Montana

History

Historical thinking is a process of chronological reasoning, which means wrestling with issues of causality, connections, significance, perspectives, and context. The goal is to develop credible arguments about the past based on reasoned interpretation of evidence from a variety of primary and secondary sources in diverse media formats.

In middle school, students place events, ideas, and developments in historical context by considering the date, place, and other developments happening at the same time. They evaluate the relevance, credibility, and utility of a historical source based on information such as author, date, place of origin, intended audience, and purpose.

Students analyze the factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras and how and why the perspectives have changed over time.

Students understand and distinguish cause, effect, sequence, and correlation in historical events, including the long- and short-term causal relations.

Finally, students detect possible limitations in the historical record and recognize that interpretations of history are subject to change as new information emerges

Students should consider topics that divided the Founding Fathers and examine the compromises adopted to produce a unifying document. Several compromises preserved the institution of slavery: namely, the three-fifths rule of representation, the slave importation clause, and the fugitive-slave clause. Students may explore quantitative information about where slaves lived and the work they did to determine why slave-holding provisions were so important to Southern delegates. Students can also wrestle with a question faced by some Founding Fathers: How could the nation’s ideals of freedom, liberty, and democracy be adopted alongside slavery? With careful guidance from the teacher, students can speculate on the question What were the long-term costs of slavery, both to people of African descent and to the nation at large? In addition, students discuss the status of women in this era, particularly relating to voting and the ownership of property.

Although political rights for women were not advocated by the Founding Fathers, some women, such as Abigail Adams, wrote explicitly about how women’s interests, especially as mothers, needed to be considered by male leaders.