M.
Miller Philadelphia, , — A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy, ed. White to John P. On the response to McPherson's essay, see John M. On the Confederate flag controversy, see J. Michael Martinez, William D. And there are different ways of watching programs—a child may watch in isolation or with an adult. The same program can have different effects depending on who is watching and whether the viewing is a solo activity or part of an interactive group.
An important distinction is whether the program is intended to be educational or not. One group of preschoolers aged 2—4 and first-grade students aged 6—7 watched about 7—8 hours of noneducational programming per week; the preschool children also watched an average of 2 hours of educational programming per week, and the older students watched 1 hour.
Despite the low ratio of educational to noneducational viewing, the educational programs seemed to have positive benefits. The 2- to 4-year-old preschoolers performed better than non-viewers of educational programs on tests of school readiness, reading, mathematics, and vocabulary as much as 3 years later Wright and Huston, Specifically, viewing educational programs was a positive predictor of letter-word knowledge, vocabulary size, and school readiness on standardized achievement tests.
Overall, the effects of television viewing were not as widespread for the older students, and there were fewer significant effects for the older children than for the preschoolers. Television also provides images and role models that can affect how children view themselves, how they see others, attitudes about what academic subjects they should be interested in, and other topics related to person perception.
These images can have both positive and negative effects. And children who watched episodes of Sesame Street featuring handicapped children had more positive feelings toward children with disabilities. However, children can also misinterpret programs about people from different cultures, depending on what they already know Newcomb and Collins, Stereotyping represents a powerful effect of watching television that is potentially negative. Children bring sex role stereotypes with them to school that derive from television programs and commercials Dorr, As a powerful visual medium, television creates stereotypes even when there is no intent to sell an image.
But experimental studies indicate that such stereotyping effects decrease with children as young as 5 if adults offer critiques of the stereotypic portrayals as the children watch programs Dorr, Thus, entertainment programs can educate in positive ways and learned information can be extended through adult guidance and commentary. But the medium is neither inherently beneficial nor harmful. The content that students watch, and how they watch it, has important effects on what they learn. Especially significant is the fact that informative or educational programming has been shown to have beneficial effects on school achievement and that a preponderance of non-educational, entertainment viewing can have negative effects.
These findings support the wisdom of continued attempts to develop and study television programs that can help students acquire the kinds of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that support their learning in school.
It begins by having students use their own words, pictures, or diagrams to describe mathematical situations to organize their own knowledge and work and to explain their strategies. Assessment tasks can involve many possible combinations of content knowledge and process skills; Table 6. Class-based Jacksonian radicalism thus informed the ideology of the Free Soil party and, crucially, the Republicans. Barney, The Secessionist Impulse: Drafting and ratification timeline Convention Signing Federalism Republicanism.
In the beginning of this chapter we noted that the four perspectives on learning environments the degree to which they are learner, knowledge, assessment, and community centered would be discussed separately but ultimately needed to be aligned in ways that mutually support one another. Alignment is as important for schools as for organizations in general e. A key aspect of task analysis see Chapter 2 is the idea of aligning goals for learning with what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed both formatively and summatively. Without this alignment, it is difficult to know what is being learned.
Students may be learning valuable information, but one cannot tell unless there is alignment between what they are learning and the assessment of that learning. A systems approach to promote coordination among activities is needed to design effective learning environments Brown and Campione, Many schools have checklists of innovative practices, such as the use of collaborative learning, teaching for understanding and problem solving, and using formative assessment.
Often, however, these activities are not coordinated with one another. In addition, students may be given opportunities to study collaboratively for tests yet be graded on a curve so that they compete with one another rather than trying to meet particular performance standards. In these situations, activities in the classroom are not aligned. Activities within a particular classroom may be aligned yet fail to fit with the rest of the school. And a school as a whole needs to have a consistent alignment. Some schools communicate a consistent policy about norms and expectations for conduct and achievement.
Others send mixed messages. Overall, different activities within a school may or may not compete with one another and impede overall progress. When principals and teachers work together to define a common vision for their entire school, learning can improve e. Activities within schools must also be aligned with the goals and assessment practices of the community. Often these factors are out of alignment.
Effective change requires a simultaneous consideration of all these factors e. The new scientific findings about learning provide a framework for guiding systemic change. The goals and expectations for schooling have changed quite dramatically during the past century, and new goals suggest the need to rethink. We emphasized that research on learning does not provide a recipe for designing effective learning environments, but it does support the value of asking certain kinds of questions about the design of learning environments.
Four perspectives on the design of learning environments—the degree to which they are student centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered—are important in designing these environments.
But the idea that the States can't control the Article V convention process is entirely anachronistic. as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side, or on the other.”4 . 16, ); Robert Natelson, Learning from Experience: How the States Used Article V Applications in America's First Century. This white paper has been created to provide an overview of research and expert opinion on 21st century learning environments, one of the four support . the United States, more than 59 million students, teachers, and . century learning experiences. . Island now uses the term „Carnegie unit‟ to refer to courses that are.
Learner-centered environments attempt to help students make connections between their previous knowledge and their current academic tasks. Parents are especially good at helping their children make connections. Teachers have a harder time because they do not share the life experiences of each of their students. Effective environments must also be knowledge centered. It is not sufficient only to attempt to teach general problem solving and thinking skills; the ability to think and solve problems requires well-organized knowledge that is accessible in appropriate contexts.
While young students are capable of grasping more complex concepts than was believed previously, those concepts must be presented in ways that are developmentally appropriate. A knowledge-centered perspective on learning environments also highlights the importance of thinking about designs for curricula. To what extent do they help students learn with understanding versus promote the acquisition of disconnected sets of facts and skills?
Curricula that emphasize an excessively broad range of subjects run the risk of developing disconnected rather than connected knowledge; they fit well with the idea of a curriculum as being a well-worn path in a road. Issues of assessment also represent an important perspective for viewing the design of learning environments. Feedback is fundamental to learning, but opportunities to receive it are often scarce in classrooms. Students may receive grades on tests and essays, but these are summative assessments that occur at the end of projects; also needed are formative assessments that provide students opportunities to revise and hence improve the quality of their thinking and learning.
Assessments must reflect the learning goals that define various environments. If the goal is to enhance understanding, it is not sufficient to provide assessments that focus primarily on memory for facts and formulas. Many instructors have changed their approach to teaching after seeing how their students failed to understand seemingly obvious to the expert ideas.
The fourth perspective on learning environments involves the degree to which they promote a sense of community. Ideally, students, teachers, and other interested participants share norms that value learning and high standards.
There are several aspects of community, including the community of the classroom, the school, and the connections between the school and the larger community, including the home. The importance of connected communities becomes clear when one examines the relatively small amount of time spent in school compared to other settings. Finally, there needs to be alignment among the four perspectives of learning environments. They all have the potential to overlap and mutually influence one another. Issues of alignment appear to be very important for accelerating learning both within and outside of schools.
First released in the Spring of , How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning.
Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods--to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb.
How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system.
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The National Academies Press. Page Share Cite. For example, it has been argued that many mathematics curricula emphasize …not so much a form of thinking as a substitute for thinking. Formative Assessments and Feedback. Formats for Assessing Understanding. Theoretical Frameworks for Assessment. Classroom and School Communities. As Barth states: Connections to the Broader Community. Watching Different Kinds of Programs. Effects on Beliefs and Attitudes. Login or Register to save! How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain. How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn.
What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach. The amazing learning potential of infants. The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace. Learning needs and opportunities for teachers. A realistic look at the role of technology in education. Then and Now Colonists were literate enough if they could sign their name, or even an X, on deeds. Surface features and shallow understanding. Underlying principles and relevant concepts.