Reading Barton and Levstik

The main idea: History in the schools needs a purpose -- we cannot expect students to study history "for it's own sake." (Do they also make the more general argument that, "it's good for you!" a la chess or music or computer programming?) History-for-it's-own-sake (intermixed with indoctrination and identification) is the typical pattern in American classrooms -- absorb a laundry list of uninteresting facts, regurgitate them on the evaluation, repeat -- and results in the abysmal results that we can observe [NAEP, Jay Walking -- do B&L cite any stats or anecdotes?]. The purpose that they take is that history, if done properly, prepares students for participation in a democratic society.

Bonus feature: what makes their analysis especially interesting and even convincing is comparison to other countries. They draw upon the work of Peter Lee (and others) in Britain, pointing out the differences in teaching and the curricular expectations of students as well as the differences this creates in students' responses to history and to evaluations of their historical thinking. Barton and Levstik have also conducted research in Northern Ireland, where the political and cultural climate shapes the curriculum and the students in unique ways, constraining certain activities and arousing certain interests in the students. Several references are also made to work in Ghana, but it is not fully represented.

They then conduct an analysis of all the possible "stances" (student behaviors in reacting to history in the classroom) and "tools" for studying history (each of which is analyzed for its "affordances" and "constraints"). They then conclude with a chapter discussing the research on teacher education, and the implications for their view on history-for-participatory-democracy approach. The overview:

Stances

1. Identification -- (Ch. 3) students study the past to "associate themselves, either as individuals or as members of larger social groups, with specific people, events, or insitutions in history." (p. 45) A "leap of faith" [involves excluding certain facts or assuming the best about the people, events, or institutions ]. Shibboleth: "History tells us who we are." Most common activity, but also most reviled [except by Lynne Cheney.] "threatens the discipline's posture as an objective and scholarly enterprise, separate from and above earthly political or social concerns." (p. 53) B&L point out that identification, by binding one to one community, cuts off ties to another. Interesting: can identify with personal history, family history (both important to adults, but not for young people), national history; can identify the present with the past. More interesting: in Britain, kids (following their teachers) will write, '"Britain entered in 1940."' In the US, kids will write, "We entered in 1941." (p. 51) It's a give-away that an American is writing on an IB exam. "Students in the United States, like their teachers, associate themselves with the people and events of the national past even when they do not approve of them." (p. 51) Bottom line: "It seems evident to us that participation in a pluralist, participatory democracy requires a fundamental attachement to one's country." (p. 58) "The legitimacy of a state's demands and benefits--at least in a democratic nation--rests on a shared sense of identity among its citizens." (p. 59) Sure, identification can be used as a club to uphold status quo, but also note that identity doesn't have to be about the past, can be about "the here and now" and not a grand history. "[T]hemes of pluralism and participation should form the basis for hte history curriculum from an early age. Stories of Columbus and Thanksgiving, George Washington and Betsy Ross, meanwhile, should take a back seat or be discarded altogether. Americans will never fully share a national identity so long as their earliest history lessons extol European conquest and praise slaveowners." (p. 61) "By and large, diversity exists in the school curriculum only when it doesn't really matter." (p. 62)
   
2. Analytic -- (Ch. 4) "analysis involves breaking material down into its constituent parts, detecing the connections and interactions of those parts, and identifying the arragement or organizational structure that holds them together." - following Bloom (p. 69) "Analysis is also prominent when working with evidence to construct historical explanations or accounts." In other words, analysis is history's bread and butter. Students learn to separate authority (true because everyone says so) from evidence (true because it's supported by evidence). "Analysis is the activity most often promoted, defended, and justified by historians and other educators." (p. 70) Analysis is "use" of history, identification is often "abuse". The History of the Present: "For Turner, studying the past without connecting it to the present was antiquarianism, not history: 'The goals of the antiquarian is the dead past; the goal of the historian is the living present.'" (p. 71) Carl Becker says history's purpose is to "illuminate the present". Examples are Novick The Holocaust in American Life, Blight Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Beliefs about the past shape the present; analysis lays bare the connections or corrects misconceptions about the past. Example: Woodward The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Can also hope to use analysis to "learn lessons" from the past. Hotly debated. Zinn is into "the use of the past to shed light on contemporary politics", emphasizes that history can teach use lessons, but these observations are limited. (p. 77) Lee agrees. Even if these insights emerge from historical research, this isn't scientific research, uncovering immutable laws of physics. Just because US involvement in Iraq shares many similarities with its involvement in Vietnam, that doesn't mean it will continue to correlate. B&L don't completely agree: analysis can yield generalizations, ex. Billings and Blee The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia. Move beyond getting the story right and instead aim to "contribue to policy discussions of the alleviation os chronic rural poverty by identifying lessons (their word) in the historical experiences of the communities they studied." (p. 78) More ammo: Schelsinger notes that "all public policy decisions are to some extent historical, because they are made with an eye toward the consequences of past decisions." (p. 81) T. Jefferson also on this side, talks of study of past providing "a repertoire of vicarious experience that can widen our understanding of the causes and consequences of human actions." (p. 81) [ Yup. Think unanticipated consequences of innovations in Rogers. ] "Any public action will inevitably be justified on some historical grounds, and as citizens in a participatory democracy, we must be able to evaluate those justifications--to determine if the particular generalizations or analogies in use are the most appropriate ones." (p. 82) And now for a little history on history in the US: New Social Studies movement of 60s-70s popularized idea that history education is not about memorizing or internalizing past accounts but learning how these accounts are created. In Great Britain, the movement succeeded (via Schools Council History 13-16 project) in revamping curriculum. Sample products: What Happened on Lexington Green? An Inquiry into the Nature and Methods of History (Amherst Project), What is History unit (Schools Council) (p. 82) Kownslar argues that "when students learned that written history was an interpretation based on primary sources, they became better able to develop and defend their generalizations as well as 'less likely to be fooled or misled by vague statements, myths, or stereotypes in textbooks, or those advanced by some politicians, journalists, salesmen, teachers ,neighbors, or friends, and, equally important, by the students themselves.'" (p. 84) Lines up with Wineburg and VanSledright. Note: American students don't intuitively get this. They see history's purpose as to learn content, to learn how present emerged from past, and to learn lessons from past; don't see it as learning craft of history. But in Northern Ireland, secondary students see history class as teaching them to "make up their own minds" because they recognize that official history and street history are both socially constructed. (p. 85)
   
3. Moral Response -- (Ch. 5) students study history "to celebrate the good things in history and condemn the bad" (p. 91). Possible goals = remembrance, condemnation, admiration; "all revolve around notions of right and wrong, of what should and should not happen. Such questions are a central part of participatory democracy." (p. 91) Remembrance and forgetting: very big in Northern Ireland. Must remember "death and hardship". One girl: "they shouldn't be forgotten". (p. 93) In the US, teachers tend to shy away from controversy, and thus sweep items under the rug: example of study of Vietnam era. Students want to know more about war, protests; teachers want to avoid topic. Vietnam was not 'part of "who we are" as a nation, and they worried about including it as one of the most important events because "it was a negative thing" In general, these teachers rejected any incident that illustrated a lack of unity and consensus in US history' (developmentally inappropriate for young children or represent abberations in national past, or would undermine sense of national identity. (p. 95) Teachers "were terrified of what they might unleash by speaking about them [past injustices] in the present, and in response, they chose silence." (p. 95) Result: domination of "story of unity and consensus" Fairness and justice: ... blah blah ... some interesting stuff on New Zealand (white) students debating Maori rights, returning land. Heroes and Heroism: White and O'Brien asked 600 students K-12 who their heroes were. Parents, family, cartoon characters; no hero; sports or entertainment figures; "Fewer than 1% of the children chose historical figures." (p. 104) Most folks view this with horror; B&L say "the problem is deeper than that and stems from the very idea of hilding up famous people as character models for students." (p. 104) Idolization = danger of having idols crushed once their flaws are realized. Tactics for "dealing with the blemishes of historical individuals": flaws were part of culture at the time, or else incorporate study of flaws into study of the heroes. But B&L suggest focusing on heroic acts, not heroes. Ex: Johnson's Civil Rights Act, Shindler's protection of Jews. These guys aren't heroes, but they did heroic things.
   
4. Exhibition -- (Ch. 6) Great opening vignette about freshman college experience of being caught in a class with two bores fighting over details. People love to exhibit historical knowledge (re-enactments, trivia, showing off memorabilia, reading books, watching documentaries). Exhibition has been used as the main peg for accountability (definitions, vocab words, answering questions). B&L comment that exhibition has pretty much no purpose in a participatory democracy. More interesting: state-mandated tests once offered hope that they would assess not just exhibition of facts but skills and thus help re-work the teaching of history; but that didn't happen. Many states dropped science and social studies from the tests; those states that did do social studies focus on exhibition of facts but not skills. "We had no problem teaching to the tests as long as the tests were worth teaching to." (p. 115) Still more interesting: sometimes tests did include items that required analysis/judgement; schools/teachers, however, failed to prepare students for these items and continued to stress exhibition of facts and coverage of content. (p. 117) "Both research evidence and our own experience in schools, then, suggest that the drawbacks of requiring students to display historical information to hold schools accountable are likely to outweigh the potential advantages." (p. 117) Exhibition as a service to others: think museums, historical sites (ex of Scottish "folk museum" -- redundant, unlabeled), older people passing on knowledge to younger people. B&L see value, but question usefulness; preference: "Exhibitions also would be more useful if they allowed audiences to relate the displated information to their own ideas, perspectives, and questions." (p. 123)
   

Tools

1. Narrative structure -- (Ch. 7) Narrative = wildly over-loaded term. Huge, sweeping definitions and expectations (foundation of all human understanding, blah blah). Need to define it, see it in different settings. Usual consulting of dictionary, examination of others' use of the term, etc. Fun hole-poking: if you go with "it has a beginning, a middle, and an end", then when exactly does, say, women's sufferage begin? They like Burke's pentad of actor, action, scene, instrument, and intention. Adapt it into: "constructed sequences of events that are both causally related and chronological; these sequences typically include a setting, actor, agent, goal, and instrument." (p. 132) Feel that this spans both fiction and history. Students and historical narratives: interesting stuff about how students remember better when all elements are present, invent missing pieces (e.g., intentions of actor) when they're absent. Result is combination of facts and inventions or "fanciful elaborations". Pattern holds up in research by VanSledright, Brophy, McKeown and Beck, plus B&L themselves. GREAT examples of student thinking on p. 134. Students view historical narratives like dramatic narratives (known outcome unfolding); "expect history to be composed of causal links ... quick, clean, and obvious -- not long-term, complicated, or ambiguous." (p. 135) Affordances and constraints: narrative is a great example of "pattern-making" by human brain. Both students and professionals do this. So: it's familiar and it's intuitive. But audience (students) of narrative tend to forget that they're constructed and that they're tools that mediate access to history, not history itself. But the narratives are so "powerful" that the students just accept them. Also, narratives necessarily involve simplification. [ Surely this isn't a killer but just something to keep in mind?? ] But simplification is necessary to provide coherence. Narrative structure as a cultural tool: Note that history doesn't have to be narrative. Ex: Bynum Unruly Women: The Politics of Sexual Control in the Old South, Genovese Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. Non-narrative history is common. But is it harder for children to understand? Pappas' study of reading narrative and non-narrative to kindergarteners found preference for non-narrative. "Pappas concludes that narrative may be less 'primary' than many educators believe and that an emphasis on stories in the first years of schooling may hinder children's mastery of a wider range of texts." (p. 141) Other researchers concur. So: US is apparently narrative-heavy (inside school = emphasis on stories, even in social studies; outside school = TV dominated by comedies and dramas with a narrative arc), but Northern Ireland isn't (inside school = presentation of both sides, outside school = TV shows include lots of documentaries that are closer to Genovese than narrative history). Study of asking students to arrange pictures chronologically: US students explained choices by constructing simplistic narrative (immigration before presidents, because first people had to come); Northern Ireland students more accurate, explained choices with more complex understanding of multiple conditions existing simultaneously. (p. 144)
   
2. Narratives of individual achievement and motivation -- (Ch. 8) Think historical fiction, biographies, or response activities (?). Important for sake of participatory democracy: students must see that history is about and made by people, not molecules or pawns or other ciphers. "History can help them see how individuals influence the course of events [emphasis added]." (p. 151) Downside: can lose sight of "larger structural conditions" (after all, Marx quote sets up chapter). So: "To prepare students for democracy, history education must not only acquaint them with human agency but help them better understand the context within which such agency operates." (p. 151) Interesting: another "balance" idea, similar to Wineburg's comment about balancing between familiarity and strangeness. Ex: of far extreme of nonindividual history: Annales school of historians (long-term focus, look at big sweeps such as "changes in social structure, agricultural systems, demographic patterns, and collective mentality"). Textbooks seem to follow this approach, especially in their unit titles ("The Nation Expands"), but is this boring/uninteresting to students? So: mix in individual narratives, but whose? The powerful (Geo. Washington)? The famous (Columbus?)? The representative (midwife)? The interesting (slave narrative)? The uplifting (Harriet Tubman)? Real (Anne Frank) or fictional (My Brother Sam is Dead, Across Five Aprils)? Affordances and constraints: it's a familiar format (narrative is a building-block, and individual narratives receive attention from pre-literacy onward), involves children emotionally ("I would have..."), exposes them to illuminating details of life of others in the past. About one student who read historical fiction:Her textbook was a national narrative, but she wanted an individual narrative -- "What she wanted were readings that focused on emotion, morality, and individual judgment." (p. 155) . But B&L feel this is "overemphasizing individual choices, responses, and actions in the first place." (p. 155) Children intensively exposed to history through individuals (e.g., acting out witch trials): "they explained all historical events as though they were about individuals; they almost completely ignored the impact of collective action, as well as the role of societal institutions...." (pp. 155-6) Slavery comes from individuals' "prejudice" or because Whites were "lazy"; sexism is because men are "bossy"; even national conflicts stem from personal motives (the British fought the French because "they didn't like each other that much"; colonists rebelled because they were "bossed around by the Queen"); explorers are "individual hobbyists or entrepreneurs rather than commissioned agents of government"; change comes from "Great [Individuals]" -- Lincoln set the slaves free, Martin Luther King "said a speech" and ended segregation. What's left out: political factions, the economic underpinnings of groups, the amount of structure and media-savvy that went into the Civil Rights movement. Doesn't leave students equipped to think about and act in participatory democracy, doesn't allow them to see enduring connections that span generations and not just lifetimes (slavery/Jim Crow -> economic status, social disruption of black population -> modern issues such as Rodney King riots; students tend to blame present individuals [espec. blacks, for not taking advantage of post-Civil Rights opportunities] and don't see past's role in the present). This bias towards individualist lense is persistent, continues even after instruction. [It certainly fits well with presentism -- students live in the present, and they are individuals...it's part and parcel of projecting yourself backward or historical events forward.] Individual narratives as a cultural tool: stepping back, this is how children try to make sense of the world. They're stitching together what they know into a cohesive whole, and the framework they're best at or most comfortable with is the individual narrative. So they'll drop out things that don't hang on this frame, focus on those pieces that fit, re-cast things as needed to make them fit better. "Margaret Donaldson and her colleagues have shown that young children attempt to make 'human sense' of the world around them by putting novel situations into the context with which they are most familiar--the world of human motivations and intentions." (p. 160) And here comes our handy contrast: Northern Ireland! Less narrative-focused, less individual-focused. Politics make it dangerous to single out individuals for attention (i.e., they'd be making a hero/villain out of someone else's villain/hero) Students did a better job of explaining differences in clothing, corporal punishment at school, etc. Can see societal factors (changing standards) and not just individual factors (personal tastes or brutality). US vs. UK public (and private?) discourse supports the difference: US blames' individuals for societal problems (poor are poor because they're lazy or insufficiently entrepreneurial), UK is more willing to point at differential advantages/disadvantages of social classes. But the US isn't monolithic: we can probably expect different patterns in different racial or SES groups (i.e., what narratives get emphasized within black families, Nat Amer families?).
   
3. Master narrative (national story) of freedom and progress -- (Ch. 9) GREAT intro. Quote from Ian McEwan Amsterdam about a character remembering, but in his remembering giving himself all the best lines. American practice (or public use) of history is like this: we remember our history, and we give ourselves the best possible light by focusing on an "onward and upward" master narrative of freedom and progress. Loewen: "textbook authors present our nation as getting ever better in all areas, from race relations to transportation." (p. 167) Same goes for museums, public historic sites. Students seem to have internalized this: Wertsch on O'Connor study of 24 college students, out of whom 23 wrote "quest-for-freedom" narratives when asked to explain origins of country. B&L found same thing in research on middle-schoolers, who ID'd important of people and docs by associating them with freedom and progress. [But doesn't this again hook into presentism because growth and development, espec in US society, is about increasing freedom (autonomy) and progress (educational and economic attainment)? Freedom and progress jibe with the kids on an individual level, not just a national level.] Interesting: because we have freedom, other countries don't. Student in study by Searle-White: "Unlike other countries, we have freedom of speech, and other countries didn't have that kind of right." (p. 168) Progress: comparing present to past, the present isn't just different, it's BETTER, whether something objective (typing v. word-processing, candles v. light bulbs) or subjectives (names! "You don't want a really beautiful girl, and her name is Flossie, or a really cute boy, and his name is Oliver") (p. 170) Perceptions of progress also drive understanding of chronology (arranging of pictures - all wilderness/settlement/rural scenes come before all urban scenes; crooked streets = old while straight streets = modern) And now for our inter-cultural perspective: freedom and progress are clearly not the touchstones of, say, Israeli or Palestinian national narratives. Northern Ireland students in chronological photo-arranging exercise displayed far more nuanced understanding (not all primitive conditions have to predate all modern conditions -- differentials exist at the same time in different places; one child asked if he could NOT lay out in a linear format but instead overlap pictures). In dialogues about historically sig events, US students chose technological advancements (light bulb -- Irish kids laughed at the idea!), Irish kids pointed out things like the Multi-Party talks, but recognized that history is set to repeat, assuming the two communities (yet again) lapse into violence. So, to reducto ad absurdum: US = linear, Northern Ireland = cyclical view. Back to the fact that US is not a monolith: Epstein on students' ideas about history. Interviewed white and black students (with white and black interviewers, respectively): racial splits on choosing of "three most important people in US history", "three most important events in US history". Seemed to reflect different assumptions about the US and its history: freedom and progress (with slavery = aberration) vs. one long exercise in hypocrisy (fancy words about rights and equality on paper, but brutality and oppression in real life, or even just a straight-up attempt at genocide, for some Nat Amer groups). Affordances and constraints: uhhh...it's not true? Particularly easy to see if you consider foreign policy. At best, it's not all true all the time. Here the necessary simplifications (due to need to leave things out as you form the narrative) can become hugely distorting. Also, just as personal narratives removes the ability to see impact of historical factors/influences across generations, narrative of freedom and progress dims the view of consequences of actions (because all actions are good, right? Interesting connect to Dan Kearns' argument about a downside to social equality and the social safety net) and triggers a dismissal of alternative perspectives (how could anyone view this any other way? How could our motives be interpreted as NOT being about freedom and progress? Freedom is on the march, I tell you!). Also may be a crappy lens for history: "By suggesting that the desire for freedom is the enduring motivation that drives both individual experience and public policy, it misrepresents the cause of many historical events and renders students incapable of making reasonable and informed judgments." (p. 179) Affordance: "It is a hell of a story!" (p. 179) The American Dream is a powerful idea, recognized and felt the world over. Also: "The concept of freedom has been so powerful because, as Foner notes, it 'exposes the condtradictions between what America claims to be and what it actually is.'" (p. 179) Also, historically, we haven't just TALKED about extending freedom and progress, we've actually done it: material progress, extension of social and political freedoms. Plus: "David Blight, for example, argues that by the early 20th century, despite the persistence of lynching, poverty, and segregation, African Americans coul dnot 'afford the despair born of short-term defeats' and instead embraced 'a faith that at least since 1863 time, God, and the weight of history might be on their side.'" (p. 180) Also, take Northern Ireland's intractable struggles: does this stem from, among other things, a lack of hope? That's Thomas Friedman-ish -- that hope is a great part of the US character and might be a necessary ingredient for others.... So: two edges to this sword (national narrative of freedom and progress), and both are razor-sharp. Can mitigate the constraints by getting students to 1.) realize that the narrative is a narrative, a painted portrait and not a mirror; 2.) constantly consider "the advantages and disadvantages of historical changes and events" (p. 181) -- who benefitted? who suffered? Get into how, why, where, who...and what happened as a result. Every action has diverse impacts; try to see what WEB DuBois spoke of in "the full range of suffering and the persistence of possibility in American history" (p. 181) "Anyone who believes the narrative of freedom and progress will disappear from US history in the near future is seriously deluded." (p. 182)
   
4. Inquiry -- (Ch. 10) Greek root of historein = "to inquire". We use the word for the outcome, not the action. That's why when we mean inquiry in history, we have to say "historical inquiry." For the Greeks that would have been redundant. Whee. "Inquiry is a basic part of what history is about in our society" (p. 185): collecting geneological info or antiques or making films...all rely upon inquiry. But it's not common in schools' social studies classrooms (but it is at least present in other classrooms, no? Ex: Science, English?) Teachers and students really struggle with it. VanSledright is a great example: students cut corners (Milson: "path of least resistance") by getting factual info from web or textbook or other students and then interpret docs to support those accounts. Also, inquiry is hard/frustrating; students (and teachers) want to give up. "Perspective" and "reliability" are abstract concepts, hard to judge, and it's easy to sink into the murk of "they're all liars". Takes time to develop any critical facility with these concepts.Great Britain and "Project Chata" research on children's understanding of historical concepts (Lee, Ashby, Dickinson). Found that kids see that "Everything is up for grabs, because there is no way of deciding between competing opinions" (p. 196) Most crushing finding by VanS: "Who fired the first shot?", even after three days of study, got opinions that were NOT based in the evidence but what students thought "must" have happened. So the kids got the lesson about bias and reliability, and thereby felt free to discount any/all evidence as needed to proceed with their own [often dramatic or even cinematic] theory. Often, these theories were shaped by personal prejudices / allegiances (the colonists MUST be right! They wouldn't do something unprovoked!). Other researchers have noted the same problem: Dehea Smith saw third graders pitch evidence (gathered by the students themselves! framed around questions they had posed!) go "out the window" and as their historical accounts became "wholesale fiction"! (pp. 191-196) B&L: problem isn't that teachers and students can't do it, the problem is balancing all the "subtools" of inquiry. I can't seem to shake loose a tidy list of these sub-tools, but I think they involve search and reflection (Dewey). In fact, I'm tempted to call it "experience-reflection-action" after the Jesuits. Whatever inquiry is, it's going to involve heavy metacognition on search strategies, the results of searches, the artifacts' claims, and how these claims influence the previous assumptions. Oh, wait, here it is: following Dewey's definition of reflective thought ("conscious inquiry into the nature, conditions, and bearing of the belief.... Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends." -p. 187): felt difficulty ("some perplexity, confusion, or doubt" -- you've gotta be interested in the inquiry topic or else it's just like solving alegbra equations...except slower and more painful....) -- so inquiry should arise from students' own concerns [but what to do if they don't have any or claim not to have any??] And after that felt difficulty?? B&L don't break it down further. Do indicate that inquiry != only looking at primary sources. Feel that primary sources have become fetishized, or at least are sometimes used to veil underlying strategies. Example of "History comes alive when students analyze primary source documents!" approach -- teachers (or historians) responsible for the searching/judging; students are only responsible for cranking out their little products (analyses). "Many such exercises fail to engage students even in the most minimal evaluation of the usefulness of sources they are examining, for their purpose is not to develop any kind of reasoned judgment, but to help students explain how given primary sources illustrate facts and concepts they have learned elsewhere." (p. 199) Seixas: this is substituting "provisional, dynamic, and ongoing conversation to a static set of verities." (p. 200) or (Stanley and Whitson) "technical formalism in which students apply skills to pseudoproblems" (p. 201) ...Seixas then suggests "conceptualizing history 'around students' questioning of their own culture and experince, an investigation of the past that questions its traces and theorizes its legacy and import for the present.'" (p. 200) OK...that's radically different AND even harder to do.... But I can agree with B&L on this: "The critical task for the teacher is to help students develop questions that lead them toward inquiries that are meaningful and significant." (p. 200) So if inquiry is so hard to do, why bother? It's meaningful, it's natural, it's a good (and necessary) thing for participatory democracy, and it "makes the process of knoweldge construction more transparent" (p. 191). Plus, it's possible, right? Can't B&L always pull the Northern Ireland / British curriculum rabbit out of the hat and say that it's a matter of paradigm? American kids are trained on an individualist, narrative paradigm, but over there they're trained on a social class, inquiry (or at least non-narrative) paradigm? Fun fact: B&L are NOT down with the New Social Studies' agenda of turning students into mini-historians. Participatory democrats need to be able to do inquiry, but they don't need to be able to write monographs. Mini-historian approach is too limiting for the "deep and sensitive" reasoning they're after. (p. 187) I guess the next chapters really drive that home.
   
5. Historical empathy, version 1: perspective recognition -- (Ch. 11) Terminology problem of empathy, sympathy -- has spawned attempts to pin down meaning via perspective-taking, rational understanding, understanding people in the past, perspective recognition, historical empathy. How is a girl to choose? B&L feel that some emotional component is necessary -- this isn't just analysis. Participatory democracy stems from feelings as well as ideas. But you can't be expected to sympathize or identify with Hitler, so.... B&L will split the idea into two pieces: caring with and about people in the past (Ch. 12; more emotional) and recognizing their perspectives (Ch. 11; more analytical). So: let understand the actions of people in the past by using their perspective -- how did they see it? Understand Hitler's outlook but not accept it as your own (Foster). Note that this perspective recognition is tricky: fragmentary nature of evidence, shifts in language (e.g., slang), presentism. Scale for differentiating levels of perspective recognition, B&L like (again) the idea of subtools for achieving it: sense of 'otherness,' shared 'normalcy,' historical contextualization, differentiation of perspectives, and contextualization of the present (pp. 209-210). Nice sections illustrating each. I like the one about kids reacting to photo of girl in a tenement, discussion of why should would bathe in a sink (no washing machines, so that was how they washed their clothes), another of kids discussing Colonial food (they didn't have burritos because they weren't smart enough to make them), or consider washing: kids see wash boards as "because they didn't have washing machines" or "because they weren't smart enough to have washing machines," not "because that was a lot easier than the previous method of crouching by a stream and pounding with rocks!" (p. 213) Other topics that elicit interesting demonstrations of historical empathy / perspective recognition: discussion of women's roles in society and Salem witch trials. The latter forced students to "not look for evidence that they themselves considered convincing but [identify] those items that would have been convincing to people at the time." (p. 215) Next up: recognize that a diversity of views (perspectives) exist at any one time. Ex: opponents to American involvement in WWI and WWII. [ Me: Northern and Southern slavery-as-institution-mandated-by-God or institution-mandated-by-science (or capitalism), Southern slave sympathizers, Northern racists, Northern abolitionists (e.g., ship 'em back or maybe 'I just don't like slavery because it drives down my wages'), Northern radicals (equality), British perspective....] Women's rights movement: not all women within the movement wanted the same things. Last step (contextualization of present) is trickiest: seeing one's own attitudes and behaviors and assumptions as not just the 'normal' ones or 'right' ones or 'best' ones or 'smartest' ones but as something that emerges from the influence of social, economic, political, religious, familial, and personal factors. Affordances and constraints: by understanding others' perspectives (reasons why), we focus on the cause and miss the effect (the consequences of the actions taken). Also creates "biases that detract from our ability to deliberate over issues of the common good." (p. 222) Ex: dropping the atomic bomb.
   
6. Historical empathy, version 2: caring -- (Ch. 12) So when we feel indignity over slavery or the Trail of Tears, aren't we just guilty of presentism? "If this kind of presentism is immature, then we don't want to grow up." (p. 229) Students care, and history without caring about the people in the past is soulless, un-motivating. More sub-tooling: we care about the people and events, we care that particular events took place, we care for people when we respond to suffering, and we can care to change out beliefs and behaviors based on what we learned. (p. 229) The last is the big linch-pin to participatory democracy. "The ultimate purpose of history education, in our view, is to enable students to take action in the present, and if they are going to take action, they must care to do so" (p. 237) Affordances and constraints: "caring" about history is treated as disreputable -- but this is because it's considered in isolation: B&L aren't saying it's the ONLY goal or tool that should be used. "Trying to develop care withouth these other tools [narrative, inquiry, perspective recognition] would be folly, and we have rarely encountered teachers who tried to do so. The greater danger--and the more common one--is that the other tools will be used without care: Students will be asked to learn stories they don't care about, to inquire into events without caring that they occurred, to examine the perspectives of people without caring for them--and to study history without caring to use it in the present. In fact, this is a concise description of most history education in the United States--study without care." (p. 241) It's safe for the teacher, but a failure as a learning experience.
   

Implications for teacher-prep (ch. 13)

Traditional debate over how to prepare history teachers for the classroom centered around content knowledge (knowing your history; Shulman) vs. methods (how to teach history).

However, even teachers with training in using inquiry, etc., tend to end up teaching in the same manner as those using more traditional forms (lecture, textbook) -- they just talk about it differently. Different talk, same walk.

Reality is that the top two priorities for teachers are COVERAGE of the curriculum and CONTROL over the classroom. Teachers want to fit in, want to be accepted by their peers and the community as competant professionals. They are judged by their students' "getting through the material" and by keeping order in the classroom, therefore these become their primary goals.

Problem: both goals tend to clash with use of inquiry, empathy, etc.

Observation: key to changing teacher behavior in the classroom is changing the teacher's goal. If coverage and control are the goals, things will pretty much always be as they are, with or without more knowledge of history or more training in teaching methods.

Modest proposal: priority in preparing history teachers for the classroom should be getting them to set for themselves the goal of preparing students for participatory democracy. Then and only then will the tools described earlier be used with proper recognition of their affordances and constraints.

My thought: doesn't this require them (the PSTs) to buy into a pretty specific political view (i.e., pluralism)? Sure, I like it too and can see the connection to good history classrooms, but I recognize that lots of others folks are NOT into the pluralist model and are in fact in opposition to it, seeing it as "exactly what's wrong with America." They're in certain private schools, they're in home schools, they're on Fox News, and they're in Congress and they're in your neighborhood. Pretty much the only argument they'll listen to is student outcomes, particularly as measured by content knowledge.

Reading VanSledright

Problems with K12 students "doing history" (not that adults are immune to this either):

1. Popularity contest -- students' arguments don't just rest upon the use of the documents, marshalling of facts, etc. It's also rhetorical style and student's social capital. Example: "Percy the liar" thesis in VanSledright's Starving Time exercise (Ch. 3)
   
2. "They're all liars" default -- "In a conversation I once had with Peter Lee, the British history education researcher who has done extensive work with children at a variety of ages, he remarked that he had talked with a number of students who, on being confronted with conflicting evidence and the potential for inconclusive interpretive moves, indicated, well, perhaps people had just made things up and/or were simply lying. This jump from initial trust in the general veractiy of accounts to concluding that people are prevaricating in one form or anotehr raises again the question of what young children learn when you expose the referential illusion and reveal the inner interpretive machinery of doing history." (Ch. 3, p. 50)
3. "Disney effect"(Afflerbach & VanSledright, 2001) -- students seem to be influenced by what they recall (or think they recall) from films. Ex of Pocohantas, in which the governor is fat, deceptive, and has a dog named Percy. The characteristics of fat and lying got associated by the students with Capt Percy (gov during starving time) despite not appearing in the primary sources (but could be intuited, perhaps?) -- seems that there's some leakage from the movie into students' impression of history/people in history. I'd be interested in seeing more examples of this, not that we need to see too many examples to prove the point (e.g., Gone With the Wind, Westerns).
   

Not that this discounts VanSledright's approach (and it's not like the history-as-grocery-list or one-damn-thing-after-another is a sparkling paradigm either), but it needs to be addressed.

Getting up to speed on name-drops, quotes

• Joan Wallach Scott: reality and interpretation are inextricably linked. Related idea: students (and most folks) see truth as objective. We might not know it, but, as the X-Files says, it's out there. If only we had the right sources, or if only the sources we had didn't dissemble so much, then we'd know it. However, a mature historical thinker recognizes that Truth is a slippery fish, that all claims of it are merely interpretations whose foundations are weak or strong depending on their use of the available sources.
• Lowenthal: History is a foreign country. The ancients are alien to us. (Contrast with Tacitus: nothing human is alien to me.) So here's a finer-grained presentation of the idea:
  
• ancient vs. modern split. Trick is not to just understand the ancients but to see things as they would have seen them, to have the same reference points, blinders,
  
• paucity of evidence, wide range of possible interpretations
• depending on the subject, you're working with both primary and secondary sources. Therefore, you have not just the "reality" of the primary sources but also the interpretations built into the secondary sources.
  
• Voltaire & Neitzche: "history is like a package of tricks the living play on the dead." (Ch. 2, p. 27)