Judging History - Again
Judging at the 51st National History Day
I originally posted “Judging History” one year ago for National History Day’s 50th Anniversary. We’re back again this year so I modified (and expanded) that post to fit this year.
This story actually starts in 1974 in Cleveland, Ohio. David Van Tassel, a professor of history at Case Western Reserve University, wanted to create a way to get kids more interested in history, to make it come to life for them. To do this he created a contest, akin to science fair, in which middle school and high school students would present the results of their own historical research. The standards for research were rigorous, with a significant number of primary and secondary resources required. At that first History Day fifty-one years ago there were 129 students.
The Missus and I were invited to be judges at National History Day (NHD) by our friend Nicole. She’s been judging there for over a decade, but she didn’t have to work hard at convincing us. I leapt at the chance as I was a judge for State Science Day in Ohio (where all those science fair winners go at the end of the school year) for close to 15 years. I really enjoy talking with bright youngsters as it gives hope for the future, despite all the doom-and-gloom coming from politicians with an agenda and news organizations who need to make things sound bad in order to sell. The students, for both science and history, have put an enormous amount of effort into their projects and their resulting enthusiasm for their topic can be infectious.
The format and rules for NHD are simple, but the projects require serious work. It starts with the NHD Annual Theme. All entries must follow this theme. This year’s theme was “Rights and Responsibilities in History.” This requires the student’s project to describe what rights, belonging to whom, were promoted or violated, and who had responsibilities to uphold or defend those rights.
Once the topic has been selected by the student, the research begins. And it is actual research. This is not just some fancy book report or Googling the topic. The student has to look at multiple perspectives of the event (there are always winners and losers, people who are for and against an idea, and people who accept and reject inventions). They must also use many, many sources, both primary and secondary. Primary source materials are created during the time period being researched. They include things like eyewitness accounts, letters, diaries and newspaper articles from the time. Secondary source materials are created after the fact and include history textbooks, books written by historians, and articles found on credible websites.
The best example I can think of to describe the difference between primary and secondary sources is the sinking of the Titanic. An author by the name of Walter Lord spoke with survivors, crews of the ships that came to help the Titanic, read all the logs from those ships, read the station logs from the ship-to-shore radio stations from that night. He also read up on the design and construction of the ship and all the hoopla about this great, new “unsinkable” ship. These were all primary sources. He then wrote a book titled A Night To Remember. That book is a secondary source, since it is a compilation and distillation of primary source materials written after the event. The Titanic entries in Wikipedia, Britannica and other encyclopedias are tertiary sources, since they rely on secondary sources for their entries.
While the student is performing their research they must decide on a format for presenting the results of all their work. The projects can be created and presented by either an individual or a group of up to five students. Formats for NHD are:
Documentary
An audio-visual presentation, no longer than 10 minutes, of the student’s findings and historical arguments using static images, videos and sounds;
Performance
A dramatic portrayal, no longer than 10 minutes, of the student’s findings and historical arguments;
Website
A collection of connected web pages using multimedia to present the student’s findings and historical arguments;
Exhibit
A 3-dimensional display presenting the student’s findings and historical arguments (think science fair tri-fold display posters);
Paper
A written document of between 1,500 and 2,500 words presenting the student’s findings and historical arguments.
There is no Group category for the Paper format, which is for one student only. If you’ve ever written a paper as part of a group you know why this is, and if you haven’t, consider yourself lucky.
But wait! There’s more! Since NHD is for students from 6th grade to high school senior (11-18 years old), there are two division for each format. Junior Division is for grades 6-8 and Senior Division is for grades 9-12. So there are 18 categories to be judged.
Before National History Day even starts, the judging has started. Each student must submit a process paper and an annotated bibliography.
The 500-word process paper describes how the student chose the topic, how it relates to the annual theme, how the research was conducted, what their historical argument (or thesis) is, and how the topic is significant in history.
The annotated bibliography must list all of the student’s sources, divided into primary and secondary sources. The annotations describe how the student used the materials in their project.
Judges spend the week before the contest scouring every word of the process paper and bibliography to ensure the validity of sources and to get an idea of what the student is going to present.
So this year, the 51st National History Day, had over 500,000 students participating at local levels. Of that half-million, 2,849 students presenting 1,643 projects made it to Nationals at the University of Maryland in College Park. Homeschoolers were well represented and several were award winners. Many of the students come from overseas affiliates of NHD: American Samoa, Guam, China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Turkey all sent students to National History Day.
Judging is done in teams of three, with one being designated the Captain. The Team Captain doesn’t have any extra authority or weight added to their opinions; he or she just has the responsibility of doing the paperwork.
This year I judged Junior Individual Documentary and Senior Group Website. The Missus judged Junior Group Presentation and Senior Individual Documentary. Last year we both judged the same categories in both Junior and Senior Divisions but weren’t on the same judging team and judged different sets of students. We believe this is absolutely fair to the students. After 32 years of marriage, we tend to think alike and make similar decisions (her egregious dislike of peanut butter notwithstanding). This would give our way of thinking too much weight in the judges’ deliberations.
The projects are judged on the following:
Historical Quality. These count for 80% of the score:
Historical Argument
Wide Research
Primary Sources
Historical Context
Multiple Perspectives
Historical Accuracy
Significance in History
Clarity of Presentation. These count for 20% of the score:
Written Material, Visuals, Narration
Technical Aspects
Student Voice (the student’s ideas, analysis, argument and conclusions are original)
Judges are provided rubrics that spell out how each area should be scored.
What we saw as judges, both of us, reflected pretty decent research and good presentation. Some were, of course, better than others. But even those who got scored the lowest in each group weren’t bad. This is something that goes into our judge’s notes, which the student gets to read after it’s all over (and every student really wants to read those notes…it’s the same at State Science Day…the judges’ notes are far more important to them than the actual scoring). In our notes we both start out (I told you we think alike) by noting that the student should be proud to have made it to the national competition. After we give constructive criticism of flaws or weaknesses, and praise for really well-done aspects, we conclude with repeated congratulations and a hope to see them again next year.
We really do hope to see them again in future National History Day competitions. It would make judging next year that much more fun.
(Drop me a line if you want to know more, or visit national.nhd.org)
