I like this approach. This guy plans to build his history survey course “around significant question for our contemporary world and then trying to help students work through the ways that history helps us answer those questions.” The difference here is that most history teachers—for good reason—seem to teach in “the past is a foreign country” mode. That means we see people, actions, events, documents and other sources as fundamentally different from us. Because, you know, they were. We do this in a generally chronologically manner: what happened first, what happened after that, and how do we understand it from a historians’ perspective. (Every teacher has his or her own approach, so this is a vast oversimplification, of course.) It’s what I do.
But I wonder about the student in a freshman survey. She or he is not a history major; at my schools, she is likely a health/human sciences or education major. Most really don’t give a *&^* about learning history and they’re just here for the course credit. I sympathize. In a perfect world, an educated, enlightened person (at least an upstanding citizen) will intellectually deal with things like evidence, sources, narrative, or analysis in the manner of a historian—with perspective(s), comprehensive review, balanced analysis—that sort of thing. But really, is a non-history major going to pick this up in one or two survey courses?
Is it ok if students escape a history class without learning the discipline of history? Do they need it? How is history most useful to non-history majors? What other relevancy does this course have in their lives? I always come back to thinking about here and now. Us. Why are we the way we are? How did we get this way? These questions can be asked of anything that’s happening these days. Financial downturn, Federal government in American life, expectations about employment, the United States’ place in the post-Cold War world, ongoing racial and gender tensions… All have long historical explanations and can be tied to something in the “cultural atmosphere” these students live in. The last two years have been good for discussion of the Conservative movement/Tea Party. Where did the modern movement begin and why? How did it change? How is the Tea Party the same, or different, from Taft, Buckley, Goldwater, Schlaffly, Reagan and their grass roots in Los Angeles and Macon?
Last semester I tried a “news project” in class. I had students select something from current events that had a historical angle that needed analysis, and then analyze it historically. Good use of historical example, or bad? Got to say that this wasn’t as successful as I had hoped, but I think it is a promising exercise. I think I might have had more success last semester when I interjected into my American history and Western Civ classes the events in Egypt. Explaining why this whole Tahrir Square thing was such a damn important historical moment meant discussion of the Ottoman Empire, British colonialism, Arab nationalism, Egyptian-Israeli relations, Egyptian-American relations, and so forth. I didn’t survey the class, but I think we might have had some useful information being learned.
Some objections might be that this is too presentist, too telescopic (what’s the word?), suggests the inevitability of existing power structures, or that it leaves out a plurality of voices from the historical narrative. IDK, maybe? What do you think? On a more pedestrian level, none of these questions have anything to do with the Student Learning Outcomes requirements that are creeping closer and closer to dictating what we actually have to teach.
Anyhow, I’m thinking of planning future history classes more specifically around some of these questions. From McCoy’s post, I especially like the ones about nation states, economic inequality, and patriotism. I usually try to ask questions that will place our moment in perspective, like, say—are we at the end of capitalism? Are we at the end of the liberal/New Deal framework? Where are we in the conservative spectrum? What advantages have we had for cheap energy and the material goods that arose from post-war “abundant society” assumptions? What is up with the middle class?
Well, I’m just feeling around in the dark here, thinking about Spring semester (not teaching this Fall.) Probably trying to reinvent some wheels, which I could avoid doing if I knew some history.
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