[Download] "Using First-Person Sources to Teach the Vietnam war." by Teaching History: A Journal of Methods * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Using First-Person Sources to Teach the Vietnam war.
- Author : Teaching History: A Journal of Methods
- Release Date : January 22, 2003
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 184 KB
Description
As an avid proponent of student-active teaching pedagogy, one of the various methods that I employ is to build an entire course around discussion of a body of readings. First-person sources serve as one of the best media for this approach. Two of my most popular offerings, "Women's Lives in Asia and Africa" and "The Civil Rights Era," focus on a film and the discussion of one or more first-person accounts each week. My course "The Vietnam Experience" is more heavily lecture-oriented, but reading, discussing, and writing about first-person sources is a central component of this course as well. In nearly thirty years of teaching Vietnam and more than twenty years of writing about teaching the subject, beginning with an article in Teaching History in 1981, (1) my approach and my pedagogy have evolved, but one important point of continuity is an emphasis upon understanding the multifarious dimensions of the conflict from the perspectives of the major groups of participants. Reduced to only the most basic differing perspectives, they are the United States' South Vietnamese allies, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, American government and military leaders, American war participants, and the anti-war movement. Obviously, each of these groups is far from monolithic, with many perceptions and viewpoints represented. A quick visit to Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com) reveals almost 3000 books under the category of Vietnam War personal narratives.