Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush William J. Clinton Edward M. Kennedy Lloyd N. Cutler Falklands Roundtable Congressional Affairs Symposium |
Oral History in the ClassroomOn December 12, Jeff Chidester delivered a lecture before the Albemarle County Teaching Fellows Program on how to incorporate oral history into the k-12 curriculum. The talk was a follow-up to the lecture on presidents during wartime given by Presidential Recordings Program scholar Marc Selverstone at the Miller Center on December 7. Chidester began by tracing the development of oral history, particularly presidential oral history, from a supplement to the written record to a free-standing and critical field of historical research. He outlined both past and current projects being conducted by the Miller Center's Oral History Program, followed by an in-depth discussion of the Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, released in February 2006. He also compared the benefits and deficiencies of the written record with spoken history collections. Finally, Chidester explored the potential for middle- and high-school classes to conduct their own oral history projects, from single interviews to extensive oral histories by an entire class. For more information on this lecture and the Albemarle County Teaching Fellowship Program, please visit www.virginiaexperiment.com. |
