TEACHING TOOLS

People’s History of the American Revolution

Questions for Teaching and Readers’ Groups

My objective in providing these questions is not to provide a set curriculum but to give readers a wide variety of material which they can adapt to their own circumstances, from the secondary classroom to advanced college classes and adult study groups. The “review” questions deal with knowledge, comprehension, and application. I focus here on key points and “defining detail,” as fiction writers say; these questions can be used as a study guide. The “historical reasoning and discussion” questions deal with analysis, synthesis, and evaluation; here, I use an inductive approach which encourages discovery and critical thinking. I have suggested many “class activities” which students can use to explore major themes through simulations and hands-on projects in group settings. I have also included “unit projects” to challenge serious students of history and to stimulate further inquiry. At several junctures, I enlarge the field of focus by referring to my footnotes and to outside sources.

Sometimes explicitly, and always implicitly, I invite readers to question or challenge the text. Through these questions, I hope to encourage people to view the study of history as an ongoing process. “History has to be rewritten in every generation,” wrote Christopher Hill, “because although the past does not change the present does; each new generation asks new questions of the past.” The new question asked by those of us who focus on “people’s history” is simple but powerful: in the old days, when only a select few recorded their thoughts in writing, what happened to all the rest? “[The] experience of something approaching democracy,” Hill continues, “makes us realize that most of our history is written about, and from the point of view of, a tiny fragment of the population, and makes us want to extend in depth as well as in breadth.” My hope is that this book, together with these questions, will encourage a new generation to extend even deeper and wider.

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