Shultz's World History Stories

07/04/2025

On this July 4, a reminder that the whole shebang was about getting the hell away from Kings.

Some people yearn for a strong man to lead them - but they never think about what happens afterward. The first installment of Quotial Studies

04/23/2025

This is my new substack, Teaching Life and Living History: Notes on Craft. I'll be alternating posts about the craft of teaching with work on history. I'd love it if you subscribed.
https://nealshultz1.substack.c
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03/29/2025

1. You can't play chess in a hurricane. The case of Yesely, the Insolent Girl

07/02/2022

08/17/2020

“Despite the best intentions of the best of you, you must, in the nature of things, humiliate us to control us.”
— from the movie, Gandhi (1982).

“Fire bad.”
—movie version of )Frankenstein’s monster

This isn’t something I should be proud of, but I used to try to entrap my advanced world history students into agreeing to genocide. Genocide, according to the UN Treaty, includes destroying cultural identity, as well as human bodies. If my students had fixed idea about history, it was that genocide was abhorrent. And, yet, what if you found yourself in 19th-century colonial India, confronted with the Hobson’s choice of Purdah vs Sati?

Purdah, many of you know, was the brutal shutting away of some Hindu women, upon the death of their husbands. One school of Hindu thought held that the man’s death was caused by the bad karma of his wife. Thus, the widow—who could be as young as 11, since child marriage was also a thing in parts of the subcontinent — would be shunned lest she pollute others. One way out of decades of living death was actual death—Sati. If a widow volunteered to immolate herself on her dead husband’s funeral pyre, she reclaimed her karma. Scholars debate how often women actually chose Sati over Purdah, but we do know both occurred.

Now, put yourself in the place of a British owner of a huge poppy plantation in 19th-century Bengal. You see you employees living on your land piling dry logs atop a 11-year-old girl whose only “sin” was being coerced into marrying a 60-year-old man near death. Could you stand by and do nothing as an innocent girl was burnt to death?
Subjected to my engineered scenario, nearly all my students said they would save the girl. And many went further, arguing that eliminating misogynistic abuses like Purdah, Sati, and coerced child marriage superceded treaties of cultural preservation,

One student, though, wasn’t having my hypotheticals. Let’s call him Sasha. When his turn came to say whether he would pull the girl to safety, he was firm. No. No way. He would not.

I pushed him. “Sasha, What if an 11-year-old girl, maybe not all there mentally, for some reason we’re to lay down in the middle of North Avenue (the heavily-trafficked street outside the school)? You mean to tell me you’d watch her get run over?”

“Oh, no, I’d totally get her out of the street,” Sasha said.

Ah. I sprang my trap. “So, Sasha, if you’re going to save a life in the second case, shouldn’t you do the same thing in the first? How is there any difference between those girls?!”

But Sasha saw the difference I had not. A huge difference. And shredded my trap.
“Well, in the first situation,” he said, “[the girl’s] on fire.”

08/15/2020

Student Questions 2.
As I mentioned the other day, the gift of spontaneous questions in my classes opens portals to where the minds of my students are. These place are, often, very different from where mine is. Nothing beats World History for mapping that gap.

On the impact of Bollywood Movies.
Every year, I subjected students to at least one Bollywood film, figuring that exposure to the movies seen by more people than any others on the planet was a job requirement. My favorite was Lagaan, 3 hours and 45 minutes of a group of 19th-century Indian villagers challenging the army of the British Empire to a literal life-or-death cricket match. If you are looking for a rousing musical full of Brittney Spears-era dance moves, that is a historical costume drama, that is also also a Rom-Com, that is also a public service announcement for caste and religious acceptance, and that is also a sports movie that does not miss a single cliche, Lagaan could be for you. It will also teach you the rules of cricket and deliver the nine-minute singing and dancing tribute to the annual Monsoon winds that you have been waiting for. Gallimaufry, thy name is Lagaan.

There is, however, one thing not in Lagaan. Even though the very attractive stars dance suggestively in exposed midriffs, they never kiss. To my knowledge, there have only been two kisses depicted in Bollywood History,, and one of them reportedly sparked a riot.

One year, as always, I called the class’s attention to the absence.
That prompted Curious Student to ask,
“Then, why are there so many of them?”

Me: (thinking as quickly as i could) “You mean….Indians?”

Curious Student nodded.

Me: “Well, you know, Curious Student, this is only a move.”

Curious. Student, (with considerable sophistication), “Of course, I know that. What I mean is, where do they learn?”

Me: “I’m afraid I don’t have any direct source material to answer you. But, Lagaan was released in 2001. And archaeologists have dated Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus River Valley back to about 5,000 years ago. The best I can do is take a leap and infer that folks on the subcontinent worked out the basics even before cinema.”

Curious Student: apparently satisfied. “Yeah, ok. That makes sense.”

On War and Totalitarianism
The invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq by the USA and a few allied militaries began in April 2003. Shortly before that, President George W Bush got on national TV in prime time to set out his causes belli. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea formed, he said, formed “an axis of evil” that keeping America safe required stopping.

It was a tense time. Even my sophomore students had watched the speech. And the day after the Iraqi invasion’s start, Worried Student began class by asking,
“Mr. Shultz, are we going to invade North Korea, too?”

I told him that, as always, I could not promise the future. But, I also said that history and geography suggested there were low odds of trying to extend the war to North Korea.

Me: ”Iraq and North Korea are very different places, with very different geographies and histories. Most of Iraq is virtually flat. Tanks can roll across it, as can horses. That’s why, historically, there have been hundreds of invasions of that land. North Korea, on the other hand, is full of freezing cold rugged mountains, and has almost never been invaded. The USA learned why when it tried in Korean War.

Me: “Also, Iraq isn’t really a nation. It’s a forced mashup of Shi’a Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Sunni Kurds who are as likely to break apart than fight. North Korea, though, might be the most ethnically homogenous, nationalistic State on earth, That’s why ever morning at 6, many North Koreans do calisthenics and thank the country's dictator, Kim Il Song, ‘for our happy, happy life.’

Instead of being reassured, Worried Student, turned white.

“How early?” he asked.

Me: “Six a.m. “

Worried student visibly shuddered. “No, no, no,” he said.

Me: “Worried Student, am I to assume from your reaction that your political philosophy is totalitarian dictatorship is acceptable as long as it’s not too early?”

Worried Student, still shaken, “Yeah. I like exercising. But I could never get up by then. That’s terrifying.”

08/13/2020

Student Questions

Earlier this week, after I posted a couple of the absurd interactions that have happened in my World History classes, a reader wrote me to say “teenagers are the worst.”

Unintentionally, that response was humbling. It made realize how easy it is for these posts to cross the line from capturing moments that that filled and still fill me with laughter into exploiting and mocking kids.

I’d rather quit teaching and writing than do that.
Teenagers the worst? Gosh, no. Teenagers are brave as hell. They still have the courage to ask exactly what is on their minds, even while that courts the risk of revealing parts of their true selves. Most adults, myself included, I know need specialized, designated safe spaces, like therapy sessions or group meetings, to risk anything approaching such radical honesty. In the words of singer/songwriter Dar Williams, “Teenagers kick our butts.”

And if their questions focus on more narrow, self-referential, or concrete matters than those of (some) adults? That’s ok. Brain research tells us their development is right where it is supposed to be. If their questions are uninformed? Why, that’s more than ok; that is WONDERFUL. Be very, very happy about ignorance, I tell the new teachers I train; it is why we all have jobs.

The most important thing about student questions is THAT THEY’RE ASKING THEM, AT ALL. It is true, that for many teenagers, hormones have staged a coup d’etat on the brain. But, as long as they are firing questions at me, I can respond in ways that address the authentic person beneath the turbulence. Teenagers, like all other subspecies of humans, are in the process of BECOMING. For 30 years, my students have honored me with the gift of allowing me allowing me to play guide for a tiny part of that voyage.

Dear reader, I would like your help. Anything posted here should reflect at least a glimmer of the respect, admiration, and love I have for all my students. If you spot a post that doesn’t contain that light, please let me know. I will either amend or remove it, instantly.

Thank you so much, in advance.

08/11/2020

A second look back at World History vs Teenager. (Warning: these will get more serious over time.).

Gentle readers, please vote your choice for Best Typo in a Sophomore Advanced World History Research Paper.

The nominees are:
* Student A’s paper on the Cold War, typed hastily enough to fall prey to the proximity of “e” and “w” on a Qwerty keyboard. Thus producing many sentences on the international threat of the Cold Ear.
Excerpt: “During the Cuban Missile Crisis, things really heated up in the Cold Ear.”

* Student B’s paper on nations that refused to denied the existence of HIV and AIDS among their citizens. Featuring the sentence “Yet we know that that number of AIDS cases is growing in Japan because of a pole administered to all Japanese students.”

* Student C’s paper investigating the roots of Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary spirit. His thesis: “Among historians, there has been a big debate whether Ho Chi Minh was a Communist, as he claimed, or fundamentally a Vietnamese Nationalist. Well, I think he was a Communist from the gecko.”

* Student D’s paper arguing that weaponry introduced during the First World War forever changed the nature of combat. Written, like Student A’s, on a deadline so tight to prevent policing potential errors posed by juxtaposition of Qwerty’s “m” and “n” keys. Hence, the effect of mining No Man’s Land on the Western Front came out as:
“At the Second Battle of the Somme, German forces were stymied because French positions were protected by more than 250,000 mimes.”

Thank you for voting.

Please note: winners will never be notified. Ineligible but special mention to the early adopter who, in the first years of the worldwide web, paid for and submitted a pre-written paper—but negated their strategy by leaving the site from which the paper was down-loaded at the bottom of every page.

08/10/2020

It’s time, I think, to start posting some of the, um, unusual conversations I’ve had about world history with teenagers, while purportedly trying to teach it to them.

The first comes from 1995, and was the collective effort of a ninth-grade class made up of wily, spectacularly-chatty demons, hellbent on getting me off topic. Every. Single. Day.

Ninth grade was dedicated to ancient, not modern history. I forget, now, which medieval society I was supposed to be discussing. But, my students, knowing my original field was Holocaust studies, figured that, whatever it was, they could hijack it by asking me about Hi**er.

And they were right.

Thus, as I was in mid-sentence, Student One blurted out, loudly, “ Mr. Shultz, did Hi**er always mean to kill the Jews?”

And, heaven help me, I stopped to try to teach a lesson in historiography.
ME,”That’s a tough one because historians can only form answers based on the evidence we have. Only the N***s were incredibly sneaky both about NOT stating their real intentions and generating documents that made up phony ones. For example, there’s a document that says the plan for the Jews was to ship them all to Madagascar.”

My seat-of-the-pants goal was to show them how to be historians, and to know how to reject the Madagascar ruse. But, before I could, the class went like this:

STUDENT 1 “Madagascar?! (He has seen the animated talking-animal movie) That’s a real place?!?”

STUDENT 2 “Yes, you dummy! King Kong is from there!”

STUDENT 3 to STUDENT 2; “God, you’re an idiot. King Kong is from China!!”

STUDENT 4, (diffidently): “Uh, I think that’s Hong Kong. He’s from China.”

ME: (overlooking the tatters of lesson), “Well, that’s about it for the day, folks. I tried to teach you. I apologize for failing completely. I’m going to step out for a bit and contemplate drinking heavily. You guys carry on.”

I nodded politely and walked out. The bell rang.

04/08/2020

Semmelweis: Tragedy

04/08/2020

Semmelweis Pt III

04/08/2020

Semmelweis’s Story: Conclusion