<p>I’ve always thought that it would be a great idea to include historical fiction in a history class curriculum. It’s one of my favorite literary genres, and I’ve always found that I learn a lot of – and am way more interested by – history when I read a good historical novel. However, I’ve never taken a history class in which this very useful (I think) resource has been taken advantage of. I think that’s a pity.</p>
<p>Do any of you have any experience with historical fiction being used in a history class? What do/did you think of the idea?</p>
<p>My school started to use Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to supplement an imperialism unit in freshman World History.
They all hate the book.
I never read it in history class, only English class but I loved it then. I think I would have liked it during history as well.</p>
<p>Also once there was a class that read Inherit the Wind for US History. They all loved it.</p>
<p>This past year we read All Quiet on the Western Front for the WWI unit. But only chunks of it.
It helped put things into context.
I like the idea. But I don’t like only reading chunks because I sometimes want to read the whole book later and can’t because I already know the beginning, part of the middle and what happens at the end. Ugh. </p>
<p>not fiction i guess but we used to discuss the jungle, and Tchaikovsky’s Overture 1812 etc. I had a really good teacher who kept giving us interesting tid bits all the time</p>
<p>I suggested to my history teacher that we watch An American Tail (the one with the little mouse) when discussing post-Civil war/gilded age era… Never took on the idea though…</p>
<p>My world history teacher last year had us do four book reports (one autobiography, one historical fiction, one nonfiction, and one of our choice) for the point in time that we were currently learning about. I thought it was definatley useful, and I read books that I would never had read otherwise (Utopia, 1776, Einstein biograph…forgot the title, andCatch-22… okay, I would’ve read catch-22 anyways).</p>
<p>In 8th Grade, we read Around the World in 80 Days. We also had to write a report on the book, and complete some assignments. The idea wasn’t bad. It didn’t go too well with my class though…</p>
<p>We read “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien to learn about Vietnam. I don’t know if it is considered fiction though. It was good though, and read like historical fiction.</p>
<p>I was mostly talking about historical novels, rather than movies… </p>
<p>The only experience I have with historically based movies used extensively in a history classroom was my horribly useless World History class in 9th grade. We played Jeopardy almost every day; the other days were either game-(other than Jeopardy)-and-pizza days or movie-and-popcorn days. (We usually had popcorn anyway.) Nobody learned anything, I don’t think. I was lucky to know a lot about world history when I came into the class. :rolleyes: </p>
<p>So, not a good experience with historical movies. :p</p>
<p>always. i haven’t been in a history class in high school that didn’t play movies. although, in my two world history classes, they were only nine weeks so i think between the two we only watched Gladiator. In American history we watched Gettysburg and Saving Private Ryan; same two in APUSH, in addition to Last of the Mohicans and the Patriot (both were taught be the same teacher). In APEH, we watched Amadeus and were going to watch Schindler’s List. </p>
<p>In APEH we also watched Billy Elliot. Har har! Best movie ever. </p>
<p>However, I’ve never read a book in a high school history class.This is mostly due to block scheduling.</p>