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A Kansas housewife in 1921,
cooking on a Westinghouse electric stove, pampering herself with massages, and
enjoying appliances that some people can't even afford today.
How typical was Mrs. W. C. Lathrop?
To answer this question, students must place Mrs. Lathrop it into the broader
context of her time.
This is harder than it may seem.
Mrs. Lathrop's enthusiasm is contagious, and some students will assume
that she was typical of women in the 1920s.
How do we help students learn to "think contextually"?
First, they need to consider evidence about the time and place in which a
document was created.
To put Mrs. Lathrop in context, we begin with a map.
Norton is located in the northwest corner of Kansas, far from population
centers.
Using the Internet, we can scan the 1920 census, which shows that
Norton County constituted less than one percent of the entire state's population,
with a population density less than half of the other counties in Kansas.
Norton's 130 residents per square mile paled in
comparison to the more than 8,000 residents per square mile in
Kansas City.
This information makes it quite clear that Mrs. Lathrop's Norton was a
rural place.
Details about the spread of rural electrification
shed more light on the time period in which Lathrop wrote to Edison.
The 1920 census shows that only 8% of American farms had
electricity.
For most rural residents, the appliances that Mrs. Lathrop enjoyed remained
well beyond their reach.
In fact, in 1935 -- fourteen years after Mrs. Lathrop's letter --
three-quarters of Kansas farms were still without electricity!
Concrete facts about place and time are necessary to engage in the intellectual
work of contextualization.
But just exposing students to such information won't do the job either.
As teachers, we must show students how to USE these details -- whether it's the rural
setting of Norton
or the date of the Rural Electrification Act --
to create a context for sources and, in the case of Mrs. Lathrop, to ask
questions about her typicality.
By modeling these questions for our students, we can help them discover just
how rare Mrs. Lathrop was in her day.
Even more important,
students will learn to ask questions about context
and how it must guide our evaluation of documentary evidence.