The advice wasn't so amazing as much as it was something so many of us overlook about the educational process. Perhaps the source was just as amazing.
Not long ago, the New York Times had a Sunday feature about how history textbooks were written and for whom. Those in the profession have known for some time that a history textbook in Texas will include some of the same things that a California textbook will, but will also differ in interesting ways.
A number of teachers wrote back last week. Their reactions were predictable. One said--and this should always be remembered--that no matter how well it's written (and there are some that are really well done), no one who reads a history textbook should consider themselves "educated." It takes teachers who care to illuminate what they believe to be the most significant parts of any textbook to weave a greater understanding of our history in students' minds.
That, of course, is the challenge and the point at which no statewide or local school board or administrator can completely control. As I read textbooks, I knew I had to emphasize certain parts that I believed students should know. That's bias, and all teachers have it. Nothing will change that and can't change that. All that can be done is for the teacher to teach from fact to reach something approximating the truth, and that's how they should be judged.
The better goal is to first, make sure both sides of any issue are at least expressed with roughly equal thoroughness so the teacher doesn't necessarily sell either side short; and (assuming that standardized testing hasn't taken over, an assumption that's no longer obvious) write the kinds of tests that reflect what's gone on in the classrooms, reading the textbook assignments included. Thus does one "cover" the curriculum.
Nobody does that perfectly, because that would mean satisfying absolutely everyone. But an important component, one that's often overlooked, is to get students to think critically about what they're reading and what they hear. In our school system, where a bunch of subjects are paraded past them every day, the average history teacher fights for attention.
So you have to come up with different ways to deliver things. So, for instance: Why is the development of our government from colonially-based (up to 1776) to constitutionally-based (after 1787) like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Hint: The answer involves the time not mentioned, in the middle; that's stage two)? If you can sell that, they have something familiar to connect with, and they might be able to understand it better--as in, the Constitution didn't just happen, it was part of a process of success and failure and settling on compromises (that word again!) so that we could move forward as a single country. Nobody really won; nobody really lost. That's how you govern.
(That is, if you want it to work. But you have to want it to work, not try to blow it up because it makes you feel uncomfortable, like 45 is doing and the Republicans are allowing him to. To him, the Constitution is a toy to be played with, not the basis of our law and jurisprudence. We are watching the results in real time.)
So you do that and hope they remember it. But nobody remembers all that; nobody reading this does. So what do you do? Give up on the process?
No. You do what good teaching always does: It assumes incompleteness from the start. You keep telling the kids that they're just touching on the surface, and for better understanding, well--they have to do what a journalist told a high school student to do.
A Connecticut high school girl wrote in to the NYT, too, and expressed some genuine exasperation (which, praise be, showed that she actually cares about her history). "How can I be sure that the information I am taking in is the correct history and not the version that leaves out massive chunks?" she asked.
That's an excellent question. The NYT gave the question to the author of the original article, Dana Goldstein. It didn't even know whether she would respond. She did.
Wait for it. She dispensed genuine wisdom. The answer's actually obvious, but normally results in whining, which teenagers are really, really good at doing.
"I'd suggest you choose a subject that interests you from your textbook--say, Reconstruction, or the Vietnam War--go to the library [omg!], and spend an hour [no texting, now] doing [gasp] your own research. Ask the librarian to help you.
"Find a recently published article in a scholarly journal [now this is getting ridiculous] on the topic. Pull a narrative biography of a historical figure off the shelf [what if it's heavy with no pictures?] and page through it.
"I guarantee you that you will emerge with new information and maybe even an entirely new framework for understanding the events in your textbook."
I don't mean to be unnecessarily sarcastic. But I was known for recommending additional reading to students and I would constantly get eyes rolled and groans--there he goes again--around the room. And here is a journalist telling a kid exactly what I told the kids for three decades: If you want to really understand something, you can't stop here. You have to go deeper, and there just isn't time for us to do so. But you know how to read, and you can enrich yourselves. You don't have to read everything. But you can read something.
And journalism is the gateway to history (which is partly why I sought a master's degree in journalism to augment my history teaching). It is the compilation of information in the short-run to give others the information base to re-develop and re-analyze for the long run. Recordings of what happened can always be added to and re-emphasized. Indeed, it constitutes history.
Does it make you money? Well, no, not by itself, unless you want to become a history teacher. But it impresses others. It gains you respect in conversations. It sometimes even gets you invited into them. And that, as much as money (sometimes more) is the great stuff of life: the development of the mind. History is so good at that. What you learn isn't always beneficial because it has to be directly connected to making you money, either.
It is also desperately needed right now, when we have a president who's not sure of the significance of Pearl Harbor; doesn't seem to know that Kansas City is mostly in Missouri, not Kansas; doesn't know that China and India share a common border, among several other things. He wanders around in a fog. He might as well be from the same kind of immigrants he's trying to stop, who probably don't have a clue (not right now, anyway) of the history of the country they're desperately trying to enter (and would, if they were allowed to and they subjected themselves to it, learn a lot about it through the naturalization process). If you don't use the education you have, you might as well not have had it at all.
We need elected leaders who know the basics about our history, who know how to weave them into their messages to help us feel grounded as Americans. For a sense of belonging involves where we've been as well as where we are and where we're going. And they are understood, most of the time, in exactly that order. Trashing what genuinely sincere news organizations collect as "fake news" does us absolutely no good but to try to divert attention to someone who actually knows very little but wants everyone to feel things he feels, whether grounded in fact or not.
That's why school districts insist on history education. That's why other publications reinforce that with articles that reference our history again and again. That's why not only knowing how our laws are made but the substance of the laws themselves are vital to our development as citizens.
And that's why, instead of just knowing answers, the Connecticut high school student gets what education's supposed to be about: the endless asking of questions. That's how teachers always know the smart kids: They're not just answer machines. They keep asking questions because they know that they'll never stop knowing, or needing to know.
If that girl does what Dana Goldstein suggested, she'll come out of it with one thing: More questions. But she'll also be impressed with herself because her knowledge will gain great leaps, and she'll also know where to find answers she will later want. That's a success that cultivates the soul. That provides self-confidence: I know stuff and that's cool. That's education.
We would be so, so far ahead if all of us kept that up. We still can. It's still possible. In fact, it's absolutely vital: In Texas, in California and right here.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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