Introduction and Rationale
There is no such thing as an unbiased history.
History is a discipline of stories. It is a retelling of the past through the sensibilities of the people who are selected, appointed and step-up to to to tell it. Like any story, the storyteller shares his or her version through the lens through which they see the world. In some cases, it is an unintentional bias, created by prior experiences, psychology, and environmental factors; in other instances, it is a bias that may be intended to create a winner, a leader or gain a prize. The reality is that the nature in which historical information is recorded makes it forever difficult to have purely unbiased content. To fairly teach this discipline, as instructors, we need to highlight this and teach students how to do historical thinking. Students need to learn to evaluate the storyteller, research the circumstances in which the story is told, and analyze the effects of the story on the present. This unit attempts to teach this in the tenth grade World History classroom.
The central focus of the unit is to use a book and movie, both presented as the history of T.E. Lawrence’s role in the Arab Revolt during World War I. At the heart of this lesson is the book by T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Some would argue that over several decades this book along with the adapted movie has played a role in creating a fantasy and dream world about the Arabs and the Middle East. They both are presented as authoritative, truthful and eye-opening. In reality, they reemphasize stereotypes about the people in the Middle East which blurs the lines between truth and reality. The lens through which these are seen are overly uncritically Eurocentric. The result is a one-sided history. It creates a mythical world and an inaccurate view of the Middle East and the people who live in it. As Richard Aldington states in Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry, it is “rather a world of quasi-fiction than of history.”1
The unit’s essential question is the following: How are stereotypes used to diminish the contributions of colonized people? Students will use excerpts of primary and secondary source documents to consider how patriotism, and the viewpoint of Orientalism created a stereotype of the Middle East, which still persists today. This is an opportunity to help students evaluate historical bias in a critical way. As the Wall Street Journal once pointed out “Putting a human face on historical events is an appealing technique that makes ‘Lawrence in Arabia’ a gripping read. Yet eloquence and color can't authenticate a flawed historical argument.”2 It is with this in mind that this unit tries to teach students about historical thinking. This helps students consider how the author’s beliefs, nationality, childhood, etc. play a role in creating a narrative that is affects the story.
Aldington points out that “the truth of [T.E. Lawrence] is harder to come by, as no one crack in the edifice revealed the whole truth.”3 Therefore, if biographers and historians cannot truly unravel the truth about Lawrence then this lesson is not intending to either. This is not a comprehensive study of T.E. Lawrence’s life or his version of the Arab Revolt. It cannot serve to tell the full truth behind T.E. Lawrence. This unit is also not a fact finding mission or research project. Its role is to develop and deepen my students’ understanding of the way in which historical facts are manipulated and how those manipulations can and must be identified, analyzed, and critiqued.
The intent of the unit is to give students exposure to thinking critically about the way we look at the Middle East today. It is a powerful opportunity to develop my students’ critical thinking skills with real issues and challenges in society. This is meant to be a starting place for teachers who want to do more of this in their classroom in other units. The long-term goal is to create more units like this one that evaluate history in a way that moves us forward and makes the events of the past relevant to the present.
Comments: