VIDEO OVERVIEW
The narrative tells only one of countless stories that could be told of this era and the issues that served to promote and maintain many of the events of this twenty-five-year period. In many ways the video represents a six-hour snapshot that, like all snapshots, exposes only part of what is there to capture, consider and reconstruct. At the same time, snapshots cannot convey all the contexts, thoughts and feelings of all the people involved in or affected by what the picture contains. These Lesson Plan Modules and accompanying student resources are designed to provide the context and guidance to assist teachers and students alike in constructing accurate, far-reaching and meaningful multi-perspective versions of what both the American Revolution and the American Revolutionary War were like and what each meant to those involved in and affected by them.
Each video reveals many important ideas, emotions, personalities and events of this period. And each includes statements that capture feelings, a particular perspective or attitude, a singular moment or a particular person so that your experience comes closer to that of the witness. These points of view are disclosed in part in the form of letters, diaries and stories by members of Parliament, King George III, colonial leaders, government officials, family members, friends and observers of the events and conditions. All of these individuals were not writing history because they were too busy making history. In nearly every instance, these sources come closer to revealing the nature and affects of the political, economic, social and personal issues and concerns about how the colonists should be governed and how they came to establish a new nation than remarks by only politicians. The student activities contain selected statements that should be considered carefully and reflectively in the context of the particular video, the particular person or persons involved and the entire spirit and experience of the American Revolution.
Each chapter portrays a single event or a particular perspective, situation or condition linked to the themes of that video. Each can be viewed apart from the other chapters in the same video should you desire to do so.
A Special Note
Each video includes a narrative that concerns important ideas, events and issues aligned with the focus of that video. The videos that accompany this set of curriculum materials have been specially modified for classroom use with both chapter breaks and the exclusive PBS VIDEOindex™ clock. Within each video there are subdivisions, or chapters, with separate titles that serve to break the narrative into short, very focused subparts. For the convenience of the teacher, each video was subdivided into as many as eleven chapters, each with its own title. These chapters were created for the purpose of helping teachers organize the content of each sixty-minute video into manageable subdivisions that focus on particular ideas or events that might be addressed separately as part of the entire story or a unit of instruction. The chapter titles appear on the video screen.
LIBERTY! includes information concerning the period from 1763 to the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. Six one-hour videos collectively form the Public Television-produced series LIBERTY! Each video combines visits to key places, live-action re-enactments, graphics, primary documents and quotations from people who experienced first-hand the issues and events of the revolutionary era and from modern day historians. Available in bookstores is a companion book, published by Viking Press, 1997, by the same title which complements this video series and contains much that could not be included in six hours of video.