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.

Getting Students to Talk; or Why I am a Failure....

John Houseman in the 1973 film "The Paper Chase" playing the domineering Harvard law professor who used the Socratic method to traumatize his students.

I begin each school year with overly ambitious and idealistic notions about what I'm going to achieve--new assignments; new teaching strategies, new approaches to the content, etc...

At the top of my list is usually student engagement, which translates, in my world, to this question: how do I get my students to talk?  It might not be a good metric, but I tend to measure "engagement" by how actively students take part in class discussions.   Perhaps getting students to talk is overrated (I mean, who is to say that students who do not talk are not engaged?).  But I am a creature of my own socialization, and what professor does not occasionally conjure up the utopian dream of college teaching: You are standing in front of the room, posing questions, raising issues, challenging conventional wisdom, provoking thought.  Your students are eager to engage in dialogue.  Their hands thrust upward.  You ask.  They answer.  This dialectic drives the class forward, leading everyone to new understandings.  Time flies.  Minds are on fire.

Ok, so this is just a self-indulgent dream--a "Paper Chase" fantasy (without the psychological intimidation).

But I live in the real world.  I'm not a skilled practitioner of the Socratic method (like John Houseman's character, above), nor are my students Hollywood versions of Harvard law students (and that is not to say that many of them could not someday be real, rather than imagined, Harvard law students).

But for now they are first and second year college students, hesitant, and perhaps unprepared, to engage in class discussion.  And my impromptu questions, although perhaps better now than they were fourteen years ago, are not always inviting, or self-evident, entrees into a class discussion.

Moreover, many students do not appreciate being asked questions and having to react on the spot to obscure historical questions (like, for instance, a point that you explained the previous day).  CBC librarian extraordinaire Drew Procter (iron law: ALWAYS be nice to librarians because they are most powerful people on campus) sent me a link to an article about a professor--a "master teacher" according to his fellow professors--who lost his job because he used the Socratic method as his primary teaching strategy.  Needless to say, the students did NOT like it.  It was obnoxious to them that he kept asking all these questions rather than simply telling them the answers!  I mean, what audacity!  Students demand the right to simply be told what they need to know, rather than having to suffer the indignity of being asked a million questions about things they don't know. 

The article speculates that the Socratic method is not popular among students "because we are in a test-based education system. Students can be increasingly impatient where the answer is not clear and when the professor is not giving it to them immediately." 

Fair enough.

But what about my Utopian visions of college class discussions?  How do I get my students to participate?

Well, to be honest, mostly I do not.  I hector and cajole and coerce my students.  I ask them to "come to class prepared to talk about such and such."  I give them documents to read and papers to write so that they will arrive in class prepared to talk.  I tell them to write something down and then ask them about it.  I assign student participation scores.  I ask them questions cold.  I swing from the chandeliers and light fires in class.

None of this moves them to speak.

Mostly, I stand in front of them answering my own questions: "What caused the Civil War?  Well, let me tell you.  Do you have an hour?"

Mostly, I'm like the economics teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off": "In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?... raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. "Voodoo" economics."

So what is the secret?  Why am I such a failure at getting students to talk? After fourteen years of teaching, just what am I missing, besides a classroom filled with Hollywood actors playing Harvard students? (It is a fact, by the way, that Harvard students are not half as smart or witty as Hollywood actors playing Harvard students).

It's alright.  Don't feel sorry for me.  I'm not asking for your pity.  Just your money.  Please send check or money-orders made directly to Dr. Gottlieb, who will be pulling my molar and tucking my gums tomorrow

Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community

The "Quote of the Week" for the October 4, 2011 "Hawk Newsletter" ("brought to you by the ASCBC") reads as follows:

"If the dream is big enough, the facts don't count."--Unknown

Quote of the Week?  Really?  But what does it mean?  Does it mean that if we insulate ourselves in big fantasies that "reality" doesn't matter?  It clearly suggests that dreams, fictions, fantasies, visions, etc…, are more important than fact-based reality; that the subjective "reality" we create from our dreams is more important than the "factual" reality of the objective world we inhabit.

The quote reminds me of Karl Rove's infamous statement to writer Ron Suskind that journalists and others who write about and try to discern "the facts" are part of what Rove sneeringly described as the "reality-based community," as opposed to those--like the administration of George W. Bush, for which Rove worked--that were actually creating their own reality: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

Rove was differentiating historical agents (like the Bush administration) from those who simply record history (journalists, historians, etc…), while the ASCBC Quote of the Week was simply a tidbit meant to inspire us to follow our dreams (I think).  But they both convey the essential idea--so powerful in our society-- that the subjective reality we create is more important than so called "objective reality."  If the dream is big enough, the facts don't matter.

Ok, so I came of age in the "postmodern" world, so I should have no problem with the idea that reality itself is largely subjective and "socially constructed."  Since there is no "objective reality" we should all get to work constructing our own realities.  In a sense, this is what is happening in America right now: the Tea Party has its own reality; OWS has it's own reality; FOX news, MSNBC, the Democrats, the Republicans--they all generate their own realities by constructing their own "narratives."  Each person, each group, can create their own storyline without regard for "the facts."  If the dream is big enough, the facts don't matter. 

Even reporters and members of the "reality-based community" have largely conceded.  Political coverage rarely involves challenging politicians and talking-heads when their version of reality contradicts "the facts."  Instead, most reporters simply report the different narratives: "in response to the charges of A, B claimed that…." 

Most of us spend more time living in our dreams than trying to discover "the facts."   And when we decide to find "the facts," we usually tune into the appropriate channels that provide us the fodder we need to support our worldviews.  Studies have shown that people, when presented with information, remember the facts that correspond with their preconceived views and largely forget contradictory and inconvenient information.

Why am I thinking about this?  Well, for one, I teach history, which involves facts sometimes.  I mean, I’m not a huge "fact guy."  I despise trivia, but only because it's trivial.  But facts really do matter.  Context matters.

Example: Today we were talking about the Constitution in one of my classes.  There has been a lot of misinformation about the Constitution.  Certain political movements (to remain unnamed) have tried to raise civic literacy about the Constitution.  I appreciate that.  But sometimes I wonder if those people are reading history about the origins of the Constitution  or if they are reading the Constitution itself?

Example: Many people think that we had the Boston Tea Party and then we declared independence and then we created the Constitution.  Well, this is kind of true--things happened in that order: 1773, 1776, 1787.  Looked at in this light, the Constitution was created by the "Founding Fathers" as a template for limited government, individual liberties, and states' rights.

I agree, if only we substitute "The Articles of Confederation" (our first constitution, created by the Continental Congress in 1777) for "the Constitution."  That was truly a document born of the revolutionary spirit of 1776.  It created a national government that did not have the power to tax, regulate trade, or raise a standing army (only the states could draft troops).  There was no executive branch--no president or monarch.  No system of federal courts.  All power rested squarely with the states.

Fast forward ten years.  The young nation is mired in debt and economic depression (sound familiar?).  Rebellions emerge in the countryside.  Europeans smugly assume that this fledgling republican experiment will soon implode.  The Continental Congress makes plans for delegates to meet in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787.  The ostensible purpose: revise the Articles of Confederation.  Disturbed by civic unrest and economic turmoil, George Washington makes plans to attend, lending legitimacy to the convention.

Of the only 55 delegates to attend the convention (only 39 of which sign the document), the majority are young men, unknown among the original revolutionaries.  Their defining experience is not the Stamp Act crisis or the Boston Tea Party.  They were kids back then.  They came of age during the Revolutionary War.  Men like Alexander Hamilton--born in the mid 1750s (1755 or 1757; there's a fact we don't know)--became young nationalists as they fought for an emergent nation.  As members of the Continental Army, they began to think continentally rather than provincially--they were no longer primarily Virginians and New Yorkers, but Americans.

The point I'm making: they constructed a new constitution that created a powerful national government (sneakily called the "federal" government to suggest that this was still a federation of states rather than a "consolidated" government, which states' rights advocates feared).  That new national government now had the powers to levy taxes, raise and keep a standing army, and "to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into the Execution the foregoing Powers," which included, among other things, the power to "regulate commerce" and the broad mandate to "provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States."

So was the Constitution really a template for limited government, individual liberties, and states' rights, as some would have us believe?  Well, it's debatable, to be sure.  The people who created it did not see it in those terms.  For them, so-called Federalists (again, sneaky, because the name implies that they promote a confederation of states rather than a stronger national government, and sneaky also because it forces your opponents, who are truly federalists, to take the name Anti-Federalists) it was clearly about expanding the powers of the federal government.  For their opponents (and there were many), so-called Anti-Federalists, the Constitution was also a template for a more powerful central government--and that's why they resisted it as long as they could and finally demanded a Bill of Rights in exchange for their support.

My point?  Hell, I'm not sure of my point any more.  I like history?  No.  I mean, yes, but no, that's not the point.

Oh yeah.  Context matters.  Facts matter.

On this example about the Constitution: If we study history and understand the driving forces behind the creation of the Constitution, we recognize, whether we like it not, that it was a document that greatly empowered the federal government.  Like it or not, the Constitution gave the federal government a lot of power to do all kinds of objectionable things, depending on your perspective: fight undeclared wars (because the "President shall be Commander in Chief"), create agencies like the CIA to spy and topple foreign governments (to provide for the "Common Defense"); create a national health care system (necessary to promote the "General Welfare" and "regulate commerce), etc…..  Again, depending on your perspective, these things might be bad policy, but that does not mean they are unconstitutional.  

My point again (just to remind myself):   We can conjure up alternative histories and make up our own dream realities or we can pay attention to certain known "facts" and develop a more nuanced view of the past and present.  It could help.

I'm not saying it is simple or easy or self-evident.  The Constitution (and history itself) is NOT self-evident.  It is subject to differing interpretations, and this has been the case from the very beginning.

But realizing this "fact" alone can help us resist the dream realities of people and organizations that want us to accept their own simplistic and self-interested view of the past and present, no matter what the facts.

So dream big and follow those dreams, baby!  But don't think for a moment that the "fact's don't count."

Become a proud member of the "reality-based community"!