If you don’t know the story of Alphonse the camel, whose chronic back problems and other factors meant he couldn’t take the strain of an additional piece of straw to his load, you can find the full version on your search engine of choice.
I have been using Arthur Chapman’s model for teaching causation to year 13 and this has really improved their historical thinking. Students have been introduced to Alphonse lower down the school and are reintroduced to him at AS as they study the causes of the Russian revolution. However, it is still useful to revisit him at A2. Before they are given their first essay title, students read a story about poor Alphonse the camel, who has a wicked owner called Frank. Frank mistreats Alphonse (who is already suffering from a bad back due to an accident at birth). Finally, Alphonse dies when Frank places a straw on his already overburdened back. The students have to find all of the causes contributing to Alphonse’s death. They then categorise these into long, medium, and short-term and trigger causes. Finally, they have to decide which cause may have been the most important by applying counter-factual thinking. They remove each cause and assess how much difference this would have made to the outcome.
