ABSTRACT
Ms. Chavez is planning to teach a lesson on social trends of the 1920s in her U.S. history class. She wants to focus specifi cally on the clash between traditional rural society and dynamic urban culture. She feels like this clash between tradition and change is an ongoing phenomena in American history – something that her students can relate to today. She wants to help students recognize the problems that can arise from clinging to some traditions or abandoning others. She knows that her high school students have great interest in music so she decides to use jazz music as the medium through which students can explore the clash between tradition and change in the 1920s. She gathers recordings of several jazz songs, intending to play short clips for students. She also gathers recordings of popular songs from the 1920s that would not be considered jazz. As she collects resources she fi nds other primary sources, written during the 1920s, voicing various opinions about jazz music. She decides to spend some time with the students helping them discover the unique characteristics of jazz music and then have them debate whether the 1920s should be called “the Jazz Age.” It dawns on her that this might be an appropriate time to introduce students to the problems of reductionist thinking by talking about the fl aws of historical labels, such as “the Jazz Age.”
