Undergraduate history teachers confront a number of problems that their predecessors did not. Registration in humanities courses is down at the same time that many colleges and universities are using registration figures to apportion funds among departments. Students, as consumers, are frequently able to dictate course offerings, teaching styles, and rigor. Moreover, high schools seem to be producing more students who are not only deficient in basic understandings of history, but also lack rudimentary writing and reasoning skills. All teachers in the humanities, including history teachers, must concern themselves especially with developing these skills.
Kenneth Jackson, as President of the OAH and professor at Columbia University, admonished history departments for failing to address the deplorable lack of historical knowledge among today’s undergraduates. In his first presidential message he said:
…we don’t take our teaching seriously enough. We may be too free to teach our own specialty, rather than what students need to know. If you have a big department, it usually works out, but sometimes the only course that’s open may be a history of nineteenth century railroads in Tennessee.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni recently polled seniors from fifty-five colleges and universities, including Amherst, Duke, Harvard, and the University of Michigan. Not one of the schools required a single course in history for graduation. Less than one-third of the students polled correctly identified the American general at Yorktown among four choices: William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, or Douglas MacArthur. More than half of the college seniors believed that Lincoln’s famous words, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” were found in the Declaration of Independence. As an incoming teacher of history, I feel it a duty to address this historical illiteracy by focusing my efforts upon making survey and introductory history courses informative and stimulating.
I do not believe myself naïve in believing that people want to learn. It is not learning, per se, that is unappealing to students; but rather being expected to learn material that seems irrelevant and useless. My own interest in history does not derive from any fascination with the minutiae of the past. Instead, I find the study of mankind’s previous ideas and actions to be the most stimulating and accessible means of understanding human behavior. Psychology is the most popular subject among today’s liberal arts students. Why? Because it provides a means of understanding oneself and the people around you. History can do the same thing, but with more opportunity to experience romance, bravery, idealism, and beauty. Moreover, American history provides insights into many of today’s public policy concerns. In an age in which many young people are avoiding participating in our political process, history can provide the understanding and context for making complex and impersonal issues understandable and compelling. Forinstance, my own work addressing the separation of church and state in the early republic can be the basis for a new awareness in current debates over abortion, genetic engineering, and faith-sponsored public policy initiatives. A history teacher can increase enthusiasm in his or her subject by specifically addressing the greater personal and societal understandings that a study of history provides.
Yet, imparting a workable knowledge of history is only one part, and arguably the less important part, of a history teacher’s job. Students are in college to learn how to think as intelligent and productive adults. What better source for discussion and analysis can one find than the record of past human experiences? I have frequently told students that they must force themselves not to judge the past, nor the historical actors they study, but to wrestle with understanding them. In a world increasingly dependent upon inter-cultural interaction and understanding, a history classroom can serve as a laboratory. History students learn to ask why and how. We know that the German people engaged in horrible acts of savagery only one generation ago. Why? We know that Jefferson, Washington, and Madison held slaves. Why? Our task is to go beyond awareness of facts, and beyond easy and sophomoric inclinations to condemn or praise, and to press on for understanding. Courses that are designed to focus student attention on these questions will be interesting and valuable learning experiences.
Francis Bacon offered that: “reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.” Teaching cannot stop at assigning texts and discussing history. I have spent several years teaching writing at highly regarded law schools. My students, all graduates from solid undergraduate institutions, generally suffered from a sloppiness of thought that was evident in their inabilities to communicate precisely. Social conversation seldom requires precision in one’s expression, and therefore rarely compels precision of one’s thoughts. As a history teacher, I have been advised by more experienced professors to give very few if any essay tests; and if I gave them to devote no time at all to correcting a student’s grammar or means of expression. I was disappointed to learn that these professors had simply given up trying to teach students how to write. I heard a variety of reasons: “they will fight you;” “it’s not our job;” “enrollments will go down;” “it’s useless, they just will not pay attention to you.” I strongly believe that writing assignments must be a major focus of any humanities course. Moreover, the careful critiquing of written work is an essential part of a teacher’s job. At the University of Richmond, I require four papers from the students in my American survey courses.
I also am convinced that one’s teaching efforts need not limit one’s ability to research and publish. I remember a discussion with Professor Timothy Breen from my days as an undergraduate at Northwestern University. At the time, as at numerous times before and since, questions were being raised about faculty commitments to teaching and research, and the difficulty in doing both well. Professor Breen disputed that premise. He argued that to be a truly outstanding history teacher, one also had to research and write history. Research and teaching combined to encourage a professor to challenge existing perspectives and pursue the quest for new understandings. Moreover, he contended that only by “doing history” could one teach history—history was not a stagnant body of information forever compressed within the books we read, but a process of understanding that depended upon an intellectual interaction with the past.
Historians who research and write history participate in a process of arguing, forming and shaping their subject matter. As a result they bring to their teaching a vibrancy and currency that positively influences their students in three ways. First, these scholars are able to teach from a perspective of doing. Their knowledge is current and their skills and perspectives are sharpened by the rigors of the academy. Second, their teaching cannot become stale because it is always being enhanced by the excitement of their own involvement in the subject. I truly believe that enthusiasm and passion for a subject are contagious and encourage learning. Third, the process of historical research and writing is enhanced when performed in an academic environment that offers an exchange of ideas. As scholars pursue new theories, they are more open to discussion and debate. Teaching from this perspective fosters interactive classrooms in which students and teacher work together to not only understand but to shape and redefine history. I look forward to teaching as an opportunity to interact with students for our mutual benefit.