By Phil Hamilton, Oct 14, 2009 in Musings, Pedagogy and Teaching
Every year I teach the first half of the US history survey course (which ends with the Civil War's conclusion), and each time I ask myself what I really want my students to take away from the class, especially since, for most of them, this will probably be the last formal history course they will take in their lives. I always have several general goals in mind:
1. To provide students with a coherent narrative of the past—one that concretely connects the various people and events of past generations to the present. Indeed, I want them to know that what happened several hundred years ago still matters to their lives today. In other words, the decisions historical actors made many years ago influences us in profound ways.
2. To explain the central role of freedom to American culture. In short, I explore how American settlers defined freedom and how they constantly expanded its meanings and refined its definition over the generations.
3. To convey my fascination with and appreciate of American history in the hope of sparking the students' long-term interest in the subject, so that they will want to learn more about it once the course is over. Perhaps they will even pick up and read an American history book on their own!
Nevertheless, over the years, I've also wrestled with the issue of how best to explain the complex paradoxes embedded in American history. As mentioned, I stress the fundamental importance of freedom to our development as well as how early Americans created an exceptionally moral and just governing order in the late 18th century. But I also fully explore the negative aspects of our past, such as slavery. While I always discuss these events in a deeply contextualized manner, I sometimes worry that the negative facets of US history will overshadow the undeniable benefits of the American experiment. In other words, I grapple with the issue of how to tell America’s story "warts and all" without the story simply becoming "all warts" in the minds of the students.
I was wondering if others have reflected upon these issues and how they have addressed them. Moreover, what central themes or ideas do others emphasize in their US history survey courses?
2 Responses to "What Should Students Take Away from the US history survey?"
Lee Trepanier on Oct 14, 2009
I'm not a historian, but one approach I use in the classroom to explain complex paradoxes in contemporary politics is to trace their historical origins. Perhaps such an approach could work in the reverse for a history course: show how the paradoxes of the past still haunt us today?
Patrick M. Ford on Oct 15, 2009
Phil,
I like what you've said here. When I read goals number 1 and 2 above, I started to think about ways those are or could be overlapping. Providing students a coherent narrative of the past that connects it with the present involves showing how the world students now inhabit was shaped not only by historical events and persons, but by ideas.
Your example of the concept of freedom is a good one. Students—indeed, most people—think that the political/philosophical concepts that comprise their worldview are perfectly objective, when, in fact, the study of history can help us understand how these ideas actually change through time, often precisely in relation to concrete historical events and figures. I can imagine how potentially fruitful a short history of the American notion of freedom—and attendant concepts of rights, etc.—could be for students.
Other professors of history could likewise dedicate some time to discussing the shifting notions of reason/rationality, authority, justice, and other concepts that comprise our current political and ethical discourse.
Of course, this is really just intellectual history, which is often unpopular among your colleagues, I know; and it certainly does begin to blur the line between historical study as we normally conceive it and political theory, history of philosophy, etc. But if a professor of history wants his courses to be relevant to students' lives, and wants his students to be engaged, I'm confident that ventures into intellectual history, if handled properly, are a sure way to do that.