Nachos - corn chips, tomatoes, olives, cheese, onions, cilantro and a large dollop of sour cream. This is quintessentially American food and it can be a fun way to think about the history of the American continents.
Corn
Corn probably developed in the highlands of central Mexico (the debates rage - some would include Guatemala) as a grass and was cultivated into a domesticated grain about 7ooo years ago. Evidence in ruins found from Copper Canyon in the South to the San Juan River in the north show evidence of corn based trade and migration. This migration continued into the northeastern portion of the America’s. Corn cultivation in northeast has been thriving for the last 1000 years.
Columbus returned to Europe with corn seed stalk. Corn was cultivated and soon spread throughout the European continent. It took about a century but corn became a staple grain in Europe.
Tomatoes
To find indigenous tomatoes one has to travel even further south to Peru. A member of the night shade family, wild tomatoes grew in the Peruvian highlands. This plant produced small green fruit. There is some evidence that pre-historic humans transported the tomatoe plant to central Mexico.
The Aztecs propagated the first modern tomato, a small yellow fruit they called “‘xitomatl”. Tomatoes eventually were transported to Europe. There is a running debate over who brought the tomatoes to Europe firs, Columbus or Cortez. The first mention of tomatoes in European literature shows up in the writings of Italian physicist and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli. He gave the aztec “‘xitomatl” the name pomi d’oro (golden apple). Tomatoes were quickily incorporated into the Mediterranean diet and were soon a staple.
The more I teach the more I am convinced that students would benefit across content from being exposed to some basic philosophy. It came up today in class when students were very critical of a dramatic production that was part of an all school assembly.
The play was deemed, by a few students, to be “unrealistic”. I asked how they came to believe this and the basic answer seemed to be that because they (as individuals or a small group) had not experienced the scenario in the play that it must not be realistic. In some sense they were arguing that if they have not experienced something or conceived of something that it is not real.
I pushed them on this a bit and asked them to write down a response to the following quesiton:
How do you know what you believe is true?
Most students answered along the lines of - “I believe something is true when I have evidence for it, I have seen it or someone I trust tells me it is true.” A few others gestured toward the idea of coherence by pointing out that they tended to believe things that fit with other things that they believed. I then asked them to write a response to:
How do you know the things you sense are true?
The period ended before we could talk about this. I am curious to see what we arrive at tomorrow. I do want to present them with a short section of Descartes.
Here is the project we will be working on over the next two days in the computer lab. All students must complete level one.
American Government
Open this document and save it to your home folder. All the links you will need for this project are contained in this document. Few people will reach level 6. Your goal should be to complete as much of the work as possible.
Here are links to the individual components of the work
Title: Inaugural Address Location: Room 205 Description: Combined session with Ms. Sherman\’s class to watch and understand the inaugural addres. Date: 2009-01-20
Here is a recording of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. We will be studying this speech later in the year. I will update this post with more links as we approach the project.
Nachos - corn chips, tomatoes, olives, cheese, onions, cilantro and a large dollop of sour cream. This is quintessentially American food and it can be a fun way to think about the history of the American continents.