Overview
In the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) our recently adopted history curriculum is called "History Alive!" and it comes from the Teachers Curriculum Institute (TCI). After teaching their seventh grade TCI curriculum "History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond" for going on three years now, I have found their approach to history to be very interactive, creative, and engaging as it recognizes the importance of teaching to multiple intelligences. Despite "History Alive!" being school district mandated, in preparing for this unit, I also know that our new curriculum is too rich and valuable to even want to cast it completely aside. Instead, I have aimed to use "History Alive!" not only as an entry point into learning about the fall of Rome, but to also use it as a source of inspiration to create and adapt additional performance assessments that can enhance the breadth and depth of my unit topic.
According to our "History Alive!" pacing guide, which our SFUSD teachers must also comply with, and in order to cover over a thousand years of history within our approximately nine month academic school year, every chapter we cover must only take about one week to teach. The introductory chapter in our curriculum, "The Legacy of the Roman Empire", which is the chapter this unit is based around, is not an exception to the confines of our district pacing guide. However, knowing that other school districts have different time parameters for their coverage of curriculum, I have adapted this unit to be taught in the timeframe of anywhere from one week to up to three weeks.
Just as the title of this unit suggests, Why Rome Fell and Is the United States Next?, we will explore some of the most popular theories for what led to the decline of the Roman Empire in the west and what possible implications this may have for us in the United States today. Americans looking towards Rome as a point of reference is not a new idea. Since before the American Revolution we have been trying to model ourselves after Rome, especially Rome the Republic when we ourselves were emerging as a republic. The first time Americans compared themselves to Rome comes before the American Revolution, when, according to Jay Tolson in his U.S. News & World Report article, "Rome & Us",
"the colonial elite, all of whom have a classical education and are steeped in Roman history, begin to see themselves as the embodiment of the Roman republican ideal. They contrast that ideal with the tyranny of the Roman monarchy before the republic - and of course they equated that tyranny with Britain's. With the image of a virtuous Roman republic in front of them, they pursued the dream of an American republic. They had Roman governance on their minds: the idea of checks and balances, certain notions of Roman virtue, what it meant to be a citizen and an upright person. This was an ideal that was very much in the thinking of people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison" (Tolson 2007).
However, the comparisons do not end there and some believe that the Roman Empire that replaced their Republic provides even more opportunities for comparisons with our own evolution. No longer do we look to Rome for only heroic stories of its rise and zenith but also for stories of its decline and eventual fall. In Cullen Murphy's book, Are We Rome?, he shares that depending on the perspective, Rome can serve as "either a grim cautionary tale or an inspirational call to action" (Murphy 2007). Though we can argue whether the United States is an empire or not, what we cannot deny is that Rome and the U.S. are the most powerful actors in each of their respective periods. During America's inception our founders were greatly hoping that our model would be Rome of the republic, though they greatly feared that one day we would become Rome of the Caesars for according to J. Rufus Fears, Ph.D. in his Heritage Lectures article, "the Lessons of the Roman Empire for America Today", "Rome of the Caesars and the United States today are the only two absolute superpowers that have ever existed in history" (Fears 2005). Fears goes on to define an absolute superpower as being "a nation that is dominant militarily, politically, economically, and culturally" (Fears 2005). According to his definition, the United States is absolutely a superpower. Though "we may never produce a Beethoven or a Bach, a Goethe or a Shakespeare [because] that is not how our culture dominates. [Instead], it is our music, our McDonald's, our popular culture that spreads all over the globe" (Fears 2005). In this way we understand that our superpower status has much to do with global consumption of American popular culture, enabling America to rule far beyond our borders. Murphy agrees with Fears that a civilization's power goes beyond just military strength by also including what he defines as "the 'soft power' of language, culture, commerce, technology, and ideas" (Murphy 2007). Both Rome and the U.S. are also made up of many different people, cultures and newcomers, whom they have absorbed into their societies through citizenship, guaranteeing the constant and continual change of identities of both long-term and recent citizens. Although we cannot ignore that the United States is only in its third century of existence, whereas the Western Roman Empire lasted for over a millennium, both also have in common their abilities to molt repeatedly from their previous selves.
Clearly there are many popular comparisons to make between Rome and the United States that are all worth further investigation. In addition to those, Murphy encourages us to think beyond easy comparisons by advising us to think
"less about decadence, less about military might, and more about how our two societies view the outside world, more about the slow decay of homegrown institutions. Think less about threats from unwelcome barbarians, and more about the healthy functioning of a multi-ethnic society. Think less about the ability of a superpower to influence everything on earth, and more about how everything on earth affects a superpower" (Murphy 2007).
Following his recommendation, this unit allows students opportunities to closely examine ten popularly held theories for why Rome fell. After being exposed to these theories students will apply their findings to the state of America today, ultimately deciding for themselves what lessons, if any, there are for the United States to draw from Rome's fall.
The revered historian Edward Gibbon in his now classic text, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, put forth several internal weaknesses within the Roman Empire that, he believed, ultimately led to its demise. However compelling his arguments were, historians remain in disagreement about the most likely reasons for the fall of their empire, no matter how big or detailed the issues may be. Historian Peter J. Heather reminds us that in our inquiry the "barbarians" should not be overlooked, especially since they provided military manpower for desperate and diminishing Roman legions towards the end of Rome's reign, essentially becoming "armed outsiders" (Heather 2006). Heather is seeking to challenge the great narrative of this traditional history by sharing in his book, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, that in recent times academia is getting to know more about "a later Roman Empire, [one] that was not on the brink of social, economic and moral collapse, and a world beyond its frontiers that was not characterized by simple, unchanging barbarism" (Heather 2006) xii). In this vein, Heather, along with other similarly minded historians want to change "the image of the 'civilized' but ever declining Romans implacably at war with 'barbarian' outsiders" (Heather 2006). Not only should we avoid underestimating the strength and strategy of the barbarians, but we should also be aware of "the many instances that our sources provide of barbarian-Roman cooperation and nonviolent interaction" (Heather 2006). Staying abreast with historians like Heather and the evolving schools of thought in regard to Rome's fall, this unit will take into account the complex relationship between Romans and barbarians while still considering Rome's internal weaknesses as also viable causes for Rome's ultimate end.
The United States has long been compared to modeling itself after Roman Republic ideals and has also long been warned of becoming another Roman Empire. As students learn about the many reasons for why Rome declined, they can apply their findings to American society today, making history immediately relevant and tangible in their comparisons. Like the Roman Republic, the United States was founded on democratic ideals, and upon closer analysis of those governments, students can compare and contrast democratic practices in both societies. In this way students will be able to uncover the relationship between existent and non-existent and effective and ineffective democratic practices, observing the results in both societies. Comparisons between the United States and Rome are not new, however, this ongoing debate will likely increase as similarities continue to reveal themselves. The more students can understand the multiple and complex reasons for why Rome fell, especially in understanding the difference between democratic ideals and democratic realities, the more they will be able to apply these theories to understanding the United States today. As students better understand the parallels and the differences between these two dominant "empires", the more they themselves will be able to participate in the larger ongoing debate about America's future, outside of just our classrooms. Ultimately our students will be deciding for themselves what role they may take in writing the next chapters of our American story.
Comments: