“Who Cares?” Writing Inquiries Worth Caring About

Writing inquiries are frustrating. Our pre-service teachers at the University of Kentucky, who have been working on their own this semester, would certainly agree with that sentiment.  I don’t exactly come out and say it, but their aggravations are exactly what we want to see. Teachers should be wrestling with the concepts and topics of inquiry.  If they aren’t, how can students be expected to do so? (Or care to do so?)

In a recent work session with our pre-service teachers, I took a particular inquiry to task.  One student had decided to write about the Salem witch trials.

Me: “Yeah, but who cares?”

“I always found this interesting when I was in school.”

Me: “OK, but why does that make it important?”

“People died”

Me: “People die every day.  Why do they need to know about these people?

She wasn’t exactly pleased with these questions.  I am not trying to belittle the lives of those affected, but rather to push her to zoom out from the situation and articulate a larger historical significance.  People die every day – why does this situation resonate hundreds of years later?  What is the larger historical issue? If there isn’t a larger significance, should it be an inquiry? And, more importantly, how can we expect our students to be engaged in a topic if we don’t even know how to articulate the significance?

This isn’t all to say it comes easily.  Oftentimes, it feels like the focus of social studies is to cover required content.  I don’t think any of us would be satisfied with saying history is significant just because it is a prescribed topic of study.  Writing an inquiry forces us to step back, to zoom out, reflect, and grapple with the “who cares?”

We also have to be wary of equating significance with being interesting. There are a lot of interesting things in history.  One important reflection we need to make when composing compelling questions and inquiries is to consider what makes a particular topic worthy of the task?  Some topics (or interesting events in history) are better left to our delightful storytelling.  What makes this topic worthy of having its layers unwrapped?

I find the assassination attempt on Teddy Roosevelt very interesting — and I love to tell it in a rather bombastic manner to students (and friends).  But does that make this topic worthy of inquiry? I would say, no.  Is there an enduring issue of the assassination? Well, let’s zoom out.  The would-be assassin was motivated by concerns of TR becoming monarchical if he served for a third term.  Decades later, another Roosevelt would be elected to the presidency four times before the 22nd Amendment passed a presidential term limit.  A compelling topic, one worthy of inquiry, might be this — did the 22nd Amendment promote or hinder democracy? Now, we need to zoom out — who cares? Why is this important?  The enduring issue relates to our current democratic process.  There are many critics and supporters of the lack of term limits for our legislators.  If students unwrap the issue of presidential term limits, it can inform their thinking of the current issue.  Should we allow lifetime Congressmen?  Is their tenure an example of democracy or a way in which it has failed? Are they being reelected because they are serving their constituency? Or is it an example of politicians maintaining power at the expense of their constituencies? Now the topic is interesting….and worthy of an inquiry, while still being grounded in historical content.

So, what did she come up with for the Salem Witch Trials?  After my asking, “who cares?” and “why is that important?” an obnoxious amount of times, she got to an enduring truth of the event.  The trials were the manifestation of fears/anxieties that had been plaguing the colonies.  “How does fear give power to lies?”  An important thing to remember is the fear in this scenario is not just of witchcraft — students will look at the larger context of colonial life and how that informed perspectives of the time.   Now we have a topic that students are interested in, there is a reason to care about understanding it, and it fosters their ability to evaluate context when assessing historical phenomena.

Not that anyone is surprised, but yes, I beta tested this compelling question by discussing it (applied to historical and modern contexts) with friends and family over the Thanksgiving holiday.  Let’s just say that not only was this something people cared about, but an issue that made my Thanksgiving meal much more interesting.