Moving the Books: The Ornament of the World

We are preparing for Lesser Boy 2.0 and I am losing my home office with the very tall and beautiful built in bookcases. But, I think it is worth it and frankly I am excited to see those shelves filled with toys and kids books! The loss of the office and it’s shelves has required me to move all the books upstairs into the new shared office. Despite the warm weather and flight of stairs this process has been pure joy. The chance to take down books and spend some time with them, it really is better than any Facebook update. The chance to catch up with old friends leads me to this post, the first in what I hope will be many short book reviews.

The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal

I purchased this book soon after its publication. I remember that I had just read a couple of works of historical fiction about Jews in Iberia and was very interested in the period. Plus it fed into what was then my growing interest into the question of why Jews and Muslims cannot get along (no time for this here, maybe more in another post if I am feeling daring!). The book is a work of high quality popular history, which does not shy away from depth and focus.

I had heard medieval Granada was a truly unique place,  in passing,  in various history texts and have always made a point of mentioning it to students while studying the middle ages, specifically Spain. I never had the details to dig deep and provide interesting examples. The book is full of vignettes and stories about the three religious groups that can provide secondary teachers with just the right hooks for students, or sections can be reproduced for student reading on a specific period.

After I pulled if off the shelf, I Googled the title to look for some quick reviews, links, and the image you see above and I was surprised that the scholarly reviews were all quite positive but the popular reviews (a la Amazon.com) were not. One that jumped out at me called the work “Optimistic History”. This really concerned me, I see the work as focusing on a moment in history that is often neglected and should be held up as a model of what greatness can be when everyone puts down that labels and lives in peace. Then again maybe as a teacher, I am a big optimist.

To wrap up, I would recommend this as a great supplemental read for teachers who teach courses in World History, Religion, if you are teaching AP then WORLD and EUROPEAN HISTORY.

Bonus, Dr. Menocal did her PhD at Penn, I think Albert would really dig this book.

The Education of Henry Adams – 100 years later

This summer I began to reread The Education of Henry Adams. I first read the Education as an undergraduate and honestly did not really understand the power or the message of the book. I began this blog  to note ideas about Social Studies and it’s need to adapt to prepare students for life in he 21st century. My main inspiration comes from Albert McKinley, founder of the original Historical Outlook. The creation the the Social Studies as a school subject came as a result of the reorganization of American education at the beginning of the 20th century.

Henry Adams saw this change at the turn of the last century and his words and ideas are very fitting 100 years later. We have to bring our educational system up to date with the times we live in and prepare our young people for the future that they will live in. Adams argues that the education he received was insufficient preparation for the world he came to know, and was concerned that our educational system was continuing to ill prepare generations of young Americans.

Adams lived in a world that was “shrinking” because of advances in transportation, communication technology, and business . Sound familiar?  The thinker of the Adams generation gave us the American High School that we still have in place 100 years later, and now Adams is telling us that it is our job to pick up where they left off and reinvent? What should we do?

Then again, I am only half way through the book. More to come….

What I am Reading….

Currently I have a couple of books on the old night stand, and one in the briefcase for the commute (bike is in the shop) so here you go:

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North by Thomas Sugrue

I am about half-way through this book and it really is a remarkable text. The thesis that Dr. Sugrue addresses is a reexamination of the 20th century Civil Rights Movement. Instead of focusing on the movement in the southern states (i.e. Alabama, Missippi, George, etc) he presents a history of the same struggle in the northern states (and Midwest/west). Themes include access to education, housing, jobs, and the reinterpretation of the Constitution post FDR.

Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century by Johnathan Zimmerman, a professor of Education History at NYU, has writtern a fascinating new book about the role American educators abroad during the 20th century. I am only one chapter in but the book fascianting. It is not a chronological history, instead Zimmermen uses three types of teacher (________, ————, and _______) to make his point that exporting education can play a key role in foriegn policy.