1 / 5

Adding sports to the standard history curriculum

Adding sports to the standard history curriculum. What popular/culture sports can and cannot do in history teaching. 2. A 7 point overview of the history of sports in the U.S. 3. Some stories that provide valuable teaching anecdotes 4. Democracy and rights in U.S. sports.

mimi
Download Presentation

Adding sports to the standard history curriculum

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Adding sports to the standard history curriculum • What popular/culture sports can and cannot do in history teaching. 2. A 7 point overview of the history of sports in the U.S. 3. Some stories that provide valuable teaching anecdotes 4. Democracy and rights in U.S. sports

  2. Popular culture in the classroom Strengths: appeal to interests; get students thinking about the historical moment, and living thoughtfully in their own time. Weaknesses: getting students (and parents) to take it seriously; the standards do not take it seriously; certain ahistorical continuities; frustratingly “fuzzy” because of questions about consumers’ taste and intent

  3. Popular Culture and Sports: some interpretative questions Are sports and popular culture merely escapes from more serious activities? What do they reflect about society? How significant are they historically?

  4. Sports: possibilities for classroom use • 5th grade: colonial games as a way of contributing to understanding of life; biographical approach to sports “heros” Jim Thorpe, Gertrude Ederle, Joe Louis, Babe Didrikson, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, John Wooden Billie Jean King, etc. etc. Try to get them to put sports triumph in social context. Why were there individual successes socially significant? • 8th grade: baseball as an example of urbanization, sports role in sectional conflict and the civil war, industrialization, immigration and the rise of spectator sports: How did sports reflect other aspects of the mid-nineteenth century? • 11th grade: Industrialization, baseball and imperialism, sports and race/gender—Civil Rights; Sports and mass media Can now move beyond the hero approach, and consider sports as an independent Example: Why was baseball segregated for so long? Who benefitted? Were women hurt by the rise of the “macho” ideal represented by Teddy Roosevelt, football, and celebration of male muscularity?

  5. Brief overview of sports history • Colonial America: Puritan restraint, Colonial Va. status anxiety—sports generally drunken, bloody and brutal • 1830s Cities become the center of sport: boxing, baseball, harness racing—importance of gambling • 1860s College students begin to play sports institutionally (rowing, football, track); baseball becomes “America’s game.” • 1890s key period—basketball, volleyball invented, “major leagues” in baseball emerge; masculinity becomes central, women start playing in earnest, racial barriers solidified—spectatorship thoroughly established. • 1920s: mass media (newspapers, magazines, radio, movies) create and exploit sports celebrities, including women and ethnic/racial heros • 1950s: t.v., youth sports leagues, rise of NFL, NBA • 1980s: internationalization of sports, 1979 enforcement ruling finally gives Title IX teeth, so new opportunities for young women in sports; ESPN, sports 24/7

More Related