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Drawing on classroom experience, the text describes students’ misconceptions, the use of carefully chosen readings and discussions, and the resulting tensions around citizenship, morality, and historical perspective. 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The curriculum’s focus on standardized testing further reduces exposure to broader, firsthand study of events.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the author teach about the wars in public schools?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The author improvises lessons in AP U.S. History and a flexible humanities elective, gauging students’ beliefs first and then using targeted readings, discussions, and impromptu lectures to deepen understanding.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What concerns about citizenship and morality emerge from the discussions?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The text highlights questions about individual historical perspective, the limits of citizenship obligations, and the traps tied to superpower status, as well as how earlier generations reacted to similar policy decisions.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},591397,1792868691,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":34,"category_name":35,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":19,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":81,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":39,"preview_page_count":4},962088006270,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_085a072bc5b1113ac321206ff7593b45","Invisible Wars  \nIraq, Afghanistan, and Teaching Insurgencies in Public Schools  \nBy Christopher L. Doyle  \n“W  \ne don’t think about them because they’ve been going on since we were little. It’s like background noise.” One of my students is answering my question. She is 17, upper-  \nmiddle class, taking my Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History class. I had asked about the low level of understanding and high degree of apathy among her peers as we studied America’s two current wars.  \nNeither is necessarily their fault. Few of my students know anyone serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. In the suburb where they live, hardly anyone joins the military right out of high school, and there is no Fort Carson or Fort Bragg nearby to remind people  \nChristopher L. Doyle recently accepted a job as the director of Global Studies at Watkinson School in Hartford, where he also teaches history. This essay is based on his experience at Farmington HighSchool, a public school in Connecticut. Doyle writes frequently about history and education.  \nthere is a war or two going on. Unlikely to read newspaper coverage of the wars, this generation prefers the Internet. And our school’s curriculum has changed since early 2002 when the No Child Left Behind law went into effect just a few months after American soldiers entered Afghanistan. Contemporary issues classes no longer have currency, as standardized test results are the litmus test for education. In my school, and hundreds like it, students are isolated from firsthand accounts and formal study of events that textbooks will one day proclaim as defining experiences oftheir generation.  \nMy own teaching about the wars improvises and flies under the radar. Moments of opportunity arise inAP U.S. History, after the national exam in early May, and inHumanities, a rare, endangered elective with a flexible curriculum detached from standardized testing. I begin by gauging my students’ hearts and minds. Asking what they know about the subject, I hear some fascinating stuff: “Osama bin Laden was the dictator of Afghanistan until we overthrew him.” “Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruc-  \nILLUSTRAT IONS BY ROB JOHNSON  \nAMERICAN EDUCATOR | WINTER 2011–2012 19  \ntion that he was giving to al-Qaeda.”“We invaded Iraq because discovered a 5-year-old child, unhurt, in the back seat of the pair’s that’s where bin Laden was, and then he went to Afghanistan, so bullet-riddled car. The medic himself almost breaks down telling  \nwe invaded there.” I have my work cut out for me. about the time he had to clean up a vehicle in which two of his  \nI define a reading list and use each work on it selectively. U.S. friends had been killed by a mortar shell.  \nhistory students tackle Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack (on tension My class is speechless when the medic, asked if he would go between Colin Powell and Dick Cheney in the Bush White House), back to Iraq, says,“I’ve done my turn. Now it’s someone else’s.”Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War (describing how long-term war Does he support a draft?“Yes. It’s not fair that we have to do so has coarsened and degraded Afghan culture), Naomi Klein’s The many tours.” The implications of this comment leave the kids Shock Doctrine (revealing the unprecedented extent to which war uneasily silent.  \nhas been privatized in the Bush era), Rory Stewart’s The Prince of Together, the speakers, books, television series, and newspathe Marshes (explaining factional divisions in Iraq), Russ Hoyle’s per stories raise troubling questions about individual and historiGoing to War (showing the failure of weapons inspectors to find cal perspective, morality, the limitsofour democracy, obligations weapons of mass destruction in Iraq), Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s of citizenship, and the traps that come with superpower status. I Imperial Life in the Emerald remind my kids how an earlier  \nCity (on how neoconservative generation of students, also  \nideology drove decision mak- somewhat privileged and shel  \ning in","cbCaitMZHGZLrUBs","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaitMZHGZLrUBs","pdf",372174,"English","# Invisible Wars\n## Classroom perceptions and apathy\n## Curriculum changes and standardized testing\n## Teaching strategies and reading selections\n## Citizenship, morality, and historical perspective","[{\"question\":\"Why do the students show apathy or limited understanding about Iraq and Afghanistan?\",\"answer\":\"Many have little personal connection to anyone serving and receive coverage mainly through the internet. The curriculum’s focus on standardized testing further reduces exposure to broader, firsthand study of events.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the author teach about the wars in public schools?\",\"answer\":\"The author improvises lessons in AP U.S. History and a flexible humanities elective, gauging students’ beliefs first and then using targeted readings, discussions, and impromptu lectures to deepen understanding.\"},{\"question\":\"What concerns about citizenship and morality emerge from the discussions?\",\"answer\":\"The text highlights questions about individual historical perspective, the limits of citizenship obligations, and the traps tied to superpower status, as well as how earlier generations reacted to similar policy decisions.\"}]","Invisible Wars - Iraq, Afghanistan, and Teaching Insurgencies in Public Schools | PDF",1792071779]