U.S. HistoryJason Lang

Telling a Vietnam War or war Story

All the wrong people remember Vietnam.

I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it. -Michael Herr, Co-writer of screenplay Full Metal Jacket

Introduction to Story – to History

What’s in a story? Does the name of a story matter? According to Wikipedia & many historians, it was the “Vietnam War.” According to historian Howard Zinn, it was the “Vietnam war.” According to the Vietnamese, it was “The Resistance War Against America,” or “American War.” Unofficially, for the U.S. government, it was the “situation” or the “involvement”.

If the title does matters as these various appellations suggest, do the “facts” matter as well– the photographs, the video footage, and the stories of fallible human memory? And if the facts matter, what of the interpretations that individuals, governments, and historians make with them?

According to the writers of the popular film Forest Gump, the war’s fire lived on at the recreated Vietnam March on the Pentagon protest of October 21, 1967:

Abbie Hoffman: Tell us a little bit about the war, man. Forrest Gump: The war in Vietnam? Abbie Hoffman: [to audience] War in Viet-Fucking-Nam!

According to Martin Luther King Jr. in1967, “If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam.”

According to Tim O’Brien, he called a civilian was a “dumb cooze,” for she, like America was “drawn toward sentimentality.” She was like “the brisk polite town” that one of his comrades was from: a town that “did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know.”

According to Alfred Plaep, a lifelong, small town Oregonian dairy farmer and the great uncle of the author of this project, the War Against America, The American War, the Vietnam War, the Vietnam war, the situation, the involvement or whatever it was, was the event, the reason, the narrative that gives context to the explanation of the death of his only son.

In short then, some stories, and particularly war stories, often do matter for a host of reasons. Knowing this and considering your experience evaluating stories this year in class, it is your turn to write a history for a high school textbook: A Vietnam War or war story.

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U.S. HistoryJason Lang

Interdisciplinary Unit Objectives

Students will be able to:

1. Identify, analyze, compare, and contrast the role storytelling plays in history and literature. Students will analyze how individual perspective impacts the one’s understanding of fact vs. fiction.

2. Identify and critically evaluate authorial bias, authorial intention, and target audience as they apply both mutually and divergently to in history and literature.

3. Critically examine the sources of how and psychology of in particular the Vietnam War is remembered in the 20th century considering themes of individual vs. collective memory.

4. Design and explain rationalization for memorial commemorating an assigned event from 20th century U.S. foreign policy. Compose a rationalization justifying how the visual design pays homage to history.

Unit Objectives

Students should already be able to:

1. Evaluate the nature of history: sources, knowledge of the sources, and interpretation and presentation of source material.

2. List the timeline sequence of the critical events in past U.S. foreign policy and key international relations tensions and partnerships in the post WWII world era.

Students will be able to do the work of a historian by:

1. Students will collect & evaluate primary & secondary source material and arguments to select the data and themes needed for a high school U.S. history textbook on the U.S. involvement:

a. Create “Reading Guides” for Secondary Source Materialb. Create “A Unit Study Guide Terms Sheet” of important people, events, dates,

ideas, themes, etc.

2. Students will work collaboratively dividing and assigning portions of the Vietnam War into major temporal/thematic blocks.

3. Students will collaboratively write a history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

4. Students will read & evaluate other peer histories for (a) trustworthiness, (b) completeness, and (c) quality of writing.

5. Students will be able to define and record the key data and arguments on the ‘Study Guide and Reading Guide Sheets”

6. Students will be to evaluate the difficulties of historical storytelling via the Vietnam War in an essay.

7. Students will create a memorial to commemorate some aspect of the Vietnam War.

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U.S. HistoryJason Lang

Unit Guiding Questions

1. Is history a collective story? If so, how does one tell a collective story?

2. How does or how should a historian tell a war story? How should a war be memorialized and remembered?

3. What attention should be given to the countless primary or secondary sources?

4. What should a war story’s central themes be?

o What attention should be paid to the emphases of the multitude of professional historians: political, economic, environmental, cultural, race, religious, gender, military, socio-political, psychological, etc. . .?

o What attention should historians give to (a) individuals—civilians, soldiers (b) the government, (c) professional and popular media, (d) popular entertainment, (e) other national perspectives?

5. Should history be interesting to read? What literary devices should it use? How should it begin? How should it end?

Unit Layout

Week 1 & 2: Collect & Evaluate Source Material for Vietnam War or war Story

Students will begin research for research paper on Vietnam:

Assignment #1— The Fog of War

In class students will watch and design an accompanying worksheet the film Fog of War. Each worksheet must include (a) descriptive and (b) analytical/thematic questions.

Assignment #2—Create a Unit Key Terms Sheet & Reading Guides

Simultaneously to the Fog of War, all students will read at least two secondary source perspectives on the Vietnam War or war:

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present (HarperPerennial, 2003). Chapter 18, "The Impossible Victory: Vietnam.”

Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (Harper Perennial, 1997). pgs. 877-909

While reading, Students will:

(1) Create Reading Guides for each of the following two suggested readings: a. Critical Guiding Questions to considerb. Critical terms and vocabulary to know

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U.S. HistoryJason Lang

(2) Use the secondary sources and the Fog of War and any other assigned readings to create Unit Terms Sheet for the unit.

(3) The Unit Terms Sheet must have an Argument established explained why they selected some terms and neglected others. This should be 250 words (1 pg. double spaced, New Times Roman).

(4) Optional: After students turn these Unit Key Terms, issue a Reading Quiz by teacher over key themes and ideas of the reading.

Assignment #3—Group Proposal for Themes/Narratives for History

Students will break or be broken into groups of 4-8 to write a history fit for a high school history textbook. Ideally, two groups will be chosen to tell a Vietnam War or war story for a United States audience. If desired, other groups may tell the story from another’s country’s perspective e.g. Vietnam.

Student groups will decide the major themes that each individual should be presented in the chapter. What themes are the most important? What information will be selected from the emphases of professional historians: political, cultural, economic, race, gender, military, psychological, religious, and environmental? What information will be neglected? How will the facts be organized: temporally, thematically, and stylistically to tell a complete, accurate, and interesting story? To what extent should bias and judgment be present?

All students will read Chapter 9 of Lies My Teacher Told Me, “See No Evil: Choosing Not to Look at the War in Vietnam” by James Loewen to see his criticisms of how the history of War of Vietnam has been presented to get one person’s perspective on thematic selection for a work.

Here is a list of suggested themes by different sources students may consider:

James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (pg.254) Why did the United States fight in Vietnam? What was the war like before the United States entered it? How did we

change it: How did the war change the United States? Why did the antiwar movement become so strong in the United States? What

were its criticisms of the war in Vietnam? Were they right? Why did the United States lose the war? What lesson(s) should we take from the experience?

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Chapter 18 What were the roles and actions of political leaders and the common people? Which U.S. citizens were for the war? Elite, middle class, lower class?

When? Did their opinions change? What was the role of the media?

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U.S. HistoryJason Lang

& New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/opinion/the-silent-majority-directors-statement.html?WT.mc_id=OP-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M226-ROS-1111-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click

Who were the “silent majority”? What was the legacy of the war in Vietnam after and today? How has Vietnam lived been remembered in the U.S. public memory?

Paul Johnson, A History of the American People Life after U.S. involvement in Vietnam

Dave Grossman or Tim O`Brien What was war like for the individual soldiers? How were they trained? What were the psychological ramifications of the war?

Each group will present a 250-500 Proposal of why they chose the themes they did. They must explain (a) what they plan to neglect, perhaps why they neglected it; and also, (b) why they selected and included the information they did.

Week 3 & 4: Write a Vietnam War or war Story

Assignment #4—Students will write a research paper: a Vietnam War or war Story

Paper Logistics 12 font., double spaced, 1,250-1,500 word essay Each paper must include 2-5 photographs, visual art pieces in their writing. Minimum of 7-10 MLA Formatted sources

o5 primary sources o2 secondary sources

Students may consider some of the suggested categories below as source evidence: Secondary Historical Sources in class Primary Source interviews Media Footage Documentaries Photos Protest Music [See Appendix for a list of suggested Protest Music] Hollywood Films

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U.S. HistoryJason Lang

Week 5 (6): Evaluate & Remember A Vietnam War or war Story

Assignment #5—Student’s will evaluate other group’s Vietnam War or war history

Each group will receive a copy of other groups’ history – ideally enough for each person in a group to receive a different history.

(1) Students will create a rubric with categories and a continuum to judge the merits of others’ histories. Evaluation may consider some of the Wikipedia criterion: Trustworthy Objective Complete Well-written – presentation, pleasure

And maybe others they want to consider . . . Audience appropriate? Etc. . .

(2) Each group will evaluate the work of other groups. Each member of the group will be assigned to read and evaluate one Vietnam War or war history. Students will write an evaluation, an article review, which could be posted on Amazon.com to an interested reader.

12 font., double spaced, 250 word essay.

(3) Students will bring these to class for a class discussion.

Assignment #6—Assessment

Test will be a synthesis of the Key Terms, Reading Guide Questions, and the main ideas raised in class discussion.

Assignment #7—Homage to History: A Vietnam Memorial

See attachment: “Homage to History: A Vietnam Memorial”

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