It’s quite early this Thursday morning, and I’m in the office early to ensure that I have time both to blog and to record the results of summer midterms before passing back blue books. I’m also struggling with my old pair of glasses — I made a quick trip to the optician yesterday to get my relatively new pair repaired, and am wearing my old spare frames, which have a slightly different prescription. As a result, I have a small headache with which to contend.
I am following the remarkable ride of Floyd Landis this morning, and rooting hard for a man who is, at least at the moment, perhaps the world’s most famous living Mennonite. Part of me still thinks of myself as a member of the Anabaptist family, after all. Bring it home, brother Floyd!
In a comment below Monday’s post on grading, I wrote about my obligations in the classroom:
First and foremost, my obligation is to the subject itself. SECOND of all, my obligation is to my students. I got that order clear when I first started teaching. Every student "needs" an A for a scholarship, or to get into a better school, or to get a discount on their car insurance. If I take that into account, I ought to dispense As for basic competence and make my students and their parents happy. I’ll also end up giving them a false sense of their own abilities — and set them up for rude awakening farther down the line.
This intrigued my long-time commenter Col. Steve:
Hugo - I am curious about this line: "First and foremost, my obligation is to the subject itself. SECOND of all, my obligation is to my students. I got that order clear when I first started teaching." A few months ago you wrote:
"Somewhere, deep inside of me, is an omnipresent awareness that I’m serving something bigger. That something is partly the institution of the college; partly Clio, the muse of history; partly all of those who worked so hard to teach me; and, ultimately, God himself. It’s difficult for me to be more precise than that. All I know is that I’m almost always aware that my teaching is a form of service, and not merely to my students themselves."
I’m curious how "Clio" (or gender studies) became first. I would think (leaving God aside) your first obligation would be to the support the mission of PCC and California Community Colleges — The mission of Pasadena City College is successful student learning. I agree that mission does not mean necessarily pleasing the students/parents. What does an obligation to the subject actually mean?
I know I could probably find still more to say about men, women, lust, and modesty, but this morning I’d rather answer the colonel’s question.
When I’m teaching, I feel myself to be responsible to a variety of different "stakeholders." For example, I have an obligation to the community college district in which I teach. PCC’s mission statement, from which the colonel quotes, reads:
The mission of Pasadena City College is successful student learning. The College provides high-quality, academically rigorous instruction in a comprehensive transfer and vocational curriculum, as well as learning activities designed to improve the economic condition and quality of life of the diverse communities within the College service area.
Well, I don’t know if learning history is going to lead to a direct improvement in the economic conditions of struggling communities in the San Gabriel Valley. I do know that I provide "academically rigorous" instruction as best I can. More importantly, I am, like many historians, convinced that those who study history will have their "quality of life" improved. That improvement may not be quantifiable; it may not involve a higher income or a larger house. But those who study history, as your high school teachers said to you, will have a better understanding of the whys and hows of the contemporary world. Being able to put often chaotic and mysterious current events into context can be a source of real comfort, and that is surely part of what is meant by an enhanced "quality of life."
But I meant what I said on Monday: in some sense, my primary earthly loyalty (let’s leave God out of it for a second) is not to my students, to the college, or to my colleagues. It is to the subject I teach. History is the record of the human past, the understanding of which is filtered by time and by bias. We see earlier societies and events "through a glass darkly", but we can still see — and the chief job of the historian is to tell, as honestly and convincingly and effectively as he or she can — what it is that lies on the other side of that glass. Our students might like the narratives to be a bit easier; they might like having to know fewer names and dates and details. But while every good history professor wants to maximize student learning, the good historian’s first professional obligation is not to the student but to the story itself.
Whether I’m lecturing about Susan B. Anthony or Marcus Aurelius, I feel a sense of personal obligation to these long-dead men and women. What I say may well be all that many of my students ever hear about vitally important, fascinating figures from the human past. I have a responsibility to help my students understand why these people were so important, but I have a similar, perhaps even greater responsibility to these great ones themselves. It’s a feeling both narcissistic and quixotic (I plead guilty in advance to both), but I feel as if it is my grave and solemn duty to ensure that those who played such key roles in the past be remembered.
In a sense, I think a good historian functions more like a bard or a minstrel than a researcher or a mere instructor. The good bard wants to tell a story well to excite and entertain and inspire his audience, but his primary concern is not with what his listeners hear but with how well he tells the story itself. His first obligation is to the heroes of whom he sings. And whether I’m talking about Margaret Sanger or Sargon of Akkad, Victoria Woodhull or Saladin the Magnificent, I don’t easily forget that I owe these men and women what is their due: the accurate retelling of their deeds and contributions, that for a while longer they may not be forgotten.
As an aside, have you read Silvia Federici’s ‘Caliban and the Witch’? Not strictly history, more political philosophy, but certainly feminist, and she basically uses historical evidence and analysis. Fascinating book.
All well and good - except that the traditional Celtic bard spend seven years not simply learning the stories, but learning how to present them in the most compelling form. Antonia Fraser may not be the world’s best historian; but she has made millions of people aware of parts of history because she cares so much about her material that how her audience can recieve it becomes as important.
I certainly like the idea of Historian as vocation; a higher calling. The worse university history teachers are those who crush the excitement of thier students in order to maintain the order of facts and figures. The best were those who taught students to see the interplay and giant soap opera that History really is. The “facts” may stay the same, but one generation’s traitor may become the next generations resistance leader (Che Guevera?) - It seems that the meaning of history is a fluid exchange between student’s needs and shifting understanding.
Hugo -
Landis had a great comeback after the other day - should be an exciting time trial.
Thanks for taking time and space to answer my question. I think have a little trouble with what your wrote though.
>> “History is the record of the human past, the understanding of which is filtered by time and by bias. We see earlier societies and events “through a glass darkly”, but we can still see — and the chief job of the historian is to tell, as honestly and convincingly and effectively as he or she can — what it is that lies on the other side of that glass. Our students might like the narratives to be a bit easier; they might like having to know fewer names and dates and details. But while every good history professor wants to maximize student learning, the good historian’s first professional obligation is not to the student but to the story itself.”
Thanks for a long and thoughtful response, Col Steve. Here’s where we differ: I certainly think teaching critical thinking skills is one aspect of the historian’s job, but it is not the primary one. In a sense, that is the philosopher’s job –and indeed, here at PCC we have a course taught in the philosophy department called “critical thinking” I’m not qualifited to teach it!
Yes, we ought to teach how to reason and to argue. But teaching skills is less important than making certain that the narrative is learned. That’s the unique job of the historian — to give an account of the past that, while imperfect, is perhaps the student’s only chance to understand how we got here. They can learn what a thesis statement is from anyone — but will they learn about Pompey and Crassus, Elizabeth Blackwell and Lucy Stone?
I think that you understate in this post the importance of critical reading skills. Sure students can theoretically learn what a “thesis statement” is in a Comp class. But I teach History, and my number one concern is that the students gain the skills needed to embark on a lifetime of learning. It’s great if they learn the key moments of Lincoln’s presidency. It’s even better if they also learn the relationship between “fact” and “interpretation,” so that they can write good essays and also understand the ways that history is used, not only by historians, but also by political figures, journalists, etc. I think students come to college having had the “narrative” of history shoved down their throats, largely to the detriment of learning. I attended a not-good high school very near PCC, and we learned that history came from textbooks. Only in college did I come to see the mutability of the narrative itself, and I am grateful to my professors for crediting us with the intelligence to take learning to a higher level. To my mind, the two skills (learning narrative and critical reading) fuel and inform each other, and true education incorporates the two. In my experience, that was the difference between high school history classes and college ones. Just my two cents, of course.
And here’s the other problem, sevres. During the semester I teach seven classes, with 35-45 students each. That’s a minimum of 280 students per term, and I have no TAs or readers. How much time and attention can I give to each student’s writing? I can give everyone a well-constructed and important story, but I can’t have 280 meetings to go over thesis statements! English classes are smaller and the teaching loads are adjusted for the enormous amount of writing the profs are expected to read.
You’re of course right to note that class size is a big factor. I think there are lots of things at play here–for one, community college courses vary amongst themselves and are also structured differently than those at big state universities or small liberal arts colleges or online. That’s not to say that there is a hierarchy, just that different courses have different strengths and weaknesses, and profs can serve certain interests in each format. Still, I’m fairly certain from reading your blog regularly that you provide a greater amount of “deconstruction” in the classroom than your original post might imply. To my mind, talking with classes as a whole about arguments that authors make in the readings, or the way that, say, Bush draws on the legacy of FDR, or any of a myriad of other interventions–all of that can constitute the teaching of critical reading/writing skills. I think that may be the way that History can complement what the students get in the Comp classes–a tangible big-picture sense of the way that arguments are made and why they matter. Then the English profs work with them on honing their skills. Well, at least, that’s how it plays out in my mind, for what little that’s worth. :)
Hugo -
I shudder to think of leaving critical thinking to only philosophers (although I did get a kick out of this article - http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200606/stewart-business - apologize most of the article is “subscriber only).
Following Cliopatria links - here is a quote from a blog entry
http://doctorhistory.blogspot.com/2006/06/historians-more-likely-to-indoctrinate.html
“I am sure there are some out there who would argue that it is the professor’s job to present all the various interpretations to students and let them decide which is correct. And I think that in upper level classes this is more attainable. But in survey courses, students need some direction - some analysis of events, if history is going to make sense. It is the professor’s responsibility in survey classes to sift through the various interpretations using the analytical skills they acquired at graduate school and working with the accepted paradigms of the profession to present to students the best understanding of events currently available.”
I appreciate the problems in large survey courses. For example, I’m sure a professor could can tell various stories on Margaret Sanger depending on which contributions and which motivations one thinks are her legacy. Large class size and expansive topics don’t allow for the full give and take perhaps due historical people and events. I guess I side on learning the narrative as a vehicle for something greater than just the narrative itself which means I would put the student ahead of the story.