Rediscovering an American Legacy of Service through a Free Curriculum

Abstract

This case study highlights a free curriculum created to commemorate the World War I centennial and to celebrate the future of volunteerism and global citizenship education by encouraging students to engage in local, regional, and international service. The lesson plans are aligned with Common Core and UNESCO Global Learning standards, and use primary sources to highlight the little-known efforts of Americans who volunteered in nonmilitary roles before and after the period of American neutrality. The curriculum was a result, in part, of newly accessible collections from the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs and related outreach efforts.

Keywords:

• World War I
• archives
• lesson plans

Notes

1 Diary, David H. Annan Collection; Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs (New York, NY, 1917).

2 There are many more general studies on the history of World War I by scholars, including two referenced for our project: R.G. Grant, World War I: The Definitive Visual History, from Sarajevo to Versailles (New York: DK Publishing, 2014) and David M. Kennedy. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).

3 As of December 31, 2017, AFS Intercultural Programs was headquartered in New York City with offices and staff in 60 countries, supported by more than 50,000 active volunteers. “Working Together to Maximize Our Global Impact: 2017 AFS Annual Report,” AFS Intercultural Programs, https://afs.org/about-afs/annual2017/ (accessed March 15, 2018).

4 Katie Nodjimbadem, “How World War I Influenced the Evolution of Modern Medicine,” Smithsonian.com, Published April 4, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-world-war-i-impacted-modern-medicine-180962623/.

5 Christopher Capozzola, “Legacies for Citizenship: Pinpointing Americans during and after World War I,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 4 (2014): 714.

6 Ibid, p. 717.

7 Historian Jennifer Keene notes that World War I is the “forgotten war” in the U.S., in part because Americans never developed “a unifying collective memory about its meaning or the political lessons it offered” as it did with other wars, including World War II. Despite the “explosion of innovative works” that indicate the war’s lasting impact on the U.S., it remains a challenge for scholars to “weave the war indelibly into the national historical narrative.” Jennifer Keene, “Remembering the ‘Forgotten War’: American Historiography on World War I,” The Historian 78, no. 3 (Fall 2017): 439, 462, 468.

8 Usage of “American” refers explicitly to “U.S. American” in this paper.

9 There are a number of sources providing information on the neutrality-era American volunteers overseas, though one of the best overviews comes from Axel Jansen, “Cultural Elite or Political Vanguard? American Volunteers Join the European War, 1914–1917,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17, no. 4 (2018): 636–49.

10 Jansen examines American volunteers in France and their key role in shaping public opinion in the U.S. during the period of American neutrality. This was accomplished, for example, when American ambulance drivers returned home from the front to speak out their experiences, among other methods. Axel Jansen, “Heroes or Citizens? The 1916 Debate on Harvard Volunteers in the European War,” in War Volunteering in Modern Times: From the French Revolution to the Second World War, edited by Christine G. Krüger and Sonja Levsen (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011): 150–62.

11 One of the reasons for this change was the humanitarian impact from the war. Brandon Little notes that “Humanitarianism helped to establish the U.S.’s position as a world power in the First World War era by its implicit criticism of European statecraft accompanied by Wilsonian inspired alternatives that extolled universal liberal democratic values, and by America’s demonstrable humanitarian administrative capacity and financial largesse that dwarfed most other international and national relief and reconstruction activities.” Many of these humanitarian efforts began as early as 1914 with organizations like the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which supplied relief to devastated areas of Belgium and northern France. Branden Little, “An explosion of new endeavours: global humanitarian responses to industrialized warfare in the First World War era,” First World War Studies 5, no. 1 (2014): 3.

12 Sources for the history of AFS consulted for this paper include American Field Service, History of the American Field Service in France, 1914–1917 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920); Arlen J. Hansen, Gentlemen Volunteers: The Story of the American Ambulance Drivers in the Great War, August 1914–September 1918 (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996); George Rock, The History of the American Field Service, 1920–1955 (New York: Platen Press, 1956); and primary sources held in the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs, including the American Field Service World War I Records, American Field Service World War II Records, AFS International Records, and the Oral History Collection.

13 The post-World War II scholarship program expanded on the organization’s first efforts in international exchange- the AFS Fellowships for French Universities program. The higher education program for French and American students was intermittently active between 1919 and 1952. Notable former AFS Fellows include Grayson Kirk, who became the president of Columbia University during the student protests of 1968, and Raymond Aubrac, a leading figure of the French Resistance during WWII and founder of the underground newspaper Libération-Sud.

14 In addition to Nicole Milano, the project team included part-time archivist Cherie Acierno and intern Johnamarie Macias.

15 The administrative files in the AFS Archives indicate that there were 55 documented research requests by former staff between 1997 and 2010. On average, after the completion of the NHPRC project, there were 270.7 requests each year between 2011 and 2017. Requests can from both inside AFS Intercultural Programs (staff) and outside (families of ambulance drivers, filmmakers, academics, etc.) The year preceding the centennial celebrations (2013) saw the highest number of requests at 433.

16 I redesigned the archives website (www.afs.org/archives) again in 2017, when AFS moved to a WordPress platform, allowing for a more interactive and engaging presentation.

17 AFS established institutional educational goals as early as 1984, and conducted a number of research efforts to understand the impact of exchange programs in the years that followed.

18 To view other lesson plans related to World War I, visit https://www.theworldwar.org/education. This website was a collaborative project between the National World War I Museum and Memorial and the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission, and includes The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, 1914–1919.

19 Jansen, “Cultural Elite or Political Vanguard? American Volunteers Join the European War, 1914–1917,” 636.

20 There are many resources available which highlight the use of primary sources in education. For a list compiled by the Society of American Archivists’ Reference and Outreach Section, visit http://rb.teachwithstuff.org/bibliography/.

21 The two meetings were funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, and Intercultura (AFS Italy.) The exhibition committee consisted of Dr. Christopher Capozzola, Doran Cart, Dr. Barton C. Hacker, Kathleen Hulser, PD Dr. Axel Jansen, Nicole J. Milano, Sheryl Hilliard Tucker, Margaret Vining, Christine Vogel, and Lora Vogt, and the academic advisory committee guiding the process consisted of Dr. John Whiteclay Chambers II, Dr. Jennifer Keene, Dr. David M. Kennedy, Dr. James Mohr, Dr. George Nash, Dr. Yves-Henri Nouailhat, Dr. Alan Price, Dr. Jonathan F.W. Vance, and Dr. Jay Winter.

22 The exhibition part of the project was originally intended to be a traveling exhibition with original artifacts.

23 Primary Source is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing global and cultural learning in schools through collaborations with educational organizations and individuals. Importantly for AFS, they focus on “understanding the world from diverse perspectives and a future in which all individuals have the skills, knowledge, and empathy to engage with their local and global peers and help solve today’s pressing challenges.” “Our Mission.” Primary Source, https://www.primarysource.org/about-us/our-mission (accessed March 15, 2018).

24 The full Curriculum Development Committee included Nicole J. Milano (Chair), Melissa Liles, Dr. Christopher Capozzola, Dr. Sophie De Schaepdrijver, PD Dr. Axel Jansen, Dr. Tonya Muro, Claire Rozier, and Lora Vogt. Early contributors to the curriculum were also made by Erica Halstead, Mary Porterfield, and Susan Ellis.

25 Elizabeth Yakel and Doris Malkmus, “Contextualizing Archival Literacy,” in Teaching with Primary Sources, edited by Christopher J. Prom and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2016), 9.

26 Ibid., 25.

27 Authors included PD Dr. Axel Jansen, Dr. Susan Zeiger, Dr. Alan Price, Dr. Branden Little, and Dr. Christopher Capozzola.

28 Patricia Garcia notes that teachers often are not trained to undertake archival research according to the principle of provenance, but rather often have domain knowledge of a specific subject. Patricia Garcia, “Accessing Archives: Teaching with Primary Sources in K-12 Classrooms,” American Archivist 80, no. 1 (2017): 192.

29 Samuel S. Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.) Cited in Yakel and Malkmus, 16.

30 Photographs and quotations for the biographies came from the AFS Archives, the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford University, the Virginia Military Institute Archives, and private collections.

31 Yakel and Malkmus, 11.

32 Archival materials in this activity came from the Library of Congress, the AFS Archives, Harvard University, the Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University, and the California Digital Newspaper Collection.

33 In his article on the evolution of American humanitarianism (and the links between mass humanitarianism and modern sensationalism) in the 20th century, Kevin Rozario notes that “Although humanitarianism was already a significant cultural presence in the U.S. in the nineteenth century, it was not until the second decade of the twentieth century that it became a mass phenomenon.” He goes on to describe efforts of the American Red Cross using professional fundraising techniques we are familiar with today to raise money for their war effort. While this was certainly one component, it’s important to also acknowledge the changing nature of international volunteerism, which grew for Americans after the exposure to international volunteering during World War I, among other reasons. Kevin Rosario, “’Delicious Horrors’: Mass Culture, the Red Cross, and the Appeal of Modern American Humanitarianism,” American Quarterly 55 (September 2003): 427.

34 Archival materials in this topic came from the AFS Archives, Musée Franco-Américain du Château de Blérancourt, the Library of Congress, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford University, the National World War I Museum and Memorial, the Ohio State University, and the Morgan Library and Museum.