History 17a Final Study Guide
Spring 2007 Essays
Instructions
BC requires 2-hour finals. This helps prepare you for
lengthy essay exams at 4-year colleges & universities.
REMEMBER: The purpose of an essay final is to allow
you an opportunity to demonstrate your mastery of
the text, notes, videos, and discussions.
In my classes, each student has several options for his
or her two-hour final.
Most will take a multiple choice identification exam [17a
Exam 5 on chapters 13 – 16. A few will use exam 5 to
replace one of their 4 earlier exams. [These students
will then take a final consisting of two 1-hour essays.]
You have 2 weeks to prepare your essay[s]. You can
design your essay[s] in advance. However, you will be
required to write your essay[s] in class on the day
of the final without any notes!
At the start of your final you will clear everything from
your desk except for a bluebook or blank sheets of
paper and your pencil/pen. I’ll mark your bluebook or
initial each of your blank pages to prove they were
empty when you started.
Remember to put your name, class period, and seat at
the top of the each page. [You will receive a new copy
of this final study guide when you start your final.]
University Style Two Hour Essays
"Some men look at Constitutions with
sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like
the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be
touched. They ascribe to the men of the
preceding age a wisdom more than human, and
suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.
I knew the age well; I belonged to it and labored
with it. I deserved well of its country. . . laws and
institutions must go hand in hand with the
progress of the human mind. As that becomes
more developed, more enlightened, as new
discoveries are made, new truths disclosed and
manners and opinions change with the change of
circumstances, institutions must advance also,
and keep pace with the times. Thomas
Jefferson
"Each age writes the history of the past anew
with reference to the conditions uppermost in its
own time. . . . The aim of history, then, is to know
the elements of the present by understanding
what came into the present from the past. For the
present is simply the developing past, the past
the undeveloped present. . . . The antiquarian
strives to bring back the past for the sake of the
past; the historian tries to show the present to
itself by revealing its origin from the past. The
goal of the antiquarian is the dead past; the goal
of the historian is the living present." Frederick
Jackson Turner
"The purpose of history is not to explain our
situation so that we settle down as what C.
Wright Mills had called Cheerful Robots in This
Best of All Worlds. Neither is its function to propel
us into orbit around some distant Utopia. Indeed
not. History's great tradition is to help us
understand ourselves and our world so that each
of us, individually and in conjunction with our
fellow men, can formulate relevant and reasoned
alternatives and become meaningful actors in
making history. Considered in this light, History is
a way of learning. As such, it begins by leaving
the present: by going back into the heretofore, by
beginning again. Only by grasping what we were
is it possible to see how we changed, to
understand the process and the nature of the
modifications, and to gain some perspective on
what we are. The historical experience is not one
of staying in the present and looking back. Rather
it is one of going back into the past and returning
to the present with a wider and more intense
consciousness of the restrictions of our former
outlook." William Appleman Williams, The
Contours of American History
"ANY QUEST for national character, culture, or
style plunges one into a tangle of complex
historical considerations. . . . writers interested in
the American quarry of this quest have usually
sought to simplify and generalize by expounding
the importance of this or that particular factor.
Thus we are free to choose from among an
enormous catalog of single-factor explanations:
the intellectual inheritance of western Europe; the
English tradition of liberty, which has produced
distinctive political institutions; the Angle-Saxon
tradition of law, language, religion, and custom;
the process and psychological impact of
immigration; the interplay of inheritance and
environment; economic abundance; immigration
and abundance in tandem; migration and
mobility; the westward movement of the frontier;
'the American Dream': the desire for liberty,
opportunity and land; the universal passion for
physical prosperity; freedom of enterprise; the
democratic faith or dogma; 'the American
conscience': the dominant body of opinion; our
mode of conformity; generosity and the
philanthropic impulse; our modes of child rearing;
and the antithesis between highbrow and
lowbrow, to mention a few." Michael Kammen
“The child is father to the man.” Ralph Waldo
Emerson
"History teaches everything including the future.”
Lamartine
"What questions are worth asking?" Barrington
Moore, Jr. [Harvard professor']
One Hour Essays
What lessons have you learned from your study
of the Civil War? [You can focus on causes. .. .]
Compare and contrast presidential and
congressional Reconstruction.
“Only a life lived for others is a life worth while. . .
. Never do anything against conscience even if
the state demands it. . . .” Albert Einstein
"The end of all education should surely be
service to others." Cesar E. Chavez
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding" (1942)
[Maximum grade = 88%]
Additional Examples
"Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the
past; for human events ever resemble those of
preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are
produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall
be, animated by the same passions, and thus they
necessarily have the same results."—Machiavelli
Compare and contrast John Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed
(1907) to your History 17a experiences at BC.
“I believe that:
a. the school is primarily a social institution.
b. education, therefore, is a process of living and not a
preparation for future living.
c. education is the fundamental method of social
progress and reform.
d. all education preceeds by the participation of the
individual in the social consciousness of the race.
e. education is a regulation of the process of coming to
share in the social consciousness. . . .”
That which we remember is, more often than not, that
which we would like to have been; or that which we
hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever
at odds; our history ever a tall tale told by inattentive
idealists. Ralph Ellison (1964)
”I know if I don’t write about something within a couple
of years it will be lost in these piles. The trouble is, all of
us feel like this. You’re so far out of the mainstream that
the few people who follow these issues closely and who
write about them know that if they don’t deal with
something, it’s out of history.” Noam Chomsky
The real danger to a democracy is one official history
[perhaps written to justify the status quo or to
emphasize an intentional distortion]. George Orwell
understood the magnitude of this threat, writing in his
classic novel, 1984: "Who controls the past controls the
future; who controls the present controls the past."
"Democratic societies tend to become more concerned
with what people believe than with what is true, to
become more concerned with credibility than with
truth." Daniel Boorstin
"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls
the present controls the past." George Orwell
"On a visit to Europe a few days before he was
assassinated by elite government forces in San
Salvador in November 1989, Father Ignacio Ellacuria,
rector of the University of Central America, addressed
the West on the underlying issues. You 'have
organized' your lives around inhuman values, he said.
These values 'are inhuman because they cannot be
universalized. The system rests on a few using the
majority of the resources, while the majority can't even
cover their basic necessities. It is crucial to define a
system of values and a norm of living that takes into
account every human being." Noam Chomsky
"Our political culture has a conception of democracy
that differs from that of the Brazilian bishops. For them,
democracy means that citizens would have the
opportunity to inform themselves, to take part in inquiry
and discussion and policy formation, and to advance
their programs through political action. For us,
democracy is more narrowly conceived: the citizen is a
consumer and observer but not a participant. The public
has the right to ratify policies that originate elsewhere,
but if these limits are exceeded, we have not
democracy, but a 'crisis of democracy,' which must
somehow be resolved." Noam Chomsky
"We are all capable of believing things which we know
to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved
wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that
we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on
this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is
that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against
solid reality, usually on a battlefield." George Orwell
[1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose."]
“Example is not one of the ways to influence others; it is
the only way.” Albert Schweitzer
". . . [T]here is no reason why the new totalitarianisms
should resemble the old. Government by clubs and
firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment
and mass deportation is not merely inhuman: it is
demonstrably inefficient, and in an age of advanced
technology, inefficiency is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which
the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their
army of managers control a population of slaves who
do not have to be coerced, because they love their
servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in
present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of
propaganda, newspaper editors and school teachers."
Aldous Huxley
"We are all capable of believing things which we know
to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved
wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that
we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on
this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is
that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against
solid reality, usually on a battlefield." George Orwell
[1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose."]
"The students are a bulwark of liberty and its strongest
army." José Marti
With God On Our Side – Bob Dylan
Oh my name it is nothin', My age it means less
The country I come from, Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there, The laws to abide
And that land that I live in, Has God on its side.
Oh the history books tell it, They tell it so well
The cavalries charged, The Indians fell
The cavalries charged, The Indians died
Oh the country was young, With God on its side.
Oh the Spanish-American, War had its day
And the Civil War too, Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes, I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands, And God on their side.
Oh the First World War, boys, It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting, I never got straight
But I learned to accept it, Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead, When God's on your side.
When the Second World War, Came to an end
We forgave the Germans, And we were friends
Though they murdered six million, In the ovens they
fried
The Germans now too, Have God on their side.
I've learned to hate Russians, All through my whole life
If another war starts, It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them, To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely, With God on my side.
But now we got weapons, Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to, Then fire them we must
One push of the button, And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions, When God's on your
side.
In a many dark hour, I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ, Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you, You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot, Had God on his side.
So now as I'm leavin', I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin', Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head, And fall to the floor
If God's on our side, He'll stop the next war.
WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE - Bob Dylan [MTVunplugged version][C F C F C F G F C] [C]
Oh my name it is [F]no[G]thin' my age [F]it means
[C]less. The country I come from [F]is called the
Mid[C]west. I's taught and brought up there
[F]The laws to [C]abide and that the land that I
[F]li[G]ve in Has god [F]on its [C]side. Oh the
history books [F]tell i[G]t they tell it [F]so [C]well.
The cavalries charged and [F]the Indians [C]fell.
The cavalries charged and [F]the Indians [C]died.
Oh the country was [F]yo[G]ung with god [F]on its
[C]side..Oh the Spanish-[F]Ameri[G]can war had
[F]its [C]day. And the Civil War too was [F]soon
laid [C]away and the names of the heroes [F]I
was made to [C]memorize with guns in their
[F]ha[G]nds and god [F]on their [C]side. The First
World [F]War, [G]boys it closed out [F]its [C]fate.
The reason for fighting [F]I never got straig[C]t
but I learned to accept it, [F]accept it with [C]pride
and you don't count the [F]de[G]ad when god's
on [F]your [C]side.[... Additional lyrics ...]But now
we got [F]wea[G]pons of the chemic[F]al [C]dust
if fire them we're forced to, [F]then fire we
[C]must one push of the button [F]and shot the
world [C]wide and you never ask [F]quest[G]ions
when God's [F]on his [C]side[ Repeat without
words ]In a many dark [F]hou[G]r I've been
thinkin' ab[F]out [C]this that Jesus Christ was
[F]betrayed by a [C]kiss. But I can't think for you,
[F]you'll have to [C]decide whether Judas
Is[F]cari[G]ot, had God [F]on [C]his side. So now
as I'm [F]leavi[G]n', I'm [F]weary as [C]hell the
confusion I'm feelin' [F]ain't no tongue can [C]tell.
The words fill my head and [F]fall to the [C]floor.
If God's on [F]our si[G]de he'll stop [F]the next
[C]war. [... Additional lyrics ...]When the Second
World War came to an end we forgave the
Germans and soon we were friends. Though they
murdered six million in the ovens they fried the
Germans now too have god on their side. I've
learned to hate Russians all through my whole
life if another war starts. It's them we must fight.
To hate them and fear them to run and to hide
and accept it all bravely with god on our side.