Anatomy of a WebQuest, Pt. I

The Signing of the Declaration

I am interested in learning about the American Revolution, the framing of the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers.

Students, I have discovered, not so much. 

Such is the plight of the English 3 teacher upon arrival at Unit Three of the Planning and Scheduling Timeline, "Getting to Know the Colonials."

It started out fluidly enough with a mini unit on Ben Franklin, he of the wit, the wisdom, and the lascivious appetite.  Poor Richard's Almanack was a hit, excerpts from the Autobiography bordered on tolerable, and the overall interest level was a 7.7/10.  Not too bad.

Then Patrick Henry happened.

You know Patrick Henry.  He's the "Give me liberty or give me death" guy that helped to foment popular support for rebelling against the British crown's unfair system of taxation sans Parliamentary representation.  It's a great line--one of the greatest in American rhetoric--but it's the final line of his Speech to the Virginia Delegation, and it takes an effort worthy of Hercules in the Augean stables to get to that point.

As an aside, no less an historical giant than Thomas Jefferson claimed that Henry was the greatest public speaker and debater that he had ever encountered, and that when one found themselves on the opposite side of a Patrick Henry debate, the only chance that they had of winning was to "devoutly pray for his death."

But as I surveyed the room and saw students slipping into what appeared to be a catatonic state, I could see that they didn't care what Thomas Jefferson thought, and that they didn't give a DAMN for Patrick Henry's genius as a debater.

This was Friday.  The lesson ended, the textbooks strewn hastily and unclosed on desktops, and my students shuffled glumly out of the room without even acknowledging my existence, much less Patrick Henry's.  To continue in this vein would have been folly.

So I had to ask myself the big question: What was I trying to accomplish?  What knowledge was I trying to impart about the American Revolution and our nation's founders?

First, it was an appreciation for the key players, individuals of towering greatness and ambition running amok inside of an idea when there was still new thought and action to be discovered beneath the sun.  There were immutable figures of stoicism, valor, and nobility (Washington), rarefied polymaths (Franklin and Jefferson), and groundbreaking political philosophers (Adams, Hamilton, and Madison).  Fascinating people, all living, collaborating, and arguing at the epicenter of American posterity.     

And yet, these great propagators of freedom either participated in or did nothing about the institution of slavery, the quintessential evil of American life.

So that was it.  This paradox, one of the greatest in the annals of humanity, was what I wanted my students to study.  Now I just needed a vehicle to deliver this critical inquiry...


(To be continued in Pt. II)