A new generation of historians? Maybe?

“The goal is not to train a new generation of historians.  Instead, the historical investigation model is designed to generate student interest in studying the past, engender competence with a set of thinking skills that will benefit them beyond the school walls, and promote an understanding of the major events, people, and ideas that populate the American past.” (p. 73)

Lesh, B. A. (2011). “Why won’t you just tell us the answer?”: Teaching historical 

            thinking in grades 7-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

This passage tidily summarizes Bruce Lesh’s philosophy that underlies his method of emphasizing text, subtext, and context, to teach historical thinking.  He does not intend to lead his students through an apprenticeship at the end of which they emerge professional historians.  Instead, he argues for a more practical approach in which students learn thinking skills that they can then apply in other areas of their lives. How does he define historical thinking?  Lesh points to a quote from Linda Levstik and Keith Barton that argues “historical thinking is fundamentally about judgment – about building and evaluating warranted or grounded interpretations.  History, then, is not just opinion: It is interpretation grounded in evidence” (p. 21).   Lesh advances this idea throughout the first three chapters of his book as he describes how he designs his classes around source-based inquiry.  He introduces them to sources with conflicting information, showing them that there is not one correct interpretation of a particular event.  However, this passage on page 73 also shows that while he places great importance on introducing historical modes of thinking, he does not limit his instructional aims to skills.   He also seeks to give his students a better “understanding” of the past.  The word understanding suggests that he does not wish to provide a bank of trivial information students can use to impress someone at some point in the future, but instead to give them a context in which they can comprehend their world. 

In this passage Lesh hits upon some of my most closely held beliefs about the purpose of teaching social studies.  My goal is to teach students how to think critically, question the validity of information they come across, and how to use that information to participate in their communities in a more thoughtful way.  I recognize that not every student will become an historian and many will not formally study history after high school.  I know that I will come across students who have encountered social studies instruction that distilled the content to a list of factoids to be memorized and that I will need to show them the relevance of history to their lives.  I believe that we can learn from the past because there are patterns that we can discern that reveal something about human nature.  I want to introduce my students to this possibility with the hope that they could finally see some utility in studying what I heard one student refer to as a story about the “successes and failures of old, dead guys”.

On the other hand, I just might have a few future historians in my classes.  For those students who wish to pursue history or any social science, I want to give them the tools they will need to succeed in academic study beyond my classes.  While I believe I received a fantastic secondary education, I was never explicitly taught how to source a document until a professor took the time to do a think aloud with my class during my junior year in college.  I had developed some of the skills intuitively but others felt like an empowering revelation.  I do not want my students who want to pursue history wait until a professor (if any) decides that students need a basic understanding of how to examine the context and subtext of sources.  I want to make my classes useful for both types of students: the future historian and the future citizen.