Network News Exchange, October 1988

Welcome back to “Network News Ex­change” and, this time, reports of teaching sessions at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians at Reno, March 24–27, 1988. Reporters were assigned to all OAH teaching ses­sions and nearly everyone provided time­ly reports. But there are, alas, some gaps, since a few who agreed to cover ses­sions did not provide reports.

NNE needs reporters to cover AHA and/or OAH teaching sessions—persons willing to commit themselves to attend­ing assigned sessions and providing a succinct reports on time. Efforts are made to ensure that reporters’ choices are honored in the assignment of ses­sions. If interested, please contact Con­tributing Editor, John W. Larner, Penn State University, Altoona Campus, Al­ toona, PA 16601; 814/949-5138.

 

Active Learning in the History Classroom

In eleven years of teaching, one attends many workshops, and from that ex­perience a method of immediate evalua­tion emerges: Do the presenters use the methods and techniques they recom­mend? Session leaders Peter Frederick, Wabash College, and Julie Jeffrey, Goucher College and University of Maryland, Baltimore County ably met that test in this excellent session. Sub­titled “An Exchange of Ideas,” it had the audience buzzing and energetic throughout. Their text was a Lakota Sioux saying, “Tell me and I’ll listen. Show me and I’ll understand. Involve me and I’ll learn.” The goal, then, is to in­volve students in their own learning. The method was to share successful ideas from members of the audience, verified by their own teaching. The conclusion was to establish some general categories for these strategies, showing the many ways involvement may happen.

Both Frederick and Jeffrey stressed that whether working at the college or at the secondary level, teaching is what we do most of the time, so doing it well is imperative. The problems we face are not new; Henry Adams described them from his days teaching medieval history. How do we get the students to talk about the subject? How do we find out what’s on their minds? The implication of these questions is that students learn more and more readily when they are more fully involved. Wherever they begin, our task as teachers is to meet them there and move them forward.

Tell me and I’ll listen. Show me and I’ll understand. Involve me and I’ll learn.

After posing these problems, the leaders set the audience to work. We had five minutes to write a description of one of our own successful strategies for stu­dent involvement. Next, small groups shared these strategies. Then, from each group, one person presented his or her strategy to the entire workshop, which provoked much discussion. For example, Victoria Brown, San Diego State University, has her students write letters to in­dividuals of their choice discussing topics or issues from class. The students find it easier to express themselves when they don’t have to “sound” intelligent. Ed Her­shey, Tsongas Center, assigns papers on specific artifacts (the family car, for example). How was it made? How was it used? What does it tell us? Lisa Emrick, College of St. Benedict, has her students do an interview, then use it and other primary sources to write the lecture for a topic.

From this discussion some of the general strategies that emerged included:­

1. Using brief writing and pairs to get started.
2. Using concrete images, visuals, or other effective media.
3. Using interactive lectures, ques­tions, and discussions.
4. Using documents or artifacts to generate theses.                            .
5. Using debates and role-playing.

For continuing impact, we also received copies of three of Frederick’s articles on active learning.

The group ended the session with a dis­cussion on the need to change attitudes among teachers. To do activities the stu­dents find more interesting may mean covering less material. Can we accept that? Can we strike the balance between giving up some control of the classroom and providing the guidance students need to approach primary sources and ar­tifacts? Such a discussion means this workshop was time well spent.

Thomas R. English
George School, Pennsylvania

Print to Electronics: New Tools and Their Applications for Teaching American History

Under  the  general  rubric  of  “Discus­sions on Research and Teaching,” Evan Farber, librarian, Earlham College, provided an audience of approximately twenty-five individuals with a thought­ provoking overview of new technology which enables libraries to enhance the teaching/learning process. Farber focused his comments on three areas:

1. The development of networks
2. Improvements of indexes
3. Future implications

Prior to the 1970s, each library ac­quired and then individually catalogued its own books. In 1971 this process was dramatically changed, particularly for smaller institutions, when a com­puterized network initially called the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC) began operation.

In 1973, the system voted to include schools outside of Ohio; at present there are approximately 5000 members. OCLC centralizes the cataloging of books, a significant time and money saver for member institutions. More importantly for researchers, whenever any member institution catalogs a book, all other institutions within the system have access to the location of that volume, knowledge which greatly facilitates inter-library loans. If the author, title, Library of Congress card number, or the ISBN number is known, the OCLC sys­tem will instantly display the closest location of the volume. This enhanced capability has increased the number of inter-library loans substantially—at present some 7000 items are exchanged daily. If only a few pages in length, the work can be sent by facsimile immediate­ly. Since the next generation of systems also will index periodicals, researchers should be able to find most items in any library.

The computerization of library resour­ces has impacted historical indexes as well. On-line databases have become increasingly important in recent years. Generally available from third-party vendors such as Dialogue or BRS, at present some 4000 databases exist. Only a few of these are of particular interest to historians including America: History and Life, Historical Abstracts, and Dis­sertation Abstracts. The obvious ad­vantages to these databases are that they are accessible twenty-four hours a day, are relatively inexpensive for focused searches, and are up-to-date. The New York Times Index, for example, contains references only two days old; information in published form was four months­ out of date. Most importantly, databases allow access by knowledge of subject matter.

Farber provided a handout illustrat­ing the speed with which a large database could be searched systemati­cally for pertinent material. Using the complete file of America: History and Life, 1964 to date, as an example, he demonstrated a search using the topic “Women and Labor Unions During the Depression.” A combination of the keywords, “women or women’s” (7,486 documents indexed) and “trade union or labor union” (1,799 documents in­dexed) produced a total of 124 docu­ments containing information on women in unions. Additional qualifiers of “depression” or years beginning with”193-” narrowed the search to 10 documents which could be quickly read for relevant information. Someone knowledgeable about the system could conduct a thesis search in two to three minutes at an estimated cost of $2.94. Perhaps, the greatest disadvantage, other than hlgher costs on some sys­tems, is that only one person can access a database at a time.

Someone knowledgeable about the system could conduct a thesis search in two to three minutes…

The most recent technological innova­tion affecting indexes involves compact disks with read-only memory, referred to as CD ROMs. These small disks can hold an incredible amount of informa­tion, up to 200,000 typewritten pages. Although the initial expense is some­what high and there are problems with compatibility between the machines that read the various disks for different databases, the CD ROMs offer sig­nificant advantages. Given their enor­mous capacity, CD ROMs may replace entire reference sets: the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary would fit on one disk. Also, it is easy to manipulate data and, more important­ly, there are no time constraints. Thus you are able to leisurely experiment with various combinations of key words until you extract the information desired. In Farber’s experience, stu­dents find CD ROM searches both il­luminating and fun since the activity al­most becomes an electronic game. Users are able to manipulate the databases to fit their own knowledge structures, and the effort thus becomes a problem solving exercise, an ex­perience in active learning. For anyone who has spent hours thumbing through a card catalogue or rummaging through library stacks, the speed with which these systems extract information is simply amazing. In the future, optical storage disks will be able to hold up to 750,000 pages of information. Although the potential is enormous, unfortunate­ly, there are no purely historical databases on CD ROMs available at this time.

As this technology is developed, the implications for historical research will be far reaching: 1) computerized re­search will lessen the need for extensive travel; 2) in some instances the dis­crepancy between the “information rich” and the “information poor” will be lessened since even small libraries will have access to enormous databases; 3) conversely, although the relative cost is modest, libraries whlch lack funds to buy the new technology may find them­ selves at a severe disadvantage; 4) in­structors, no matter how knowledge­able, will find it difficult to evaluate stu­dent papers since they increasingly will be based on material that the instructor has not read and perhaps did not even know existed.

Farber’s well-organized presentation led to a lively discussion about the ef­fects of the new technology on research and teaching, including the necessity for educating students about methods for evaluating the quality and ap­propriateness of sources. As Farber convincingly demonstrated, we rarely will hear future students state, “But I couldn’t find anythlng on the topic!”

Charles C. Bonwell
Southeast Missouri State University

Teaching for Thinking in History

This workshop, moderated by Arthur Zilversmit, Lake Forest College, fea­tured presentations by Robert M. Saunders, Christopher Newport Col­lege, Carol Lynn H. Knight, Tidewater Community College, and Charles C. Bonwell, Southeast Missouri State University. All three presentations of­fered concrete advice on how to intro­duce critical thinking into history cur­ricula.

Saunders described the format of his survey course in early US history, one that stresses the evaluation of written sources in class discussion and tests in order to foster critical thinking and ap­preciation of the historical process. Suc­cess, however, may be limited. Using the Cornell Level Z test for critical thinking as the entrance and exit tests for his classes, Saunders was unable to demonstrate dramatic improvements. While his students improved marginally, those in a traditional survey courses at William and Mary had static scores. Saunders found some cause for satisfaction: his students did well in mastering the kind of information tested in Educational Testing Service’s Advance Placement tests. These findings bolstered Saunders’ contention that the debate over process and content is based on a false dichotomy. His students mastered content while attempting to discern process. Saunders ended with a plea for a concentrated attempt to design student-centered curricula that did more to foster reading comprehension.

Knight then explained her approach of involving students in the historical process. She uses reading focused on key events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Materials range from scholarly monographs to tub-thumping editorials. She then guides students through analyses of these readings. To do this, she employs class discussion based on prior background reading. Students are expected to work through the argument.

Bonwell’s presentation made his allegiance to active learning clear. Using Piaget as his inspiration, he has designed classes that involve students in discussions on issues such as the freedom of speech. Bonwell challenged his audience with such an exercise, showing how carefully crafted questions can elicit a range of responses that illustrate the complexity and difficulty of many historical concepts. He stressed the time and patience that such an approach involves, but he lauded its affects on students’ motivational and critical thinking skills.

An interested audience of about thirty-five people were particularly responsive to Knight’s and Bonwell’s ideas. Nevertheless, the range of responses indicated some muted doubts about the viability of these approaches as well as a good deal of commitment to doing more in class than transmitting masses of information.

Kevin Mulholland
Central Florida Community College

Without Nostalgia: How to Teach About the 1960s

This session covered ideas about four topics that should be included in any coverage of the 1960s. Joshua Freeman, Columbia University, discussed the conservative movement in the 1960s; James Livingston, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, described the cultural revolution and intellectual innovation; Marilyn Halter, a substitute for Carol Hurd Green, Boston College, talked about the women’s movement; Harvard Sitkoff, University of New Hampshire, focused on civil rights activism; and moderator Nelson Lichtenstein, Catholic University, dis­cussed teaching about the end of the ’60s era

Freeman stated that conservatism in the ’60s is mostly ignored in courses covering this era because of conserva­tive support for federal aid to education after Sputnik and the liberal triumphs of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. However, conservative in­fluence and opposition always existed in the forms of anti-civil rights activists; the rebirth of the John Birch Society in the late 1950s; Goldwater’s nomination by the Republicans in 1964; Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Pat Brown in the California gubernatorial election in 1966; and the Nixon triumph in 1968. Even in popular music, “conservative” singers such as Bobby Vinton, Louis Armstrong, and Dean Martin had suc­cessful  records. Freeman suggests these ideas as well as studies of George Wallace’s supporters and the Young Americans for Freedom both to stress the important influence of conservatism in the ’60s and to lay the basis for ex­plaining the long-run development of conservatism.

Livingston held that the cultural revolution of the 1960s was really intellectual innovation, and that the period 1955–1963 was an era when principal liberal ideas of Western civilization were rejected in the United States. He also pointed out that the cultural in­novation of the 1950s and the 1960s was a rebirth of the American intellec­tualism of Dreiser, James, and Dewey; and that there is value in comparing of these two decades cultural heroes, such as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis with thinkers such as E. Wright Mills.

Sitkoff maintained that both intellec­tual and moral objectives legitimately exist in the teaching of the civil rights movement. He urged that the move­ment be approached in three parts: origins of the movement; its develop­ment and transformation; and its conse­quences. He would begin with the Montgomery bus boycott and the Brown decision and would cover black high school and college students, protest tac­tics, and the violence and riots that en­sued.  He also would mention the new consciousness and objectives that turned the movement into a black liberation agenda. This approach, which could include analyses of black music, role playing, and contrasting the black struggle with white ethnic at­tempts in America for basic rights, could fulfill the objective of learning his­tory to make a better future.

Halter pointed out that women have usually been neglected in examining the 1960s and that 10 percent of the average course or book—and sometimes less than 10 percent—are given over to the study of women. Even though the “liberation” movement intensified in 1968, it was present throughout the six­ties. Halter urged that the role of black women should be stressed in sixties-based courses and noted that while working women experienced no real im­provement of their condition, at least in­ equities between men and women be­came more apparent in this decade.

Finally, Lichtenstein discussed the years 1969–1973: the economic and political “great divide” between liberalism and conservatism, and be­tween growth and stagnation. This period can best be understood not by studying typical themes such as civil rights and social culture, but rather by examining “external” events such as Nixon’s grain deal with the Soviet Union, oil and the Middle East, and the rise of European and Japanese business power. Lichtenstein also sees the importance of studying ways that social movements were affected by economics, such as the rise in wages, and the effect of Affirmative Action on women and minorities, and by the rise of social ex­pectations, rights consciousness of both black and white workers, and the ar­rival of immigrant laborers.

Paul Hoffman
Canyon Del Oro High School, Arizona

The Bicentennial of the Constitution in Hindsight

This session was attended by ap­proximately thirty individuals in an auditorium that seated 300! Does the paucity of attendance indicate the level ofresidual interest in the Bicentennial of the US Constitution? Although lit­tle of practical substance, either in method or content was offered in this session, four leading historians none­theless presented conflicting and inter­esting views of what the celebration of the Bicentennial of the Constitution had done for the study and teaching of American legal and constitutional his­tory.

Americans are told what to ad­mire in this document rather than being urged to examine and assess it.

Jack Rakove, Stanford University, delivered a blistering barrage that set the framework for much of the com­ments offered by other panelists. Rakove’s remarks including humorous anecdotes about his involvement in the “birthday bash” lamented the impact he felt present-day conservative ideologies played in orchestrating the Bicenten­nial celebration. Contending that his­torians should have produced more es­ says for public consumption in national magazines, Rakove observed that Clio’s practitioners allowed political scientists and legal writers to control this season’s interpretations of the founding of the Constitution and its impact on American life.

Paul Murphy, University of Min­nesota, and Joyce Appleby, University of California, Los Angeles, built upon Rakove’s remarks, by noting that na­tional politics played too much of a role in the focus of the Bicentennial celebra­tion; Murphy pointed out that scholarly impact was negligible at best, and cited five works as the most solid efforts put forth to date. They included Michael Kammen’s A Machine That Would Go by Itself, Richard B. Morris’ The Forging of the Union, Forrest McDonald’s Novus Ordo Secilorum, Jack P. Greene’s Peripheries and Center, and Edmund Morgan’s Inventing the People. Al­though these studies “greatly enrich the understanding of the importance of the Constitution,” Murphy stated that few new interpretations have been offered.

Appleby continued in this vein, noting an ahistorical/anti-historical influence made manifest by insistence upon the Bicentennial celebration, being “a great civics lesson.” Because the Constitution is placed on such a lofty pedestal and revered, Appleby claimed that Americans are “told what to admire” in this document rather than being urged to examine and assess it.

The only major note of optimism in this otherwise grim retrospective was offered by Mary K. Tachau, University of Louisville, in her discussion of pedagogical programs conducted thus far. She observed that pre-collegiate teachers are “committed, responsive, talented, hardworking, and hungry for substance.” Tachau further noted that probably the best and most enduring ef­fect of the Bicentennial will be what it produced for classroom teachers. She stressed that classroom educators operate under impossible conditions and have been blamed for almost every conceivable wrong in the educational process and have been woefully neglected by their fellow teachers at the college level. Insisting that it was the “professional responsibility” for college instructors to join forces with teachers at    the pre-college level, Tachau described several examples of how the Bicentennial forged alliances among history teachers at all levels.

Although this session offered little in the way of material for classroom instruction, views of its presenters clearly­ indicated that the Bicentennial, not un­like the  Constitution itself, invites a  range of interpretations.

James F. Adomanis
Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Maryland

Choosing and Using Textbooks in American History

In a lively session, two textbook authors, a textbook editor, and a mem­ber of the Bradley Commission on his­tory in schools, explored how history textbooks are written and how they can be used.

Carol Berkin, Baruch College, and John Garraty, Columbia University, spoke from the perspective of textbook authors. Each made clear that, con­trary to some common assumptions, they were left quite free to write the best book that they could. They pointed out that they encountered no censorship from publishing houses and that editors respected their work. Berkin conceded that one of the current criticisms of texts—that they are not “zippy” and have fewer “stories”—may be true, but the new social history has made history more complex, ambiguous, and human.

Garraty argued that there is no need to “dumb down” texts. He believes that a twelve-year-old child can understand anything in a pre-college text, if it is properly  expressed. Complex, he pointed out, is not necessarily more dif­ficult; complex issues just require more explanation. Many texts, he argued, are too abstract and too didactic. They should show what happened, and they should explain unfamiliar terms. For example, if the text explains how a mus­ket operates then students can under­stand the military tactics that were necessary with this weapon. In writing for high school and elementary school students, he said that he found himself using shorter sentences and saying more about fewer things.

Texts also must show the dif­ferences among the American people; they can no longer offer a single narrative that will satisfy everyone.

B’Ann Wright, Social Studies Editor, Prentice-Hall, also denied any inherent conflict between historians and textbook editors; in fact many editors have been trained as historians. Wright talked about the constraints on textbook publishers. Because new books are very expensive, publishers are apt to develop textbooks that work for many people. They are also concerned with meeting the guidelines es­tablished by state and local authorities. The fact that states have adopted different guidelines presents a real problem to publishers. The new Califor­nia guidelines will present many problems for textbook publishers be­cause the new California curriculum does not resemble that of other states.

Nathan Huggins, Harvard University and member of the Bradley Commis­sion, was critical of textbooks. He ar­gued that many texts seem to be based on the assumption that people do not read. They are so slick and highly illustrated that they look like USA Today.

Huggins argued that texts should teach history as history, not as part of social studies. They should depict people of the past in their own terms, as different from our generation. Textbooks need to deal with change and causality. By demonstrating that people in the past made mistakes and had limited views, textbooks should give readers a sense of our own limitations. Textbooks, he said, should provide a basis for citizenship by offer­ing critical evaluations of American institutions and demonstrating how they operate. Texts also must show the dif­ferences among the American people; they can no longer offer a single narra­tive that will satisfy everyone. We have to allow different people to see themsel­ves in our textbooks.

In the discussion that followed, some members of the audience said that they valued illustrations, though all agreed that these must be integrated into the text. Several people called for reviews of textbooks by historians in historical journals.

Arthur Zilversmit
Lake Forest College