Educational Material
On a practical level, Eric Schnakenbourg and Virginie Adane have designed a traveling exhibition consisting of 11 chronological and thematic panels. The creation of these panels was rooted in a reflection on the teaching practices of our high-school colleagues, who often lack usable resources for this part of the curriculum. A problem that is all the more urgent with the recent adjunction of new chapters centered on the American Revolution in the new, 2019- then 2022-curricula. The exhibition has thus been designed primarily for a high-school audience, favoring a visual and computer-graphic approach when possible.
Eric Schnakenbourg and Virginie Adane have jointly selected the themes to focus on, in line with recent developments in historiography and with the framework provided by the Conseil Supérieur des ProgrammesThey call for particular attention to be paid to the “forgotten” actors of the Revolution and its global ramifications- beyond the French, as linking these events to the study of the French Revolution is already widely marked out in the resources available for K-12 colleagues and students. Marie Boiscommun, in charge of research dissemination at CRHIA, was responsible for the graphic design.
Our project was therefore rooted in the reality of K-12 education in France, and in the ambition to make calibrated resources and data accessible to a high-school audience. The panels were designed as an exhibition for free consultation, and could also be used to gather information and cross-reference data from one panel to another, leading students to write their own synthesis.
We produced 11 panels: two introductory panels (chronology and presentation of the Thirteen Colonies), then 8 chronological and thematic panels (“From colonial crisis to revolt”, “the War of Independence”, “a world war”, the Constitution, “women in the American Revolution”, “a people’s revolution?”, “The American Revolution and the Indigenous nations”, “The American Revolution and slavery”). The final panel echoes the previous ones by proposing a list of key actors, enabling us to humanize this history based on individuals who can be associated with the exhibition’s themes.
Our visual approach, using computer graphics, and the choice of no more than 4,000 signs per panel, are designed to facilitate group work. We also wanted to provide easily-adaptable resources, that can be translated (both in France, for colleagues teaching English, and for distribution outside France).
We then tested these panels with a selection of colleagues teaching secondary school history-geography and English.
The work carried out within the pedagogical department has also consisted of a critical reflection on school textbooks, led by Ghislain Potriquet, which will be extended during a summer university in June 2025.
