Part 8: Identifying Systemic Relationships

Student understanding grows not by acquiring isolated facts, but by discovering relationships. Only when parts of knowledge are linked together—moon, earth’s rotation and tides, for example—do they become useful tools for interpreting reality.

Unfortunately, most history textbooks, preoccupied with “telling the story,” give students little or no chance to explore relationships more complex than claims that “this caused that.”

The Model, using the principles of General Systems Theory, does far more. It says, “If you really want to understand an event or situation in the past, present or future, you must take into account everything that might have shaped it. Here’s a template to remind you of what those things might be.” The categories of the Model say, “Look at setting, demography, action patterns and shared ideas, and how they interact.”

Each of the primary sources we’ve presented so far has—inevitably—contained elements of every part of the Model, even though we’ve emphasized one element at a time. Buried within the Spanish “Ordinances for New Towns” (procedures for modifying setting) are assumptions about the “right” patterns for living, ideas about who should make decisions and how these decisions should be made. Even elements of demography (i.e. population distribution) can be inferred. For example, the Spanish make the assumption that those doing farming will live in town, and not on individually-owned farms.

The unit on “information trees” focused on having students classify “things made by people” (elements of “setting“), then classify or categorize all the people mentioned in the primary source. Logical classification of the people leads to functional divisions (cavalry, crossbow infantry, boat paddlers, native warriors), each with designated patterns of acting. Some of the ideas and attitudes of both the explorers and the natives toward the other group of “outsiders” is apparent from their actions. Something of the demography of the native Americans can also be inferred from the data. The presence of a large river-based society of “Indians” at the time of De Soto may surprise many.

Similarly, the unit that provided primary sources for Virginia focused on setting, but also contained demographic evidence (diffused settlement), and evidence for ways of acting (the plantation system of agriculture, trade, status divisions, etc.) Some planter ideas having to do with what planters considered “the good life” can be inferred. All the elements of the Model are so closely related within Virginia society that it’s sometimes difficult to find the dividing lines between them. Ways of life on plantations shaped settings, and those settings reinforced the ideas of those living on them.

Using the Model as an analytical tool provides a way to understand any society—Puritan, Pennsylvania German immigrants, native nations or any other—far more thoroughly. Whether students deal with the exploits of Alexander the Great, or next year’s Middle Eastern conflict, the elements of the Model (and their systemic interrelationships) will provide insight far beyond the results of simply reading or hearing the “story.”