Reuniting a Divided Profession

All those who care about education have good cause to celebrate the growing movement that’s succeeded in bringing together teachers of history at all levels in formats that have proved to be both pleasurable and conducive to the devel­opment of a genuine sense of shared purpose. It was a special pleasure in this regard to read, in last December and January‘s issues of Perspectives, Professor Degler’s account of his presidential tour to investigate the status of the history profession. The information he gath­ered strongly suggests that a long-divid­ed profession has at last begun to show vital signs of moving in the direction of ongoing collaboration among those who teach history, whether to pre- or post­-eighteen-year-olds.

I would like to share some thoughts on this movement, which exists within a broader climate of public concern about the state of elementary and secondary education. These reflections are neces­sarily the product of my three years as director of the Clio Project at the Uni­versity of California, Berkeley, a pro­gram cosponsored by the Graduate School of Education and the Depart­ment of History and involving faculty from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law as well. Bernard Gifford, dean of the Graduate School of Education, and Sheldon Rothblatt, history department chair, have worked closely together in developing this program. The chancel­lor of the Berkeley campus and the California State Department of Educa­tion have given it their strong support. And each facet of the program has been built with the active involvement of teachers from a growing number of school districts. The comments that fol­low represent my own views, however, and should not be attributed to others associated with the Clio Project.

It’s important, as we discuss collabora­tive projects like ours—and like many others known to the readers of Perspec­tives—to guard against overemphasiz­ing the extent of this movement. My guess is that so far, only a minority (in some places, a small minority) of public school and college teachers have been actively involved. What has been achieved is an exciting new beginning. If the good news is to last, however, and to produce fundamental change, our plans for the further development of these new collaborative modes must be accompanied by some degree of histori­cal self-consciousness. We need to un­derstand how a climate of opinion de­veloped that created institutional barri­ers between precollegiate and higher education and allowed these to exist for such a long time as a “normal” part of the structural environment of educa­tion.

What sort of collaboration existed be­tween the levels of history education in earlier days that allows us to speak now of reunification? How is it that a once­ united profession became a seriously segmented one? An answer to these questions requires that we look at the roots of the current collaborative move­ment. These date back to the first years of the American Historical Association. This was a time when some of its most eminent members were deeply committed to serving public education and contributed in important ways to the form that history took in the schools as it became a standard part of the curricu­lum.

… we’ve learned how important it is for all of us to take issue, publicly, with blanket condemnations of the schools that cast blame for the shortcomings in student learning in a grossly unfair and undiscriminating manner.

For example, Frederick Jackson Turner’s involvement with secondary education was especially intense and far-reaching. Turner copresented a course on teaching history in the public schools at the University of Wisconsin and conducted a voluminous correspon­dence with history teachers in which he advised about teaching methods and the choice of books. He spoke regularly at meetings of teacher associations and at high school commencements. He head­ed a committee of the Wisconsin State Teachers Association charged with de­veloping high school curriculum and also served as an elected member of the Madison School Board. According to his biographer, Ray Billington, Turner wel­comed a position as one of the universi­ty’s high school inspectors.

The careers of other eminent histori­ans of the first three decades of the twentieth century show similar commit­ments to public secondary education. Among them are Carl Becker and Charles Beard, whose very important contributions to the AHA’s Commission on the Social Studies were made during the 1930s.

What caused the near-disappearance of these ties between research historians and the public schools? A number of factors would seem to be responsible. Often cited is the unprecedentedly rap­id growth of higher education, especial­ly after World War II, that made schol­arly specialization the norm and turned much of the language of historical writ­ing away from questions of broad general interest, thus making history less usable by the schools.

Long before that change took place, however, secondary schools had entered upon a period of enormous growth and altered social function, changes that dis­rupted the basis of the earlier rapport between historians and public education officials. The high schools, which in Turner’s day had served a narrow social segment, were becoming mass institu­tions. According to Sara Lawrence Lightfoot in The Good High School: Por­traits of Character and Culture (Basic Books, 1983), high schools graduated only 6 percent of seventeen-year-olds in 1900; the proportion rose to 30 percent in 1930 and to 59 percent in 1950. By 1979, 75 percent of the age cohort was being graduated. Today, a young per­ son who does not complete high school is commonly known as a “drop-out,” a term first used in this connection during the 1950s and one that conveys the expectation—or at least the aspiration—of universal high school completion.

As the high school population became far larger and enormously diverse, pub­lic school educators adapted the curric­ulum to what they saw as a more practi­cal course of study. Historians believed that the goal of citizenship education was best realized by a curriculum that included a demanding program of an­cient, European, English, and American history. Those in charge of public edu­cation believed such a program to be far removed from the needs of their new mass public. This strong and basic dis­agreement over the role of history in the shaping of future citizens—not just how much history, but also what kinds—continues to divide historians and social studies educators. I believe that continu­ing dialogue on this issue is essential, if current efforts at collaboration are to achieve lasting success.

Fortunately, both the desire and the institutional basis for such dialogue now exist, thanks to current efforts to bring school and university faculty together in the interest of common educational goals. How can we best strengthen and extend these efforts? What have we learned through programs like ours at Berkeley that can help us chart a course towards excellence in history education?

First, we’ve learned how important it is for all of us to take issue, publicly, with blanket condemnations of the schools that cast blame for the shortcomings in student learning in a grossly unfair and undiscriminating manner. One example cited by several of our teacher-collaborators was an issue of one of the major news weeklies that featured on its cover the image of a teacher wearing a duncecap. The talent­ed teachers we work closely with agree that there is a serious shortage of quali­fied people entering public school teaching. They object strongly, howev­er, to broad-brush generalizations that are insulting to all teachers, regardless of the quality of their practice. Such undiscriminating charges level a blow at the status of the profession that makes the recruitment of capable men and women even more problematical.

Something else we’ve learned is how important it is to recognize and showcase the excellence that already exists in the schools. This is an obvious but often overlooked point. Certainly, the first step to educational improvement is to identify what’s right and help it become more influential. For example, an im­portant research project called the “Wis­dom of Practice” study was recently begun at Stanford University under the auspices of the Carnegie Corporation. One step in a program to develop a national certification examination for teachers of history, the “Wisdom of Practice” study seeks to learn about ex­emplary teaching practices in the field of American history by observing out­standing teachers, describing what they do, and eliciting their reflections as to the rationale of their chosen pedagogical methods. Eventually, this kind of inquiry will lead to new teacher educa­tion programs by which gifted practi­tioners will be able to share their skills and insights with colleagues and student teachers.

The logical next step after recogniz­ing the accomplishments of outstanding teachers is to encourage the recruitment into the profession of young men and women qualified to teach history both by their knowledge and love of the subject and by their interest in working with young people. History faculty in colleges and universities can help a great deal in the early stages of the recruitment process by encouraging un­dergraduate majors who fit this descrip­tion to learn about and consider careers in public school teaching. Career Coun­seling offices can further this process by inviting teachers to campus for periodic meetings with history majors, and by setting up programs in which students considering teaching careers will be able to visit the classrooms of exemplary teachers and take some part in practice teaching, perhaps in paid internships.

One problem that anyone concerned about history education must confront is the inadequate academic preparation of far too many of those currently responsible for teaching the subject. A world history teacher, for example, who holds a general secondary credential, may have studied little or no history while in college. This type of credential was awarded in California through the mid-1960s; subsequently, a new law re­stricted the issuance of teaching creden­tials to the candidate’s major or minor undergraduate subject. Unfortunately, this restriction is frequently evaded by school districts that assign teachers out­ side their areas of preparation through what is called a “limited assignment emergency,” an emergency that may be renewed on a regular basis.

By such means in California (and by similar rules or rationalizations else­ where in the country), the world or United States history assignment is of­ten given to the driver education teach­ er or the shop instructor, if that person holds a tenured position and has a schedule that needs filling out. And in the current age of large-scale immigra­tion, teachers of English as a second language who may or may not have training in history, are often the sole providers of historical knowledge to newcomer students from all over the world.

One unfortunate stereotype has a basis in fact: history teaching assignments are commonly given to the proverbial coach. Those who saw the recent film The Hoosiers will remember the feverish-level of community concern over the qualifications of a newly hired coach. It is striking that no one in the film ex­presses the slightest interest in his quali­fications for the academic portion of his job—teaching United States history and government—about which he is in­formed almost as an aside. It seems to me that one of the highest priorities of our profession should be the develop­ment of a climate of opinion that makes grotesquely inappropriate teaching as­signments like those described above altogether unacceptable. These assign­ments constitute an insult to well-pre­pared and dedicated teachers and exac­erbate the status problems of the social studies. Students are indeed fortunate if a well-prepared history or government instructor in their school can also coach sports; the priorities should always come in that order.

Genuine collegiality can develop only when college and school faculty share the perception that their common goals as educators provide a basis for unity that is not negated by the diverse re­sponsibilities of each group. Surely, the contributions made to society by teach­ers who inspire young people to develop intellectual curiosity, skills, knowledge, and moral consciousness are of paramount importance and should be valued and honored as among the most important of human endeavors. To paraphrase the comment of one of our Master Teachers, the creativity of re­ search scholars is demonstrated by their ability to develop and elaborate new interpretations of the past; for teachers, creativity consists in finding interesting and effective ways to communicate his­torical knowledge to young people, to evoke their students’ appreciation of the interest and value of learning about the past, and to help them develop essential skills in gathering, evaluating, and syn­thesizing information and in oral and written expression.

As Professor Degler notes in his re­cent article, teachers appreciate the chance to work with or learn from col­lege and university colleagues: “What does not sit well is the all too common implication that professors are always the instructors and high school teachers always the students.” It is important for those at the university to become more knowledgeable about the realities with which teachers must deal and to express their appreciation for the dedication and talents of outstanding teachers. Indeed, the teachers should not always be the students. As one Berkeley high school teacher has told us, university historians who take time out to visit the classrooms of successful teachers are invariably impressed by seeing how complex concepts can be communicated to young people; the creative teacher is able to simplify abstract ideas without violating them.

By planning programs on topics of broad concern to all teachers of history, we can avoid the exclusively one-sided learning that Carl Degler’s informants alluded to. For example, several of our History Teaching Alliance sessions have been led by teacher-researchers. One session in this series dealt with problems of teaching American religious history. Professor Henry May was the featured speaker for this program, and the topic allowed for all participants to share their experiences and problems in teaching about this important and sensi­tive topic in a variety of school settings. Professors teaching in our programs on immigration history have learned a great deal from the insights of teachers of foreign-born students. University faculty who taught in our National En­dowment for the Humanities program on constitutionalism learned from teachers about students’ political socialization, about community pressures on academic freedom, and about the expe­rience of adapting institutions to the major changes brought about in our schools by court-ordered desegregation. University faculty have also been enthusiastic learners in seminars taught by colleagues who specialize in other fields of history.

The problems in American public education, including those in the social studies, are complex and longstanding. Any expectation that quick results will issue from our endeavors is likely to lead either to early disillusionment or to the possibility of a deceptive success based upon the “twenty questions” type of history teaching and testing. It seems far better to set our sights on the kind of long-term improvement that comes from encouraging the fine practitioners who currently teach in our schools to continue to teach history; working to attract able candidates to enter the field; and strengthening our efforts to make collaboration across grade-level and in­stitutional boundaries a normal and ex­pected part of professionalism for all those involved in history education.