And, But, Therefore

In a world where an excess of information strains attention to the breaking point, the ABT Method can help a nation subject to chronic amnesia and a profession confounded by change.

And = Agreement; But = Contradiction; Therefore = Consequence

The ABT is the equivalent to the rope strung between the farmhouse and the barn in a blizzard—in this case, the blizzard of way-too-much information and too many ways to organize that information.

With its emphasis on form, the ABT Method offers the best way to answer difficult questions that everyone in the profession confronts, namely:
  • What is the point and the unmistakable value of my research questions and of my general knowledge of history? Why should people pay attention to me and to what I know?
  • When I emerge from the archives, I have an abundance of evidence, and that very abundance can be more confounding than illuminating. How can I figure out how to get my archival findings to cohere and reveal their significance?
  • How can I connect the methods I use in research directly to the skills I teach my students?
  • What approach will position me to reach the audience of my fellow scholars and the audience of a wider public?
  • How can I escape from disciplinary silos and build alliances with people in other fields? How can I recruit allies who may not, at first glance, think that they want to pay attention to and work with historians?
  • How can I recover from a susceptibility to jargon that may have crept in when I wasn’t watching?How can I feel confident about my work while avoiding the perils of over-confidence, and push my ambition as high as possible—but not to excess?

 

An ABT on the particular benefit for teachers and professors in social studies and history

Every course in American history pays some attention to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. AND the framework for discussing these figures is sometimes a perfunctory acknowledgment that they are both very important historical figures,

 

BUT, studied together, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” and King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech can reveal to students the force delivered when the ABT Method is brought to bear on the most difficult issues in American history,

 

THEREFORE, two speeches, conventionally included in lesson plans, are ready to be unleashed in  a spirit-lifting project to empower young people to learn a life lesson on how they can make a difference and mobilize themselves and others to productive action.