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The History Curriculum
Michael J. Galgano, Editor The history curriculum has drawn considerable public attention in recent years concerning what we teach and how we do it. The Stanford debate is perhaps best known; however, it is hardly an isolated example. What has been largely ignored by our external critics is what Professor Gordon T. Stewart of Michigan State de- scribes as the ongoing reality in departments everywhere. Curricu- lum development is always underway and is more often initiated by the departments themselves than undertaken in response to outside pressures. The two essays included in this sixth issue of the OAH Council of Chairs Newsletter illustrate two dimensions of curricular revisions at the college level. Evolutionary developments, triggered by discoveries in various his- torical fields and the employment of new faculty with diverse specialties, are the norm in most departments according to Profes- sor Stewart. At the same time, owing to the backgrounds and pre- paration of our students, innovations in subject matter and tech- niques must be balanced by traditional material and approaches. Most students taking history classes are not majors; rather, they are satisfying university requirements often established outside the department. In defining courses for them, we must bear in mind the purpose of history within the framework of a liberal arts education. Also, Professor Stewart correctly reminds us of the extent to which multidisciplinary instruction has become more necessary at the undergraduate level. Finally, he provides valuable insights into how a department may best work with uni- versity committees and administrators to enhance the overall undergraduate education. His essay helps us to see opportunities and pitfalls faced by large departments as they review the curriculum. The experience of Emory and Henry, detailed by Professor Eugene Rasor, offers a somewhat different model. Since this department is small and relatively stable, it does not often employ appreciable numbers of new faculty. It undertook a more formal curriculum review following the retirement of half of its full-time members. Once replacements were hired, the new department embarked upon a methodical self-examination in preparation for an external review of course offerings. Each class was scrutinized and the department decided to replace traditional chronological approaches with more thematic and comparative ones. Greater emphasis will be placed on research, critical thinking, and writing. The result is a substantial overhaul of existing classes relating to content, meth- od, and approach. Although major revisions are not anticipated in the near future, the department will monitor each change and introduce revisions as needed. Professors Stewart and Rasor have illustrated different strategies regarding curricular changes. Their experiences may complement or contradict your own. Your responses and reactions are welcomed and will be printed in future issues of the Newsletter. Curricular Changes in the History Department at Michigan State University Gordon T. Stewart, Chair In the current debate on the undergraduate curriculum as it is con- ducted in the national press and even in specialized journals there is a somewhat artificial view presented. This view is Manichean in nature. It supposes on the one side a traditional, even old-fash- ioned curriculum supported by conservative faculty members who resist all changes no matter how enlightened or reasonable they might be in terms of new scholarship in various fields. It sup- poses on the other hand progressive groups of scholars usually, represented as working on behalf of women and minorities, pushing their aims for a complete restructuring of the curriculum to the point where all traditional approaches will be thrown out. On ei- ther side loaded terms are used to belittle the enemy and make the debate seem dramatically confrontational. This Manichean presentation of the issues is a false one. The cur- riculum in history here at Michigan State, as well as at similar institutions around the country, is always changing as new develop- ments take place in various fields and as new faculty members are hired to teach courses in the curriculum. This department, for ex- ample, hired four new historians during the academic year 1987-88 and each of these young scholars will bring new approaches and different perspectives to our existing offerings in their fields. Similarly, the diversity of faculty in general leads to continual reexamination of the curriculum. In a department with an active strength of 32 faculty members, 12 colleagues are women and/or minority. Not all of them are in fields that centrally focus on the history of minorities or the history of women, but they do bring perspectives to bear on their subject matter in a way that changes the traditional emphases. None of this is unusual. All of it is healthy because it keeps the curriculum alive to contemporary trends in scholarship. As Renato Rosaldo of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford remarked during Stanford's debate on its core curriculum: ``Would a science student be expected to take a course that hadn't changed since 1930?'' None of the history courses at Michigan State are now taught as they were in 1930 and none are taught as they were in 1968 and that is as it should be. In another five years, our courses will take different approaches than they currently do. This is in the nature of education. As historians, above all other scholars, we should understand that nothing is fixed, that the profession of history is a constant, unremitting effort to understand the past and that we will never arrive at the point where we have a final answer that will last forever. That effort is bound to be different according to the world in which we live. The concept of the past held by the Greeks or the concept of the past held by a factory worker in nine- teenth-century Britain are different. The meaning of American history will vary according to who is telling the tale. We want our students to understand this as we ourselves understand it in our own work. The best historians and the best students are those who are knowledgeable about as many viewpoints as are necessary for a comprehensive understanding of a particular topic or field. It is essential to point out that, in adopting the approach that our course material should be scrutinized constantly with a view to possible change, the department does not think it is pursuing the shibboleths of particular propagandists in the profession. No one could describe Professor John Pocock as an unthinking or shoddy historian who hitches his reputation to the latest bandwagon. As long ago as 1975, in an article in the Journal of Modern History, Pocock proposed a useful framework for ``a pluralist and multi-cultural perception of British history.'' Pocock made this pitch not to please any current manifestations of Scottish, Welsh or Irish nationalism, but to make the simple but powerful point that a complete understanding of British history requires scholars to have sound knowledge of other cultures outside of London. The stance represented by Pocock's phrase is the stance this department takes toward curricular changes. This does not necessarily lead to frequent wholesale structural changes but it does mean that historians who comprise the department are always monitoring the subject matter of their courses and are making judgments about different perspectives that could be usefully incorporated into them. On the other hand, in a large public university with a wide range of students, many of whom have little or no knowledge of their own country's history, far less the history of other cultures, then the department understands it has an obligation to conduct a good deal of teaching that some critics might deride as traditional. In many of the courses we provide chronological accounts and cover elemen- tary material about the causes and consequences of wars, the causes and consequences of economic change and the evolution of different political systems. In this context the debate in the country about the lack of basic knowledge possessed by American undergraduates has certainly had an impact. One colleague, for example, in a course on American social history insists that students pass through a series of map exercises to ensure that they have a basic knowledge of American geography before embarking on a course dealing with the most recent developments in social history. There is, in short, a creative tension in our courses between the demands we feel for incorporating recent scholarship and the demands we feel in terms of presenting traditional or basic information to the students. Having established this general intellectual context in which the department approaches curricular matters, it is also essential to set out the context created by a large public university. In particular, it is necessary to bear in mind that over 80 percent of the students who take our courses are not history majors but are taking three or four courses in history either to fulfill general education requirements or to complete cognates and such require- ments set out by other colleges. Designing the curriculum is not based simply on the needs of history majors. It is also worth bearing in mind that the department has no single viewpoint on curricular matters or on the writing of history for that matter. The diverse viewpoints represented in the national debate are also represented in the department. It would be counterproductive therefore to try and recast the curriculum in response to the arguments made by either of the two extremes as represented in the popular press. One of the themes which has had a noticeable effect on the depart- ment is the concern that modern American students need to be more educated about the world outside the United States. In response to this concern, the department has established a sequence of introductory courses in non-Western history which parallels our sequences in European and American history. These three courses provide an overview of the African experience, the Latin American experience and the Asian experience. Within the European and American sequences, while no structural change has occurred, indi- vidual colleagues in the department have clearly made thoughtful responses to outside criticism as well as making the usual changes that flow from their own scholarship. For example, in the European courses there is now more attention given to the history of science and technology as well as to the history of women. Similarly on the American side, our courses engage the students much more directly in the work being done on women's history and the history of minorities and native Americans. However, these changes have not been implemented in such a way that the traditional concerns of these courses such as the causes of the American Revolution or of the Civil War are neglected. It is simply that the approach in those courses is more multidimensional than ten years ago. There is also a marked tendency in the department that reflects concern raised by the criticism most easily associated with Lynne V. Cheney of the National Endowment for the Humanities, that histo- rians tend to be too narrowly specialized. Apart from the broad education that takes place in most of our general education courses, this view of the profession ignores the extent to which multidisciplinary work is becoming more common. For example, this department teaches courses jointly with the Art Department, the Anthropology Department, and several colleagues are actively en- gaged in teaching and developing courses in American Studies, Women's Studies, and African Studies. In general, these trends re- flect a widespread view in the department that in addition to an appreciation of the complexity of their own country's history, stu- dents must be better educated about other cultures in the world outside the United States. This does not mean to say that such perspectives lead to easily identifiable or generally acceptable curriculum changes. It does mean, however, that the debate about the undergraduate curriculum heightens our consciousness about what we do as scholars and as teachers. One of the most important con- sequences of this kind of thinking is that colleagues are now more ready to accept that the courses they teach to a general undergrad- uate audience will be less directly related to their research interests than has typically been the case in the past twenty years or so. Because we are a department in a large public university, while we have the usual responsibility for developing the history curriculum we are also directly affected by university-level decision making about the undergraduate curriculum. At Michigan State University, we have been fortunate in these past two years to have the leadership of a provost who has committed the university to making thoughtful and far-reaching changes in the core curriculum. Although he is a nuclear physicist, the provost has an extensive knowledge and deep interest in the humanities and is clearly committed to improving the curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences in ways which will make the undergraduate experience better balanced. In particular, as a result of the recommendations made by the Committee to Review Undergraduate Education (CRUE) established by the provost, several major changes are to be made in the core curriculum. Although some of these changes reflect the peculiar structure here at Michigan State University, their general direction has been affected by the national debate on American undergraduate education. Put briefly, the CRUE proposals are in- formed by the view that the traditional curriculum concentrated too exclusively on the values and achievements of dominant social entities and thereby undervalued the contributions and experiences of disadvantaged or powerless groups. The report also emphasized the need for American undergraduates to have a better understanding of their own cultures as well as the cultures of other parts of the world. While this summary would seem to suggest that the CRUE report has too easily succumbed to the demands of particular lob- bies, the situation is not that simple. The report is also criti- cal of the cafeteria approach to the core curriculum which allows students to pick courses as their fancy takes them. It calls for colleges and departments to design coherent sequences that will provide students with a sound general knowledge of U.S. and Europe- an history, that will seriously address the need to provide a global dimension to the undergraduate experience and that will help students understand the relationships between cultures within any society. In the wake of this report, the department will have to reevaluate the sequences of courses it offers to the general undergraduate au- dience. One aspect of this reevaluation is the proposal that such core courses ought to be distributed throughout the student's un- dergraduate experience. Instead of trying to complete all these general education courses during the freshman and sophomore years, students will be encouraged to take sequences which work vertically through their four years of education. The justification for this change is that so long as general education or core curriculum courses are confined to the freshman and sophomore years, students tend to treat them less seriously than courses in their majors. Students view the core curriculum as ``something to be gotten out of the way'' before they proceed to the really serious business in their various majors. This will give the department an opportunity to rethink the level of sophistication that can be obtained in overview courses set at the senior level. The possibilities here are most interesting. Under the present structure since our general education courses usually come during the first two years of a student's career, it is too easy to make these courses elementary and argue that the students are too ill-prepared or immature to accept a really sophisticated overview of, let us say, American history. However, if students are seniors when they take such courses then it will be possible to ask for more demanding reading and more serious intellectual engagement with American history. In general the kind of pressure put on the department from the university community simply intensifies the pressure we put on ourselves as we take the national debate into account. The other colleges in the university tend to want their students to have ``the basics in history'' rather than esoteric courses from too specialized historians. That, of course, trivializes the issue to some extent, but the issue is clearly there. In sum, the leadership provided by the provost and by the dean of the college is most stimulating and is forcing the department to think hard and deep about its undergraduate offerings and the relationship of those offerings to our research interests. One of the concerns in the department is that the rethinking of the curriculum in the national and institutional context sketched out above will lead to a neglect of those students who major in history in the sense that the more our courses are directed toward a gener- al audience, the less easy it will be to provide the kind of training in the use of sources and knowledge of historiography required of majors. To ensure that this doesn't occur, the department has established two courses exclusively for majors at the beginning and end of their undergraduate careers. HST 201 (put at this level to catch transfer students as well as freshmen) introduces majors to history by intensive study of the work of one historian. HST 499 is a capstone seminar which requires the student to undertake supervised primary research. In this manner the department thinks that it can continue to give proper attention to the specialist needs of the majors while making thoughtful changes in its range of undergraduate courses designed for a broad student audience. As historians, we understand that the present has always had an im- pact on the past as that is presented as a construct in books, lec- tures, and popular culture. As historians, we also understand the origins and value of traditions, we understand the ramifications of conventional thinking, and we understand the shallowness that re- sults from doing things merely because they are fashionable. With these insights on the human condition, we cannot be stand-patters on the curriculum but neither can we rush into developing a cur- riculum that reflects only fleeting concerns. As we move into a new phase of curriculum change, we will continue to question stan- dard assumptions that have grown up in the last two decades, we will listen attentively to critiques from the larger community and we will continue the intellectual struggle to present as true and as comprehensive a view of history as is humanly possible. The Making of a History Curriculum Eugene L. Rasor, Chair Members of our department believed the time was appropriate for the development of an entirely new curriculum. Beginning in the spring and summer of 1988, we conducted planning sessions among ourselves and formulated some general guidelines. The situation, as we saw it, was as follows. The Department of History of Emory & Henry College, a four-year liberal arts institution of 750 students in southwestern Virginia celebrating its sesquicentennial, has experienced major changes. Two of the three full-time faculty, each with over thirty years ex- perience, retired last year. Two new replacements with teaching experience are now in place. The Classics professor, the academic dean, and the president, Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., each offer history courses on occasion. Reform of the course offerings in history had not been undertaken in twenty years. The time seemed propitious for a thorough self-study with the objective of restructuring the curriculum. The col- lege has just shifted back to a semester calendar, has implemented a new, two-semester, team-taught survey of the Western Tradition for all first-year students, and has recently signed cooperative, articulation agreements with neighboring public community colleges. Enrollment is good for the college and in history courses. There are an adequate number of majors. The department is responsible for the Social Studies-Secondary Teacher certification process. The college and the department remain committed to the liberal arts and are determined to concentrate our resources to improve our status in that regard. The General Studies requirements represent our core curriculum. Historians teach in a number of the courses, e.g., Western Tradition and Global Studies; most are taught by fac- ulty from all of the disciplines and none are strictly histori- cally-based. We assessed our resources, aspirations, and strengths. All history faculty have Ph.Ds, impressive credentials, and are academically and professionally active. The college supports such endeavors and resources to fund faculty development are improving dramatically. Library facilities and holdings, including access to computers, are adequate. The General Studies and the departmental curriculums are strong. Our students have always been able to enter graduate and professional schools of choice indeed, we wish more would do so. The college and the department have excellent records in producing teachers of quality and many of them are employed in nearby schools. There is a viable Pre-Law Society with a good track re- cord. Alumni support and contributions are very good. Relations and rapport with neighboring institutions (e.g., Clinch Valley and King Colleges) and four regional public community col- leges are solid. Emory & Henry faculty peers in social sciences, education, and other disciplines, have been cooperative and respon- sive. History has participated in an academic internship program (e.g., in pre-law, archives, museums, libraries, and historical preservation) which is mature and productive. There are several significant awards, scholarships, internships, and fellowships available, including study abroad and in Richmond, Williamsburg, Washington, and the George Marshall Library. Special opportunities exist related to a Methodist Church Conference archives, Appala- chian Oral History, National History Day, and Social Studies Coun- cils. Resources for visiting scholars, lecturers, and speakers are available, something the department has exploited. During the last two decades the following persons, among others, have participated on campus: Anne Firor Scott, William Appleman Williams, Henry Steele Commager, George Rud, Gerhard Weinberg, Norman Graebner, and Walter LaFeber. Eugene Genovese is coming in April. We acknowledged our weaknesses, deficiencies, areas of vulnerabil- ity, and potential dangers. Current faculty members are all white males. The total number is inadequate for our responsibilities. Our training and areas of expertise are too narrow and traditional and we lack obvious bases for cross-cultural, nonwestern, and interdisciplinary expertise. Budgets and salaries are relatively low. There is fierce competition over adding new faculty. There is no student honor society in history or social science. No current faculty member can continue the Appalachian Oral History project. We have no contacts with local historical societies. Under these circumstances we began preparations for reform. Since there were friends and colleagues in neighboring schools with whom we had worked previously, we decided to invite them and students theirs and ours. We decided to incorporate all of this into one occasion and sponsor a day-long workshop, ``The Making of a History Curriculum.'' Prior to the time of the workshop, members of the department discussed plans and objectives with other members of the faculty. Then we selected knowledgeable consultants, invited our colleagues in history at six nearby colleges, and invited the best students. Seventeen persons participated in the workshop on Saturday, October 22. Brunch and lunch were served during the proceedings. Partic- ipating were: Dr. Michael Galgano, Chair, Department of History, James Madison University, consultant; Dr. Mary Butler, Assistant Professor of History, Colgate University, consultant; Dr. Bruce Clayton, Professor of History and former Chair, Allegheny College, consultant; two history professors from Clinch Valley College; four history professors from three community colleges; and two students from Emory & Henry. After a day of presentations, deliberations, and discussion, we were much better prepared to proceed with plans for restructuring our curriculum. The consultants made their recommendations stressing the need for renewed emphasis on research, writing, and critical thinking in all courses. Newly developed courses should fill serious gaps in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary studies. An example of ``ocean rim studies,'' a program featured at Johns Hopkins and Northwestern Universities, was cited. Other sugges- tions included comparative cultures, ethnicity, anthropology, gender, nonwestern and quantitative studies. Specific planned arrangements for library acquisitions and student assessment should be implemented. There were further refinements among history faculty and others, mostly in the social sciences. A proposal for a completely revised curriculum was submitted to the appropriate committee and then to the faculty. It was passed at the December meeting. The new history curriculum can be summarized as follows: the traditional chronological divisions and emphases have been super- seded by courses stressing comparative concepts and themes; an entire ``Area'' from which all majors must take at least one course is ``Social History;'' another ``Area'' is ``World Views;'' seminars are added as options for the Senior Project; and examples of new courses developed as a result of our studies are: comparative revolutions, comparative colonialism, comparative slavery, war and society, social history of the family, regional history of Appalachia, the New South, Latin America, Central Eu- rope, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Medieval Studies, a course in global systems, and a new 100-level General Studies course in Modern World History. This new history curriculum will be imple- mented next September. Every course listed can be offered with existing faculty at least once in a two-year cycle. Majors are also required to take one course in ancient history. Other recommendations and innovations will be implemented. We plan to exploit opportunities of lectureships and sabbaticals to present perspectives to fill serious gaps noted above. There is still much to do but we have a better vision and the assurance that our peers support us. We must now concentrate on revising and restructuring our offerings so that we will be ready with new courses and programs by the beginning of the next academic year. Such has been the process of ``the making of a history cur- riculum'' at Emory & Henry College. Council of Chairs Meet at AHA in Cincinnati Arnita A. Jones Attendance was small but conversation lively at the Council of Chairs luncheon held December 28, 1988 in conjunction with the Cincinnati meeting of the American Historical Association. Speakers were Fred Miller, currently at the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Jane Landers, re- cently-appointed Director of the History Teaching Alliance. Miller, who is serving as a program officer in the Tools and Access Programs at NEH, is also an archivist and historian at Temple Uni- versity. He discussed the need for better training for work in electronic records and databases for history students, as well as NEH support for research using these new technologies. Jane Landers described the programs of the History Teaching Alli- ance, an organization devoted to improving history education by promoting a national network of collaborative seminars between university professors and secondary school teachers. A joint pro- gram of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the National Council for the Social Studies, the Alliance is located at the Department of History, Uni- versity of Florida, 4131 Turlington Hall, Gainesville, FL 32611. The meeting also included a discussion of the general information and communication needs of history department chairs. AHA Task Force to Meet at OAH in St. Louis James B. Gardner The American Historical Association's Task Force on the Under- graduate History Major invites OAH annual meeting attendees to a special session from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. on Friday, April 7, in room 46 of the Adam's Mark Hotel, St. Louis. The task force is one of fourteen disciplinary and interdisciplinary groups established under the auspices of the Association of American Colleges with funding from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the Ford Foundation. Its charge is to study current departmental practices and recommend ways to define, strengthen, and improve the expe- rience of study in depth for undergraduates in history. Myron Marty, chair of the five-member task force, will provide a progress report on this effort and seek response and input from the OAH membership. For more information regarding the meeting, please contact the AHA offices in Washington, DC. |
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