Over at to do, MsBaby suggested that we take a stab at a meme that’s been floating around the academic blogosphere regarding why we teach what we teach. The original post, by the way, is well worth reading.
The first answer that comes to mind is, unflatteringly, that my current livelihood (and future livelihood) depends on teaching. However, I could also be making a mint at instructing high school rather than college, or by dropping this whole teaching business and getting on the Ivy League-investment banking bandwagon. So happily I conclude that monetary incentives play a fairly minor part in my motivation.
And so:
- Because my students’ lives are made by history. I mean this in both the literal and metaphorical sense. They were conceived, born, and raised in a certain way because history took a particular course. The gametes of their parents would not have joined had not political, social, cultural, intellectual, and economic developments occurred as they did. In a less tangible sense, their lives are made by history in that every little thing in the world has a history and story behind it. All of this is worth knowing, and has everything to do with how they see their place in the world: as a woman, man, American, consumer, immigrant, blogger, Latino/a, suburbanite, Asian, environmentalist, Democrat, Republican, Mac user, and so on.
- Because my students are history itself. Not only are they living artifacts of history, but they are making history simply by being alive, having dreams, loving, buying, eating, writing, working the way they do. I teach partly out of respect for what my students are–living artifacts–so that they may make history with awareness of what (and who) came before them.
- Because everything is history. Or will be.
- Because history is fiction. This proposition makes students and historians uncomfortable. So many students take history to find out “what actually happened,” and object loudly to history as fiction. My response is to take a page from my English major days, and to reflect on the matter of myth: just because it’s fictional (or mythical) does not mean it’s untrue. Yet understanding the constructed nature of history–from grade school onwards–gives people such agency, I think. This does not necessarily mean that one can construct a history of the American Revolution wherein the colonists are made entirely of Roquefort cheese, but that reality is malleable, even what has supposedly been set in stone (like liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness). Moreover, if histories are fiction, perhaps students will pay more attention to the telling of history–characters, heroes, villains, and so on.
- To give them the tools to think creatively and critically about the country they live in, so that they will not trot obediently behind those who would take advantage of their naivete. This is especially the case with my field, American history. “Question everything” is not a bad slogan, and I especially hope that they will begin by questioning and challenging me.
- To encourage their capacity towards compassion. This is a difficult task for me. I expected so much to hate the man that I was recently researching: a rabid racist, misogynist, and pseudo-Nazi-sympathizer. Yet the more I learned about him, I found that I was conflicted; he was a devoted husband, deeply sympathetic to children–a forerunner in the playground movement, who earnestly believed that he was doing the right thing. His good qualities do not, of course, excuse his bad choices, but it certainly removed a chunk of my self-righteousness. Learning about all sides of a historical actor (or actress) can hinder hero-worship, to be sure, but seeing historical figures in three dimensions can dent one’s own hubristic tendencies. If students can feel some amount of compassion towards the villified and the glorified for their human faults and gifts, then perhaps they might treat other people (and themselves) with a little more compassion and humility.
- Because history has something for everybody. History is absolutely fascinating. Because it encompasses everything, it has something for everyone. Because humans intrinsically love a good story, and history is full of them. If students can find people and ideas with whom they can identify, so much the better. Before her presentation on a Native American captivity story, one of my students last term described the account as “sad, interesting, and a little gross.” I responded that she had described pretty much most of human history. However, I think that “interesting” is the most essential thing. “Interesting” has the potential for hope.
Professional history can be, as I said in my last post, a series of poo-flinging contests. Yet that is not what history is, nor certainly what it ought to be. And it is certainly not what teaching history is. There should be no poo-flinging in the classroom, unless no one has done the reading.
I realized quite awhile ago that research will not lie at the soul of my career. Laying out all of the propositions above has crystallized my determination to devote my academic career to students. The PhD is merely a hurdle to jump over on my way to the classroom.
