“You teach history? How do you make that interesting?”
Every history or social science teacher hears that question at least once, and likely many times. But even a quick look at a typical “social studies” textbook, leaving aside the endless monotony of charts, diagrams, textboxes and the like, is enough to make one wonder the very apt question: How do you make that interesting?
Perhaps the most direct answer to the question is that “making it interesting” is missing the point of the standard textbook. Virtually all textbooks in use in public (and many private) schools today are not published with the goal of engaging young minds with fascinating content that stirs the imagination and encourages deeper reflection and mastery of the subject matter. If students do find the subject fascinating, it is most likely in spite of the textbook rather than because of it. The same, I imagine, is true with textbooks for other subjects.
Why is that? A simple clarification can answer the question: While we might assume textbooks are written for students, in reality students are not the real consumers — state educational bureaucrats are. The reason textbooks can be many hundreds of pages long, with a seemingly endless array of information that is only loosely connected at best, is for a simple marketing strategy utilized by major textbook companies. The primary goal is to develop a textbook that will most likely satisfy the wish-lists of “Textbook Adoption Committees” of the various states, especially the most populous states. The best way to accomplish that goal, of course, is to create a textbook that includes as much textual and visual information as possible. The result? A nine-hundred page monstrosity written by an obscure and impersonal “committee of experts” that becomes the primary medium by which a student interacts with a certain subject. Is there any surprise that a student might struggle to find any pleasure or meaning in history?
Apparently the problem is particularly acute in social studies. According to a 2006 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation,
“The only possible interpretation of the state of social studies education at the turn of the 21st century is that the field is moribund…Students rank social studies courses as one of their least liked subjects and social studies textbooks are largely superficial and vapid.”
I suspect that the ten years since this report have not brought us any nearer to a solution.
As a lover and teacher of history, I must ask how this could be?
The problem cannot be blamed entirely on textbooks. Quite often what people mean by “history” is in fact “social science.” While it has become commonplace to equate “history” with “social science” (as many colleges do), it would be more accurate to state that social science has in fact replaced history in the education of most American students. About a century ago, Western educators urged a transition away from history and toward a more “objective” and “scientific” approach to studying people. While history tended to consist of studies of great people and great events, and thus was supposed to contain an implicit cultural and moral bias, social science is supposedly free of such things. By removing the story of the past, the grand narrative of human history and its major and minor characters, and inserting instead a fully “scientific” and “factual” study of human society as though it were a biological organism under a microscope or a species of migratory birds, we would achieve a more rational and appropriately modern training of the young mind.
But the implication of this transition inside the classroom has meant countless lectures on highly abstract and impersonal topics such as “the socioeconomic system of medieval Europe” and “the migratory patterns of Indo-European settlers.” Perhaps young folks need to learn about these things, but notice what is lost when these topics are taught to the exclusion of learning about Hannibal and Charlemagne and Queen Elizabeth. We lose connection with concrete individuals, with persons and their virtues and vices, their beliefs and ambitions — the very things that twelve-year old students can imagine and relate to and get excited about. Without this connection, we invariably find a mechanized, soulless, deterministic view of man — man as social organism, nothing more and nothing less.
For these and other reasons, when I am asked how I make history interesting, my response is simple: I do not make history interesting; history is interesting. If nothing else, a teacher of history would do well to simply get out of the way and allow the students to encounter the wondrous past as directly as possible. The teacher need not bend over backward trying to convince and persuade his students that history is worth studying, as though it were a lifeless body that needs resurrection. History is alive and well.
You will find this approach to history in WHA’s Your State and Closer Look courses. ‘Your State’ students research the story of their particular states. They study not only key geographical features (e.g. climate, land forms, major rivers and lakes, etc.), but also the people who lived there prior to arrival of European settlers, the lives of the settlers themselves, the saints and scoundrels, heroes and villains, and how the story of their state ties in with the larger events of U.S. history (e.g. the War for Independence and the War Between the States). Moreover, ‘Your State’ students learn how to present their findings to their classmates during a live online class (using Power Point, webcam, etc.). The emphasis is on research and presentation, on genuine encounters with history, rather than on impersonal lectures and slavish adherence to history textbooks.
The emphasis on research as direct interaction with history also defines the essence of the ‘Closer Look’ series. The goal of each ‘Closer Look’ course is to encourage the student to read and reflect upon the primary sources of a particular major event or period in history. For instance, in the Closer Look at the War for Independence course (offered for the 16-17 school year) students will be reading such writings as Paul Revere’s own memorandum on the opening shots of the war, Washington’s 1775 Speech to the Continental Congress, a diary entry from a Loyalist prisoner in South Carolina, and Benedict Arnold’s written justification of his actions.
In these classes our primary question is not, “How does the textbook understand these events?” Such an approach misleads the student into thinking that somebody, somewhere has figured it all out. “What could I possibly add?” the student thinks. There is only the transferring of information, a sort of downloading process (and a test to ensure successful downloading). How boring.
Dr. Tom Vierra teaches courses in The Great Conversation, Logic, History, and Rhetoric and is part of the administrative staff at WHA.