From the Letters to the Editor column of the December 2010 issue of Perspectives on History
Editor's Note: Perspectives on History welcomes letters to the editor on issues discussed in its pages or which are relevant to the profession. Letters should ideally be brief and should be sent to Letters to the Editor (or mailed to Letters to the Editor, Perspectives on History, AHA, 400 A Street SE, Washington, DC 20003-3889) along with full contact information. Letters selected for publication may be edited for style, length, and content. Publication of letters does not signify endorsement by the AHA of the views expressed by the authors, who alone are responsible for ensuring accuracy of the letters' contents. Institutional affiliations are provided only for identification purposes.
Scholars and Teachers
To the Editor:
I want to urge the AHA, especially in its publications, to cease using the terms “scholars and teachers” when referring to college and university professors, on the one hand, and secondary school history teachers, on the other. Are not professors also teachers (even as all may not be scholars)? Of course they are. Can’t secondary school teachers also be scholars (as numbers have always been)? Of course they can. That is why I believe such language usage creates an artificial division that is surely insulting to some among both groups. As an alternative, my suggestion is to refer to all of us, especially when the labels are used together, as “historians at all levels of education.”
By way of perspective, in my capacity as vice president of the AHA’s Teaching Division, in 1992, I worked with and represented the Association’s U.S. history and world history task forces during the contentious interaction we had with the National History Standards Project as we reviewed their work in progress. During that time, there were those of us in the AHA, as well as some project people, who argued against the project’s separating historians into scholars and teachers.
So, in the spirit of collegiality as well as to be more reflective of reality, I urge the AHA, its editors, and, indeed, all historians, to avoid creating—even unintentionally—divisions between “teachers” and “scholars.”
—Robert Blackey
California State University, San Bernardino
Copyright © American Historical Association
Last Updated: November 27, 2010 6:56 PM