The Warfare State and the Welfare State

One of the great joys of being a generalist is that I no longer feel the need to read articles and attend presentations in "my field" if I think they're boring. 

Example: During graduate school and in my early years at CBC, before I had made the thorough transition  from "specialist" and "scholar" to "generalist" and "teacher," I would go to conferences and attend the most brain-numbingly boring panels merely because they were  in my "field," which, at that time, was the history of the American West, Native Americans, and the environment.

Now my "field" is simply history (US and World, any and all topics) and, of course, teaching history.  So when I went to "the OAH" (the Organization of American Historians' annual conference) in Milwaukee last weekend, I did not feel compelled to attend panels that sounded boring.

On Friday afternoon, I gleefully opted to pass by a panel on "Studies of Three Hydroelectric Dams in Washington State" (which I would have dutifully attended in the past because it was my field) in favor of a roundtable discussion on "The Warfare State since the Vietnam War."

The simultaneous expansion of the "warfare state" (think "military industrial complex") and the "welfare state" (think Social Security, Medicare, Veterans Benefits--the concept that the federal government has an obligation to promote the "general welfare" through various social programs) in the post 1945 period is a major theme in my History 148 course (US since 1945).  I thought to myself, I should go to this panel.  The expansion of the warfare state is my field!

Well--I was very glad I went.  The presentations were engaging and thought-provoking, which, frankly, is not common at academic conferences.  I scribbled pages of notes, asked a couple questions, and stayed afterwards to talk to the luminaries on the panel. 

The panel was focused specifically on the expansion of the warfare state, but it occurred to me that you cannot deal with that development without linking it to the growth of the welfare state.  There are obvious connections between the two: programs like the GI Bill, for example, serve the purposes of both the warfare state and the welfare state.  The expansion of the higher education (and universities as a nexus of government and corporate research) is another obvious link, promoting individual opportunity, economic development, and bolstering the warfare state at the same time.   Even the Manhattan Project, which was clearly part of the warfare state, served "welfare state" ends, promoting jobs and economic development in communities like Los Alamos and the Tri-Cities (a nice local example that John Findlay and Bruce Hevly talk about in their book "Atomic Frontier Days").

Anyway, here are some compelling insights from the panel (nothing new, but good thoughts nonetheless)

1. The warfare state (military spending) has been largely immune from the rising-tide of conservative anti-government rhetoric.  Military budgets have expanded dramatically without protest from small-government, deficit-hawk conservatives, who seemingly have never seen a defense-spending program they don't like (Ron Paul is one of the few exceptions to this).  And this had been true of the larger American public, who, in one poll, give a 67% favorability rating to the American military but only a 22% favorability rating to the "federal government" generally, which is criticized for being bloated, inefficient, and intrusive.

Why is this so?  Why have Americans been so unyielding their support for the growth and expansion of the warfare state in the post Vietnam era (and indeed in the entire post 1945 period)?

One answer is that politicians have cynically or unwittingly engaged in "threat inflation," playing upon the fears and insecurities of the American people (this has certainly been the case in the post 9/11 period where our military establishment has expanded exponentially while the world, arguably, has become a much safer place).

Another answer is that the post-Vietnam all-volunteer military establishment has offered seeming protection from these manifold global threats while at the same time asking very little of most Americans (no extra taxes; no conscription).  It's a great deal!  They keep us safe and we (American civilians) sacrifice very little. (Of course, this will have to change, given our looming deficits.)

2. The structural change to an all-volunteer army (moving away from conscription) has helped to foster the expansion of the warfare state.

It is interesting to note that Richard Nixon voiced support for ending the draft in 1968 because he felt that it would help bring an end to anti-draft rioting (which he conflated with anti-war protest generally) while at the same time peace protestors believed that ending the draft would make America less likely to go to war.

Richard Nixon was more correct than the peace protestors.  It is a great irony of modern American history that our move to an all-volunteer army, a move so much advocated by anti-war protestors,  has dulled criticisms against the growth and expansion of the warfare state.  Without the draft, citizens have less investment in large questions of war and peace.

On a related note, fewer of our current politicians now have actually served in the military than in previous decades, and this lack of experience may influence their decisions concerning the use and withholding of troops--the panelists suggested that politicians with no military experience might actually be more likely, not less, to deploy troops.

3.  The move to an all-volunteer force has also escalated the costs of the warfare state, since the need to recruit and retain military personnel has necessitated increasing salaries and benefits.

I would argue that most Americans see the warfare state as just another arm of the welfare state: it provides jobs and keeps us safe.  It's popular.  And the wars are distant and non-intrusive. And the taxes are still low (so far).  And until now, American have not really had to choose between spending on the military and spending on social programs,  guns and butter

Anyway, my students this quarter are hearing a lot about the relationship between the warfare state and the welfare state, guns and butter.

Sometimes you learn things at conferences.  Or at least think about things in new ways.

This Blog Not Dead Yet

At the end of last quarter, I took my History Club students on a field trip to Tamastslikt Cultural Institute in Pendleton, Oregon.  It's a nice museum.  I've taken students there before (unfortunately the main exhibit there has not changed in the last ten years, but they do have a temporary installation that changes: we saw some Mayan artifacts).

Anyway, on the way home, I had a conversation with one of my students who told me that he did not perform well in his math class last quarter.  When I asked him why, he explained that his professor didn't require that the students turn in the homework.  The professor assigned homework, and it was up to the students to keep up with it, but since it was not "required," my student's math homework began to take a back seat to everything else.  We all know that we never have enough time for everything.  We do what seems most pressing.  In this case, his Spanish homework (which had to be done) got done, while his math homework languished.

We can all understand this.  We have busy lives.  We are creatures of externally imposed deadlines.  The self-imposed deadlines (like "I'm going to write a blog every week!") get pushed to the bottom of the pile when things get busy (which is always). 

Of course, teachers cannot collect and grade homework everyday--it's just impossible, given that we all teach more than 100 students per quarter.  And many faculty believe that, since this is college, students simply need to be responsible for learning the material.   So what's the solution?

I can think of a lot of impractical ones: all classes should be taught as seminars with ten students per professor, so that professors can devote themselves to working intensively with each individual student.  But, alas, this is not Sarah Lawrence College, but CBC.  We need to pound through the FTE just to survive.

Of course there all kinds of things we can do in the real world, the most obvious being the use of technology.  Since this was a math class, I'm sure that the professor could have assigned online homework that would be graded automatically.  And on and on. 

Anyway, this is my way of explaining why I haven't posted a blog in so long.  I've been piling up the notes and ideas for blog posts, but, alas, no one was requiring me to post blogs--not even myself.  During the fall quarter, I made my students post blogs, so I HAD to do it also.  But now I have no mandatory deadlines, just my own hopeful aspirations to write about teaching, which periodically become crushed under the weight of exams, papers, little league games and household projects (and the repressive strictures of the space-time continuum). 

So I'm beginning again.  Now that I've driven my entire readership away with my long hiatus (even Mom), I will begin afresh (like spring!).  I promise.

What do Students Really Need to Know?

Ok, so I haven't kept up my New Year's Resolution to post at least once a week.  My colleague Michael Lee is mostly to blame.  I am currently team-teaching a class with him.  It is an American Literature/History "learning community, and we meet for two hours daily and, truth be told, I am barely keeping up with the reading assignments for the literature section.  We just finished reading Edith Wharton's classic, "House of Mirth," on Thursday.  Remarkable book--poor Lily Bart!  The upper classes of fin de siècle America were a vicious bunch!  What a jungle.

But this "learning community" has raised some serious questions for me:  what do student really need to know? Are there particular facts that students MUST learn in a US history survey course?  What if I skip the Populist Movement (one of my favorite topics, by the way) or the War of 1812?  What if I do not spend much time on politics in the late nineteenth century and instead spend more time on Women's Suffrage or the Harlem Renaissance?

In my usual survey courses, I try my best to cover the broad outlines of US history--we read a textbook chapter or two every week.

In this learning community, however, so far we have spent three weeks on Reconstruction and race relations in the post-Reconstruction South, one week on the American West, and one week on industrialization (which we will be exploring in various forms for another couple weeks).  We are already at least two weeks behind where I would normally be and we are focusing primarily on themes as they relate to the literature of the period.  In short, I am making no attempt at broad coverage.

I'm having a great time and I think are students are as well.  I think they're learning a lot.  We're going into more depth and I would argue doing more critical analysis.  Aren't those the skills and habits of mind we're trying to instill?

But it raises many questions in my own mind about how I teach, what I should be teaching, and what students really need to know.  

One question central to history and the humanities:  Are there specific facts that students need to know in order to pass a college survey course?  Is there a specific body of knowledge that must be mastered in my history classes?

Or, is history--like the liberal arts generally--more about cultivating  habits of mind like critical inquiry and critical thinking?  Is developing a "historical consciousness" (a term we history teachers use to mean, I think, an ability to recognize the ways that history has shaped and continues to shape the world around us) about learning specific facts or about recognizing and exploring connections, being sensitive to context, and asking why things are happening as well as venturing forth conclusions that pay attention to historical origins?

A recent article I read ventures forth a compelling definition of the liberal arts:

The liberal arts, argues the author, "aren't bodies of knowledge that can be ladled out.  They can't be set down on a study sheet (though developing them requires the mastery of specific bodies of knowledge).  They are abilities, like the ability to see beauty or do critical inquiry, and are cultivated or brought out of (e-duced from) students' latent powers." *

By this definition, it would seem that WHAT you cover is not as important as HOW you cover it.  Do you subject historical facts to a process of in-depth inquiry and analysis?  Operating on this principle, it should not matter if you explore ten topics or one topic during the quarter, as long as students are cultivating their higher faculties.

But are most of our students ready for that kind of seminar-like focus?

Ok, so I'll keep chewing on these conflicts:

Coverage vs. Depth

Facts/"Knowledge" vs. Habits of Mind; Critical Thinking

*Jeff Lustig, "The University Besieged," Thought and Action (Fall 3007), 10.

Critiquing America or Celebrating America: What is the Goal of History?

Some people decry the fact that history professors do not sufficiently praise America.  Instead, the argument goes, college history professors spend their time trying to drag America down by focusing on the dark spots of American history--slavery, the conquest of Native Americans, the ill-treatment of minority groups--rather than celebrating the great stuff, like the gradual expansion of liberty, equality, and democracy in the modern world's first great republic.

There was a huge outrage from conservative culture warriors in 1994 when a former professor of mine at UCLA, Gary Nash, Director of the National Center for History in the Schools, introduced national "standards" for what K-12 students should learn about American history.  The standards were part of a collaborative effort among teachers and scholars across the country, but conservative commentators like Lynn Cheney, former director of the National Endowment of the Humanities and wife of Dick Cheney, suggested that American history was being hijacked by a liberal, politically correct professoriate who painted a "grim and gloomy" portrait of US history.  By giving disproportionate attention to slaves, women, Native Americans, and Civil Rights activists, Cheney argued that the new standards slighted great historical figures like George Washington and Robert E. Lee.  She complained that the standards did not provide American children with heroes: "I think our kids need heroes. I think that they need models of greatness to help them aspire. I think they need heroes so that they can become heroes themselves."

The controversy over what to teach our children about US history continues, with conservatives consistently making the claim that most history texts and teachers like to bash America rather than build it up.  In 2010, the same year the Texas school board became embroiled in an ideological struggle over which founders and which "facts" to emphasize--conservative evangelicals wanted less Thomas Jefferson and more John Calvin--Glenn Beck endorsed a conservative-leaning US history textbook called "A Patriot's History of the United States," which billed itself as an antidote to the apologetic critical histories of America: "For at least thirty years, high school and college students have been taught to be embarrassed by American history. Required readings have become skewed toward a relentless focus on our country’s darkest moments, from slavery to McCarthyism. As a result, many history books devote more space to Harriet Tubman than to Abraham Lincoln; more to My Lai than to the American Revolution; more to the internment of Japanese Americans than to the liberation of Europe in World War II."

All of this begs the question: What is the goal of teaching (or writing) history?  Is history about "celebrating" or "critiquing"? 

Without a doubt, the goal of history, as it developed in the nineteenth century, was clearly about celebrating national values and advancing a narrative of national greatness and exceptionalism.

History, as taught in schools and written in textbooks, was an outgrowth of nationalism and nation-state building.  School curriculum, national holidays, national monuments and memorials all aligned around an explicitly nationalist message.    

The goal of history was not scientific--to objectively analyze causes, consequences, and facts--but rather moralistic: it was intended to teach and celebrate national values and to create a sense of national unity.  Students in the US learned history from their McGuffy readers, which contained, among the speeches by great men and poems about great men, Parson Weems' story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree:  "George," said his father, "do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden? " This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself: and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-conquering truth, he bravely cried out, "I can't tell a lie, Pa; you know I can't tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet." "Run to my arms, you dearest boy," cried his father in transports, "run to my arms; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son is more worth than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold."

It's great stuff, but it's not really history per se.  For one, modern historians, trained in the scientific method, claim that it likely never happened.  But the story of the cherry tree was not included in the McGuffy reader because it was scientific history (or even verifiable, as far as we know), but because it conveyed a moral lesson that reflected well on our national character.  The message:  our Founding Fathers, like our nation, were moral exemplars who were beyond criticism.

I grapple with these issues every single quarter--every single week.  I encourage students to be "critical."  In doing so, I am often pushing against their inclinations, their politics, their values.  Moreover, I have a great love of my own country--of its values, political system, and culture.  I'm certainly not out to bash a country that I love, simply for the sake of bashing.

Why should we be critical? Why can't we simply praise our civilization? 

I offer a couple answers.  The first is that we ARE celebrating our culture--especially our freedom of speech and thought--when we look at the past clearly, openly, and critically.  In this country, when we criticize our leaders and our past, we ARE being patriotic.  As Americans, it's our right, and I would argue our duty, to engage in good faith criticism of ourselves and our country.  It's something that does not happen in countries like China, without grave consequences. 

The other argument is an explicitly moral one: how can we improve ourselves unless we subject ourselves to criticism.  This is an argument that students understand implicitly when applied to their own lives--that subjecting oneself to criticism and interrogation is the first step towards moral uplift.  Humility, and a willingness to recognize one's flaws (one's "sins" depending on your particular worldview) are seen in most religious systems as a prerequisite to spiritual enlightenment, or at least the first step towards moral self-improvement.

So it only makes sense to apply the same principle to the nation.  If we seek to improve as a nation, we must be honest about our flaws.  We must be willing to subject ourselves to good faith criticism in the interests of making ourselves better.

In rereading a section of WEB DuBois's "Souls of Black Folk" for a class last week, I came across a wonderful passage that launched me into this train of thought (along with the fact that on the same day I was grading a document analysis assignment where too many students were uncritically praising the Truman Doctrine without also subjecting it to more "critical" analysis).  In the passage, DuBois admonishes "black men to judge the South discriminatingly."  "The present generation of Southerners," says DuBois, "are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it." 

He then urges his nineteenth-century readers to jettison their stereotypes and preconceptions and see the South in all its complexity, the good and the bad: "The South is not 'solid'; it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is to-day perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good."

Then comes the line that really made an impression--the one that provides a positive rationale for why even patriots must engage in good-faith criticism of their country: "Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs,--needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development."

WEB DuBois was fair minded and "discriminating."   As a black man in the late nineteenth-century, he could have easily indicted all whites as racist.  But he didn't.  The South was not "solid" or monolithic.  It was complex.  His analysis encourages us to throw away our biases and use our minds.

As I finish this--on Saturday night, January 21--Newt Gingrich has just won the South Carolina Republican primary.  He is giving a speech to his supporters who are chanting "USA, USA, USA, USA!"

I'm guessing they wouldn't like my message: that Americans should take a "critical perspective" on their own past.  I’m guessing I would be accused of being one of those liberal history professors who don't love America.

He has just said something along the lines of "We look to our Founding Fathers" for inspiration, while Obama looks to left-wing critics of America.  Gingrinch makes Obama sound like one of those history professors, mentioned above, who are accused of wanting to drag America down.

So here we go again: to be "critical" is to be unpatriotic; to chant "USA, USA, USA" is to be patriotic.

My goal: for all of us to be more fair-minded and more discriminating; for us to look, and think hard, before we leap to conclusions.  If I am partisan I hope I am a partisan on the side of critical thinking. (Personal note: I happen to be a real critic of political parties, which were not, by the way, mentioned in the Constitution….but that's another story.)

Tyranny; And what I learned in 2011

Ok, so it's only mid-January and I've already broken my New Year's Resolution to post "one blog entry a week." But it wasn't my fault.  Not at all.  There were numerous culprits, including technology itself, which, although touted by its apostles as liberation from the shackles of our limited, material reality, is nothing more than a vast conspiracy to make us worship at the alter of technocratic efficiency while we become dependent slaves to tyrannical machines!  Fight the power!

[Translation: On Friday, I wasted an entire three hours of my life-never to be retrieved!--when this brutish computer robbed me of an entire class of grades and comments.  Ok, so maybe there was some element of human error--a botched key stroke that made my grades inexplicably disappear from the (unsaved) web page where I was recording them prior to "uploading" them to Angel .  But that's not the point!  The point is that three hours of MY LIFE disappeared and I want them back!  All three of them!  The very three hours that I would have used to post my blog and maintain my New Year's Resolution!   Truly.  You must believe me!]

Well, actually, I must admit that this system of grading and making comments of which I speak is truly an efficient and time-saving procedure that I've used flawlessly dozens of times, probably saving me dozens of hours and the earth dozens of trees.  I can't really complain.  But computers--and ANGEL, our "elearning course platform," is such a convenient scapegoat.  [The reader--and yes, Mom, that is singular, as in you--must now inevitably conclude that I am the tyrant, at least of this blog, employing the classic "create a scapegoat to divert them from your own flaws" strategy.  To this I would only say, "No duh."]

So, the quarter has begun and there is much to discuss.  But first what I learned from 2011 (teaching-wise)?

1. Don't try to be cute: I know what you are saying.  "But Dave, how can you possibly keep yourself from being cute?"  Here's one example of what I mean: sometimes I give titles to lectures, so as to frame a particular argument that I'm making.  For instance, I might call a presentation of the Clinton years, "Clinton Conservatism," to underscore the point that Clinton took the Democratic Party to the center of the political spectrum and even co-opted a number of conservative issues and approaches (remember the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act," Clinton's welfare reform law?), or I might discuss the Bush 43 years under the heading "The Rise of Big Government Conservatism" to showcase how conservatives like Bush often speak rhetorically of "limited government" while dramatically expanding the size and scope of the federal government.  Here’s the problem: while many students get it, there are invariably those who will explain in their final exam how Clinton was "a conservative" and how George W. Bush was a "liberal" who expanded the size the government.  Subtlety does not work.  Satire never works.  And cute counterintuitives are not cute or counterintuitive if your audience has no background knowledge to begin with.  This, unfortunately, is the case with most of my students.

2. Students like biography:  My graduate school professors must have hated history as biography.  I don't recall ever being assigned to read a biography for a class while in graduate school (although I read a few on my own), and I remember a lot of abstract seminars about "colonialism" and "classical liberalism" and "classical republicanism" and "liberal capitalism" and "nationalism" and "imperialism" and "industrial capitalism" and on and on.   An alien eavesdropping on those seminars would have been  hard-pressed to gather that history is fundamentally about people.  I'm not even sure that I learned about any people in graduate school!  Alas, I exaggerate.  But truth be told, I'm kind of a sucker for abstractions.  I  can talk nationalism and industrial capitalism and Social Darwinism until the cows come home.  But my students, weirdly enough, actually enjoy learning about people--their dreams and deeds and dalliances.  The latter is, of course, a reference to Clinton again.  I might talk for an hour about welfare reform, financial deregulation, and trade liberalization in the 1990s, and my students may vaguely remember some of it, but if I talk about Clinton's upbringing, his education, his marriage to Hilary Rodham, his stunning political intelligence and, yes, his marital infidelities, it seems as if students lock in and soak it up with near perfect recall.  I'll get well-written bluebook exams that go on for pages about the gossipy, personal, human-interest bio material, and mention nary a word about politics and policies.  Of course, this just kills me.  I think the important stuff is in the politics and policies.  But that's because I've been brainwashed.  My students are tapping into what makes history compelling for most of us--and what has been drawing us in for centuries.  Stories.  About people.  What a concept.  I'm going to do more of that.

3. Students can write blogs: Some of my students gamed the assignment and did the bare minimum to receive extra credit, but many students created outstanding blogs.  What more can I say.  I was impressed.

4. I have a chip on my shoulder: As I was reminded recently by a fellow colleague with whom I am teaching a history/literature "learning community," I have a chip on my shoulder about how fashionable it has become for pedagogy experts to attack lecture as self-indulgent (the "sage on the stage") and ineffective, while advocating "student centered" or "active learning," which essentially boils down to various forms of group-work.  I plead guilty.  I really do have a chip on my shoulder about this.  Which really means that I feel defensive.  Which really means that I suspect that I lecture too much and need to do more "student-centered" learning activities, which truly makes me want to barf because I do not enjoy running my classes that way, at least that's my line and I'm sticking to it, for now…… Ok, so you can see that I have a chip on my shoulder.  This means more fruitful blog entries about my inner struggles to grow and challenge myself as a teacher while still trying "to thine own self be true."

Well, this isn't all I learned last quarter, but it's late and I'm running out of steam.  I think the real tyranny is this New Year's resolution that has kept me up past my bed time posting this blog!

New Year's Resolutions 2012

Ok, Mom, winter quarter has begun so I'm beginning my blog about teaching again.  Now you can quit bugging me about it! :)

First what I'm thankful for (teaching-wise) and then my New Year's resolutions for teaching:

Thankful for:

1.   Gainful employment in my profession of choice: I hardly need to expand on this (but you know I will anyway).  In this age of austerity, I wake up every day counting myself  abundantly fortunate to be living out my dream.  Indeed, in the mid-1980s, while most of my peers in college were dreaming of starting businesses or chasing their fortunes on Wall Street, I was dreaming of some day being a history professor.  Ever since taking Leroy Ashby's US history survey course at WSU in 1985, I figured there could be nothing more fun or rewarding than spending one's life trying to excite undergraduates about history.  Professor Ashby sure had a lot of fun: back in the days before the internet or Powerpoint, he dashed back and forth between an overhead projector, a cassette player, a slide projector, and an actual film projector (yes, complete with a reel of film, just like in the old days), striving to give his students a multimedia experience.  I was transfixed.  During the swashbuckling nineties, while more rational twenty-somethings were making millions in the dot.com revolution, I was busily scribbling notes in some dusty archive (this was before the archives were online) and happily accepting student loans as I worked my way through my masters and doctorate degrees.  It all paid off in spades.  In 1998, I hit pay-dirt: a tenure-track job at Columbia Basin College with a starting base salary of$ 34,500.  I never looked back.  Fourteen years later, I'm still living the dream (and still paying off my student loans, if you can believe it….).  In all sincerity, I can't imagine a more rewarding career--one that allows me the opportunity to try to make sense of the world and the freedom to use my own voice.  You can't ask for more than that.

2. My students:  Ok, it's obvious that without students I wouldn't have a job, but that's not exactly what I mean here.  I mean that I really appreciate those people, young and old and in-between,  sitting in front of me, who are so much in the midst of "the struggle."  Their struggles are not all equivalent, to be sure --some are simply struggling to stay awake after an ill-advised evening of revelry while others are literally struggling to survive: holding down jobs, tending to families and sick relatives, overcoming their own health problems, battling with financial and emotional stress, and on and on.  But there they are, sitting at their desks, trying to focus, trying to make sense of this curious material that I think is so important, but which runs so contrary to the tide of our popular culture, with its sound bites and 24X7 sensationalism.  It's a tough business being a student in twenty-first century America, and I'm grateful for all those people who, in spite of all the conflicting pressures and distractions, make such a good faith effort to apply themselves to the complicated task of self-improvement.  Isn't that what life is all about?  It is for me.

"Good God, man, get a hold of yourself!"  Ok, ok, enough on that front--if I continue I'll just get more syrupy and teary-eyed.    Let's stiffen that upper lip and move on to resolutions, a much more Churchillian task:

Resolutions:

1.  Post one blog entry a week while the quarter is in session.  [One more thing to be thankful for: a quarter system that allows you a fresh start every 12 or so weeks along with some time in between to decompress.]

2. Experiment.  Why not?  My classes should be pedagogical laboratories, no?  For example, in one class this quarter I am giving no quizzes and no exams--just papers.  Why can't I do that?  I CAN DO THAT!  If only I liberate myself from the shackles of my self-imposed bondage!  [One more thing to be thankful for: a job that gives me the autonomy to experiment and innovate.]

In coming weeks: What I learned in 2011 (about teaching, that is); why primary documents are so important; putting the "community" back into the community college classroom.

Yes, brothers and sisters,  you got it:  strap yourself in, because 2012 is going to be a wild ride for this particular blog.  Amen.

Depth vs. Coverage; or I'm behind again and how did this happen?

I've only been perfecting my trade for fourteen years here at CBC, so it should be no surprise that I find myself, once again, nearly through the quarter and behind where I should be.  How does this happen every quarter?

Here are some of the issues at play:

1. Depth vs. Coverage: The first is the age-old conundrum of history teachers everywhere--how does one balance in-depth analysis with broad coverage?  If you are determined to talk about EVERYTHING, then you will talk about NOTHING in depth.  Conversely, if you wish to enthrall (fun note: also means to enslave) your students with a particular topic's subtle intricacies and confounding ironies, then you will get behind and be forced to jettison large portions of the historical record.  That's what the dustbin of history is for, after all.

Obviously, there is a middle ground here, as with everything, and the goal is always balance.  But it can be hard to do, especially if you really want your students to "get it" and understand a particular topic well.  There is always a trade off, especially in history teaching, because your choices are nearly limitless.  That unit on feminism, complete with a day discussing documents by Steinem and Schlafly, is going to come at the expense of Nixon's foreign policy or Carter's domestic policy (please let it be Carter's domestic policy!).  And never mind the Red Power Movement, the Brown Berets, the Grey Panthers (militant old fogies), or the Pink Panthers (the Gay analog to the Black Panther Party).  It ain't happening, bro.

2. Discussion vs. Lecture: Another facet of this epic conflict involves teaching choices.  If you lecture in a unilateral (dictatorial) fashion (my favorite style, best when done in jack boots, because what do students know anyway, until you tell them!), you can march through a lot of material very quickly.  It just feels good to check off the list of topics covered each day.  It gives you a profound sense of accomplishment, kind of like conquering small countries.  On the other hand, if you ask your students to read documents on a specific topic and discuss those documents in class, you could spend an entire week on just one theme.  And that's fun too!

3. What do students really need to know?  A lot of this boils down to what you believe students really need to know--and what your goals are as a teacher.  If you believe that students need to be introduced to the "facts" of history and it's your job to give them those facts, then lecture away and sleep peacefully at night knowing that nothing is being left out.  By God, those students are not going to leave MY class without learning about Ogden vs. Gibbons or the Tariff of 1828 (yes, guilty as charged, I have indeed lectured about both those topics). 

But if you believe that your job is to teach students how to "think critically" about history (and information generally) because they'll soon forget the "facts" anyway, then you should spend more time on fewer topics, allowing students the time to really sink their teeth into the subject matter.

4. Buddhist (Eastern) approach vs. Western goal-oriented approach: This Herculean struggle can also be seen in the light of East v. West.   If you want to take the Western approach and make progress, then forge ahead in linear lecture mode,  progressively laying claim to ever larger swathes of historical territory.  This approach is largely about conquest--mapping and making order of a disorderly and unwieldy human past for your students.  This approach requires a firm hand on the wheel , a clear destination, a steady course.

If you want to take the Buddhist approach, then take each class as it comes.  Live in the moment.  Enjoy the now.  The question is not, did we get through enough material to stay on schedule (see Western approach above), but rather, was today's discussion illuminating and useful in itself?   Who cares if you spent four days discussing the Constitution, making it so that you'll never get to the Civil War unless you jettison the entire Jacksonian Era:  as long as students got to think about and discuss important issues (something that takes time), it was worth it.

There is also the Pure Land Buddhist approach, which entails having your students meditate and visualize, while occasionally whacking them with sticks in hopes that they obtain enlightenment.

Really, you know, just pick an approach and go with it, man.  It's all good. *

*I'm lying.