(Edit: Ended up being a lot longer of a comment than I anticipated. I just really love history and have tons of thoughts about how it is and should be taught. Thanks for sharing, OP.) Interesting...
(Edit: Ended up being a lot longer of a comment than I anticipated. I just really love history and have tons of thoughts about how it is and should be taught. Thanks for sharing, OP.)
Interesting article. I agree with a lot of the points (like that teaching history relies on a lot of personality and charisma), but not really on some other points (that a good history teacher needs to be skeptical and anti-establishment). I think, as with almost everything, there's nuance to this and no truth or lesson is going to be 100% accurate with regards to what makes a good history teacher.
I'll preface some of this by saying that I have two degrees in history, and have worked in public history for a decade now. I've taken tons of history classes, with great teachers/professors and some crappy ones too. I'm not saying that my opinion is factually correct or anything crazy like that, just that I've probably taken more history classes than most people. And I've found that the classes I enjoyed most were often very different from each other, and I enjoyed them for various different reasons that have nothing to do with each other and more to do with either the subject, or how I personally prefer to learn.
My favorite professor was as formulaic as possible. Took like 6 or 7 classes with him from undergrad to graduate level. Each class was a pure lecture for 1-3 hours and that's it. There was no attendance, no homework, no assignments. Just a mid term and a final that each was worth 50% of our final grade. Some people HATED that. I loved it. Meant I could just relax in class and listen to this incredibly well-versed man talk about something he clearly knew a shit ton about without having to worry about anything else other than what he's lecturing about. Maybe some people would ask a couple of questions every now and then, but essentially it was just him talking at you for multiple hours straight.
Another super memorable class I had was by a professor who was the exact opposite of that. Only like five or six people signed up for the class, which just happened to be the minimum needed for a class to count at my university. So he basically made a deal with us that if no one dropped the class we'd go on a shit ton of field trips (the class was about our local region's history). And boy were those field trips amazing. Learned so much cool stuff about the place where I grew up and even visited some sites that I had no idea existed despite living in that area for 20+ years. That class was as far from formulaic as possible, and the professor was a soft-spoken old man who definitely did not exude charisma.
I had another class with a professor who absolutely loved Classical history as well as the Renaissance, and he didn't care if we ate in his class. So every morning at 9 AM I'd show up with a bowl of cereal (provided by the school, I didn't just bring my own from home) and listen to this guy talk about how Plato's ideas or Michelangelo's frescos for an hour.
I've taken classes on historiography where the entire class was just a round-table discussion and the professor was sort of just a moderator for the group discussion every week, pointing us in the right direction with specific questions about the reading material each week. I've had classes about subjects that I thought would be super interesting, and then turned out to be horrible classes because the professors were too monotone and assigned work that felt unnecessary or forced. And many other classes in between that were neither memorable for being great, nor for being shit.
All that is to say that different people value different things from their history teachers/professors. Charisma definitely helps, but the actual subject matter helps a lot too (it's a lot easier to learn about something that you already sorta care about) as well as the structure of the class and how it jives with your personal learning preferences.
And especially on the public history side of things, where I might only have a few minutes to convey some history to people rather than a whole semester or year like history teachers/professors get, I find that the content is even more important. People don't like hearing numbers and dates and obscure names, they want the Hollywood stuff. Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll are what catches people's attention and leaves a lasting image in their head (for better or worse), so you need to use those key interesting points/stories to convey the other important shit you want to talk about. Teach them without making them think you're teaching them. I'm not trying to get you to learn about this history, no no no, I'm just telling you about this cool shit that happened and btw it just happens to relate to the history of this area, hmm what a coincidence. Think back to a historic site or building you might have visited. You probably don't remember the exact year it was built, but you might remember a crazy story that you heard about while there. It's a whole different ballgame is what I'm trying to get at compared to more traditional classroom environments.
My wife always talks about how much she hated history growing up because all her teachers happened to be boring as hell, but since meeting me has become way more interested in history because she enjoys how excited I get about it. And yeah I'm sure she's biased as hell, but it makes me a bit sad that there are tons of people out there that grew up with crappy history teachers and end up not caring much for it despite how integral it is to our lives (the 'subject of subjects' as the article puts it).
Long story short, what makes a good history teacher is different from person to person. No one person is the perfect history teacher to everyone out there, because people learn in different ways and have different interests. Heck nowadays my favorite history teachers are often times YouTube channels like RealLifeLore, Extra History, and Heroes and Legends. Back when I was a kid there was a very over-the-top show comparing different soldiers, like a samurai vs a knight vs Zulu warrior or whatever, and it was dumb as hell in hindsight, but kept me hooked and encouraged my love of history. 12-year-old me had different tastes and interests as current me, so how we learn history should not be a one-size-fits-all approach.
(Edit: Ended up being a lot longer of a comment than I anticipated. I just really love history and have tons of thoughts about how it is and should be taught. Thanks for sharing, OP.)
Interesting article. I agree with a lot of the points (like that teaching history relies on a lot of personality and charisma), but not really on some other points (that a good history teacher needs to be skeptical and anti-establishment). I think, as with almost everything, there's nuance to this and no truth or lesson is going to be 100% accurate with regards to what makes a good history teacher.
I'll preface some of this by saying that I have two degrees in history, and have worked in public history for a decade now. I've taken tons of history classes, with great teachers/professors and some crappy ones too. I'm not saying that my opinion is factually correct or anything crazy like that, just that I've probably taken more history classes than most people. And I've found that the classes I enjoyed most were often very different from each other, and I enjoyed them for various different reasons that have nothing to do with each other and more to do with either the subject, or how I personally prefer to learn.
My favorite professor was as formulaic as possible. Took like 6 or 7 classes with him from undergrad to graduate level. Each class was a pure lecture for 1-3 hours and that's it. There was no attendance, no homework, no assignments. Just a mid term and a final that each was worth 50% of our final grade. Some people HATED that. I loved it. Meant I could just relax in class and listen to this incredibly well-versed man talk about something he clearly knew a shit ton about without having to worry about anything else other than what he's lecturing about. Maybe some people would ask a couple of questions every now and then, but essentially it was just him talking at you for multiple hours straight.
Another super memorable class I had was by a professor who was the exact opposite of that. Only like five or six people signed up for the class, which just happened to be the minimum needed for a class to count at my university. So he basically made a deal with us that if no one dropped the class we'd go on a shit ton of field trips (the class was about our local region's history). And boy were those field trips amazing. Learned so much cool stuff about the place where I grew up and even visited some sites that I had no idea existed despite living in that area for 20+ years. That class was as far from formulaic as possible, and the professor was a soft-spoken old man who definitely did not exude charisma.
I had another class with a professor who absolutely loved Classical history as well as the Renaissance, and he didn't care if we ate in his class. So every morning at 9 AM I'd show up with a bowl of cereal (provided by the school, I didn't just bring my own from home) and listen to this guy talk about how Plato's ideas or Michelangelo's frescos for an hour.
I've taken classes on historiography where the entire class was just a round-table discussion and the professor was sort of just a moderator for the group discussion every week, pointing us in the right direction with specific questions about the reading material each week. I've had classes about subjects that I thought would be super interesting, and then turned out to be horrible classes because the professors were too monotone and assigned work that felt unnecessary or forced. And many other classes in between that were neither memorable for being great, nor for being shit.
All that is to say that different people value different things from their history teachers/professors. Charisma definitely helps, but the actual subject matter helps a lot too (it's a lot easier to learn about something that you already sorta care about) as well as the structure of the class and how it jives with your personal learning preferences.
And especially on the public history side of things, where I might only have a few minutes to convey some history to people rather than a whole semester or year like history teachers/professors get, I find that the content is even more important. People don't like hearing numbers and dates and obscure names, they want the Hollywood stuff. Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll are what catches people's attention and leaves a lasting image in their head (for better or worse), so you need to use those key interesting points/stories to convey the other important shit you want to talk about. Teach them without making them think you're teaching them. I'm not trying to get you to learn about this history, no no no, I'm just telling you about this cool shit that happened and btw it just happens to relate to the history of this area, hmm what a coincidence. Think back to a historic site or building you might have visited. You probably don't remember the exact year it was built, but you might remember a crazy story that you heard about while there. It's a whole different ballgame is what I'm trying to get at compared to more traditional classroom environments.
My wife always talks about how much she hated history growing up because all her teachers happened to be boring as hell, but since meeting me has become way more interested in history because she enjoys how excited I get about it. And yeah I'm sure she's biased as hell, but it makes me a bit sad that there are tons of people out there that grew up with crappy history teachers and end up not caring much for it despite how integral it is to our lives (the 'subject of subjects' as the article puts it).
Long story short, what makes a good history teacher is different from person to person. No one person is the perfect history teacher to everyone out there, because people learn in different ways and have different interests. Heck nowadays my favorite history teachers are often times YouTube channels like RealLifeLore, Extra History, and Heroes and Legends. Back when I was a kid there was a very over-the-top show comparing different soldiers, like a samurai vs a knight vs Zulu warrior or whatever, and it was dumb as hell in hindsight, but kept me hooked and encouraged my love of history. 12-year-old me had different tastes and interests as current me, so how we learn history should not be a one-size-fits-all approach.