ABSTRACT
They're almost like wildflowers. You know, we work so hard to plant flowers in our little annual garden. The bloody things, it's too dry, it's too hot, it's bugs-it's one thing or another. It's very, very hard to grow these little flowers. And yet wildflowers, man, they'll literally crack up through holes in the tar and cement. They'll grow in the fields, whether there's a lot of rain or no rain; too sunny, not enough sun. It's a great sign of strength - those wildflowers, you see. They're so resilient in the face of being neglected and not being tenderly nurtured. (Pine, 12/06/89, pp. 504-24)
This vivid quotation is neither from a gardening club, nor a rambling philosophical exchange, but rather from a middle school United States history class in rural Maine. Here, we have a teacher explaining, and students thinking about, the import of an unfamiliar historical document in terms of a familiar concept. In other history classes across the country, we have seen other teachers (and students) explaining, and other students (and teachers) thinking about, the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar. Democracy as wildflowers, communism as disease, Cabinet members as phantoms, foreign policy in sheep's clothing-these are among the many such comparisons teachers and students make when explaining history. How often and when do they make such comparisons? Are they any more than evocative images or colorful language used to get attention? What is being compared to what? For what purpose? How does analogy function in the instructional explanation of history?
