It's not often that I become engaged with one of my friends 'status updates' on Facebook, yet that was truly the case the other today as I fired off four (fairly) rapid-fire comments in response to "Written teaching philosophies: just that much boiler-plate nonsense." I explained that, over the past year, I’ve been carefully considering what my role as a historian should be with regards to my professional desire to teach. I cited an example in a recent NY Times article in which a graduate in media studies landed a job largely based on his use of 'social media' techniques to reach a larger audience. Within the profile, the student confessed that he initially went into college with the hopes of being a history teacher. However, problems arose.
"I thought I was going to be a history teacher, but after taking some of the core general ed and psychology courses, it seemed like history was all about memorization, and I wanted to do something more hands-on, so I made the segue to media studies. The range of courses you could take made it great: production, marketing and journalism."[i]
Now what struck me about this statement is the way in which the student-turned-worker perceived history; namely, it was a process of memorization. I have no doubt that the majority of undergraduates who take history courses feel this way as well. To them, history is nothing more than a trivial pursuit, useful only for the occasional 'one-up' with other history buffs or the even rarer appearance on Jeopardy. To be truthful, the way most programs are taught this is not far from the mark. Why? For me, at least, it boils down to two factors: one, professional skills used by historians are not properly inculcated because, two, the not-so-secret workhorse of many departments, the graduate assistants, perform much of the teaching/grading load and are themselves in the process of mastering the skills they should, in theory, one day pass on to their students. When professors actually teach a course themselves, they often focus on content and little on historical/analytical skill usage. Usually, if you are taking a history course where an actual professor is the instructor (often at the higher levels of history courses) they assume you have already mastered said skills and will gloss over them accordingly.
Rather than focus on the second point (I will speak to that in a later post), I would like to use this post to discuss why the first point, that essential skills used in history are not properly taught, parallels the statement my friend made, that "written teaching philosophies" equals "just that much boiler plate nonsense."
I draw inspiration from a John Dewey essay, entitled "The Problem of the Liberal Arts College" in which Dewey traces the development of liberal arts education against the rise of the scientific revolution and pursuant democratization that dissolved barriers between 'liberal' and 'useful' knowledge. ('Liberal' was the domain of the elite, while 'useful' remained in the hands of the poor- think artisans and craftsmen) Once scientific knowledge gained appreciable respect for its ability to explain and predict the natural world, it thrust itself into the liberal arts college mainly on the grounds that it was useful for social affairs. (Think Economics and Political Science) This intrusion provoked practitioners of the 'liberal arts' to take a conservative stance, to assert that a clear distinction exists between true 'liberal arts' and 'other' subjects. Yet, Dewey is of the opinion that such attempts to isolate the liberal arts will not reestablish the old model of the medieval university and, further, that the implication of such division possesses serious consequences.
"At a time when technical education is encroaching in many cases upon intelligent acquaintance with and use of the great humanistic products of the past, we find that reading and studying of 'classics' are being isolated and placed in sharp opposition to everything else. The problem of securing to the liberal arts college its due function in democratic society is that seeing to it that the technical subjects which are now socially necessary acquire a human direction. …they cannot be liberating if they are cut off from their humane sources and inspirations."[ii] (Emphasis in the original)
This, to me, is one of the central problems of higher education today. We are so concerned with producing business majors, engineers, chemists, physicists, financiers, etc… because they, in turn, produce the so-called marvels of our age that we don't mind if these students skimped on studying the humanities. What use is history in the production of new vaccines? Or in the manufacture of complex debt instruments? History, along with the humanities in general, is becoming bankrupt in the eyes of the masses because the 'professionals' of these disciplines long ago abandoned the pursuit Dewey elaborated above. We no longer give the technical subjects a 'human direction'. And yet, there is a severe disconnect in this reasoning when the masses blame bankers for their role in the financial crisis- how can we become angry and judge a profession that was never, in any real way, taught their connection to 'humane sources and inspirations"?
This brings me back (albeit in a rather round about way) to the point I am trying to make; history has failed because those students who actually engage with the topic do not take away appreciation for the skills involved. What skills am I talking about? Essentially, history is about the critical evaluation of sources and forming a cogent argument in written form using those sources. All sequencing of events and explanatory theories/models used in history derive from these fundamental skills. When I taught undergraduates at the University of Kansas, I was amazed at how students approached diverse topics in much the same way; they created a chronology and then proceeded to memorize that list. When I pressed them to look at the sources presented in class, be they trial records, tax registers, newspaper articles, or even secondary sources written by established historians they took the very words they read (if they read them at all) for gospel. When I took the time to show them how history uses a critical eye towards the evaluation of these sources it was like a light bulb finally turning on for the first time. For many students today, simply being in a book equates to truth. In our current age of mass marketing and psychological profiles, could anything be further from the truth?
Thus, historians at all levels need to seriously consider their position vis a vis teaching philosophies. Perhaps the reason my colleague felt that all teaching philosophies were "boiler-plate nonsense" is because that is what they have become. Later, in our Facebook to and fro, she admitted that non-historians don't read our teaching philosophies- only a select panel or hiring committee will glance at it, preferring to instead focus on the actual work produced by the candidate. Now, of course, this should be one of the primary qualifiers for a potential hire or certification for doctorate but I argue that teaching philosophies should also be just as important. As a graduate student who studies Imperial Russian history, and peasants of the 19th century in particular, this is one of my central concerns. How can I make this topic relevant to students today? How can I draw them in? However, these are questions best asked after a student has mastered the ability to critically evaluate sources and written arguments. It is my belief that too few history courses actually spell out the acquisition of these skills, instead opting for the traditional 'chronology' approach that many students regard as trials of memorization- once students believe that, it is only a short jump to viewing history, on the whole, as trivial. They no longer see the practice of history as relevant to their lives, even though the essential skills I elaborated on above are applicable to a wide range of activities.
In this way, teaching philosophies are only a first step towards bringing a 'human direction' to the study of history. As this is a theme that requires much more deeper analysis, I will revisit this topic and explore practical models that can help re-shape the way we consider history to be taught. At the conclusion of his essay on the liberal arts college, John Dewey stated,
"The present function of the liberal arts college, in my belief, is to use the resources put at our disposal alike by humane literature, by science, by subjects that have a vocational bearing, so as to secure ability to appraise the needs and issues of the world in which we live."[iii]
I couldn't agree more. Stay tuned for more posts!
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