{"id":95,"date":"2008-08-03T06:04:20","date_gmt":"2008-08-03T13:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=95"},"modified":"2008-08-02T22:07:07","modified_gmt":"2008-08-03T05:07:07","slug":"facts-no-no-tell-me-how-history-makes-you-feeeel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=95","title":{"rendered":"Facts? No, no, tell me how history makes you feeeel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back on July 25, I wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201c… To understand and explain American exceptionalism, like it or not, it may be necessary to at least understand why aeroplanes were not used in the Civil War, why the British couldn\u2019t use the train to get back and forth between New York and Philadelphia in 1788, why no one seemed concerned that opium and marijuana and machine guns were perfectly legal in 1905 (an era so safe that Americans didn\u2019t even lock their doors), and why the Jackson Democrats kept making such a fuss about the National Bank. …<\/p>\n

\u201cNevada\u2019s Council to Establish Academic Standards was scheduled to meet July 21 to adopt new public-school history standards. When some attention was drawn to what they\u2019re up to, they promptly postponed their meeting for \u2018lack of a quorum.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBehind all the double-talk about replacing fact-driven, chronological history with a more \u2018thematic approach,\u2019 the unmistakable goal is to dumb down our history classes still further. The draft proposal under consideration is \u2018gobbledy-gook,\u2019 says Carson City School Board member (and former history teacher) Joe Enge. The stated goals are \u2018so broad I could drive a truck through them,\u2019 Mr. Enge says.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtrapolating \u2018themes\u2019 from history is great. But a young person cannot possibly judge — let alone generate — a useful interpretation of any facet of American history if he or she cannot locate the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, Bunker Hill, Guadalcanal, Normandy, and Yorktown on a globe … place them in their proper chronological order … and name a commanding officer from at least three.
\n\u201cGo ahead, ask them. Write in to let me know how they do. …\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, one Cheryl Grames Hoffman of Las Vegas writes in:<\/p>\n

\u201c… Kind Sir, I can assure you that no job or law school application has asked any questions about the names and places of American battles of any century. More importantly, and more to the point of why I\u2019m writing this, such a view obstructs a constructive conversation about how best to teach history to kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cI taught American history at UNLV for three semesters, and I really, really did not want my students simply to spew facts at me,\u201d Ms. Hoffman continues. \u201cInstead, I wanted them to learn the relevance and meaning of some key facts, and then to show me they could convey that relevance and meaning in a clear and convincing way. Sure, it would be cool for young people today to know the facts of the Great Depression. Even cooler would be for them to be able to speak and write about it well. Employers, I think, place value on that ability — not on knowledge of important battles in our past.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudying history is a means to an end: it can provide an opportunity for kids to master a much-needed set of skills. Let us focus on providing them a means for learning how to think critically, to synthesize data, and to present it for others to scrutinize. The end, however, is not that young people become more patriotic and less apathetic about all that has transpired before they arrived on this planet. The end is that our youngest citizens are ready to join us upon graduation as productive members of society, equipped with valuable, transferable skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t that really what most folks would like our educational system to accomplish?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, no. If all we wanted was to teach the process of \u201csynthesizing data\u201d we could cancel the history courses and have young people write papers analyzing the philosophy of Batman.<\/p>\n

You cannot process and interpret data until you\u2019ve got some. English class is for learning how to craft a paper; to improve their diction and delivery the young folk can join the Debate Club; in history class we expect them to actually commit some stuff to memory.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m reading this right, what we have here is a HISTORY TEACHER (albeit \u201dformer\u201d) saying it\u2019s silly — that it \u201cobstructs a constructive conversation about how best to teach history to kids\u201d — to expect COLLEGE history students to be able to tell you whether Gettysburg or Yorktown came first (I said \u201cplace in chronological order,\u201d not \u201cgive specific dates\u201d) and to name a couple of the commanding generals.<\/p>\n

Because the question never comes up on job applications.<\/p>\n

Is it possible SHE can\u2019t do it?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember ever being asked to do long division on a job application, either, or how many electrons there are in a helium atom. (We WOULD want our students to be able to \u201cspew some facts\u201d about what happened at Lakehurst in May of 1937 before they substituted hydrogen in their helium balloons, wouldn\u2019t we?)<\/p>\n

What prospective employers and institutions of higher learning do ask is whether you\u2019ve got an eighth grade education, or a high school diploma, or maybe spent four or five years at a day school best known for its semi-pro basketball team and being closed on weekends.<\/p>\n

As recently as 1965 an affirmative answer to the \u201ceighth grade\u201d question meant you could do long division, algebra, and at least stumble through Madame Bovary and\/or the Commentarii de Bello Gallico. The \u201chigh school diploma\u201d question used to mean no one had to re-check to make sure you knew \u201c1781; west shore of the Chesapeake; Cornwallis surrenders to Washington,\u201d with extra points if you know what the Comte de Grasse was up to that week. (Though I\u2019m pretty sure I knew that by Ninth Grade — high school was Napoleon and Bismarck and the Bhagavad Gita.)<\/p>\n

Apparently nowadays asking about the diplomas will no longer suffice; thanks to \u201ceducators\u201d like Ms. Hoffman we\u2019re going to have to actually start checking this stuff.<\/p>\n

How do you discuss the \u201crelevance and meaning\u201d of Continental logistics problems or the Treaty of Paris or the 1789 debate over the need for a stronger central state if you think Yorktown was fought after Gettsyburg and you believe the American commander in 1781 was Meade or Eisenhower or maybe Robert E. Lee or if you just don\u2019t care because you\u2019re convinced none of that matters, it\u2019s all just \u201cspewing facts,\u201d that studying history is a \u201cmeans to an end\u201d — an undisclosed \u201cend\u201d that apparently has more to do with moaning about the lack of advancement opportunities for 18th century women than requiring anyone to retain any \u201cfacts\u201d or be able to explain what happened at Pearl Harbor or Bunker Hill or the beaches of Normandy … or even who was in charge?<\/p>\n

How do you \u201cthink critically\u201d about whatever theories and \u201ctrends\u201d the government-school teacher wants to spoon-feed you if you don\u2019t know enough \u201cboring facts\u201d to say, \u201cWait a minute; that doesn\u2019t fit — that theory doesn\u2019t even surface till a century later and I can\u2019t find a single contemporary account that supports it. Who\u2019s you\u2019re source: Frantz Fanon? Andrea Dworkin?\u201d<\/p>\n

Should we wonder now why so few of our public servants seek to emulate Washington — how would they even know how? — if they have no idea what he did on Dec. 23, 1783 and then on March 4, 1797, arguably the two most important acts taken by any single man in delivering us our freedom (\u201cIf this is true,\u201d said no less a figure than George III, \u201cthen he is the greatest man of the age\u201d) … exceeding even what \u201cthe indispensable man\u201d did on Christmas night, 1776, a date any American should be ashamed at having to look up?<\/p>\n

I wipe away tears of pride. Ms. Hoffman sneers we\u2019re \u201cjust spewing facts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back on July 25, I wrote: \u201c… To understand and explain American exceptionalism, like it or not, it may be necessary to at least understand why aeroplanes were not used in the Civil War, why the British couldn\u2019t use the train to get back and forth between New York and Philadelphia in 1788, why no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}