History Teaching and the Magazine of History: A Janus Perspective

Howard D. Mehlinger

The articles that have appeared since 1985 seem to have been aimed at answering one or more of the most urgent questions that confront the profession: Why should secondary school pupils study history?; What history should they study?; How can teachers become more effective instructors?; and, where can teachers obtain the resources they need to teach better?

Such questions are never answered with finality.  The best answers depend upon the time and the circumstances, and “best answers” are inevitably subject to debate.  The Magazine has served its readers well by offering many answers to these four questions and by supporting the debates prompted by some of the answers.

Occasionally, a single author has provided answers to all four questions.  In the “Dialogue” column of the second issue, published in fall 1985, the Magazine published Anne Firor Scott’s address, presented at the 1985 Professional Day luncheon for secondary teachers, where she answered the why, what, how, and where questions in the following way:

Why:  “I want them [students] to begin to learn what is for most of us a lifelong enterprise—how to evaluate evidence.”

Why:  “(F)irst the student must learn about his or her own past.”

How:  “Asking students to find out every single thing that was going on the day they were born can be a useful device for getting into recent history.”

Where:  “Interviewing grandmothers and great aunts for a paper in women’s history takes the young person right into the history of immigration, or of women’s work, or of the changing state of education, of wars and depressions as well as into changing culture patterns.”

But the journal has not relied upon single authors’ answering each of the four questions; it has also organized the journal to answer these questions in each issue.  For example, most issues have been organized around topics or themes such as reconstruction, urban history, peacemaking in American history, and life in revolutionary America.  The topical issues have responded to the interests of teachers and students; they have also armed teachers with ideas and materials not typically covered in pre-professional survey courses taken by teachers or in the textbooks used by their students.  The theme issues have provided a means for bringing high school teachers into contact with recent historical scholarship and to stimulate their thinking about the content to be covered in high school courses.

The journal also contains regular columns such as “Dialogue,” “On Teaching,” “Lesson Plans,” and “Educational Resources.”  In this way, the editors have ensured that why we teach history, what to teach, how to teach, and where to obtain resources are addressed regularly.

While the Magazine has consistently treated issues that concern teachers, it has also changed somewhat since it began.  A column called “Time Out” appeared in the first issue but never reappeared.  “Time Out” was intended to provide an opportunity for athletic coaches to comment on their pedagogical experiences.  I have no idea why it was dropped; perhaps it was because the reputation of coaches as social studies teachers in many public schools created an antipathy toward the notion that coaches might offer advice to history teachers.  However, the Magazine might have been ahead of its time because coaching is now often used as a metaphor for good teaching.

There have been other changes.  The design has changed since the first issue, and in 1990, the Magazine began to utilize part-time editors for special issues rather than rely upon full-time, professional editors.  Despite these changes, the essence of the Magazine has remained the same: a journal of, by, and for teachers, one that neither bashes nor panders to teachers but treats the teaching of history in the schools as a serious but difficult intellectual task.

Concern about the teaching of history in American schools has not been restricted to the Organization of American Historians or to the pages of the Magazine.  The journal has published during a time of extensive debate about the quality of American schooling in general and the teaching of history in particular.  What role has the Magazine of History performed in the wider discussion of school reform?

The current school reform movement may be said to have begun in April 1983 when in this city [Washington, D.C.] the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its report, Nation at Risk.  Partly because of its tightly written and colorful prose, making it eminently quotable and easy to read, and partly because it was brief, the report became an instant best seller; its ideas were discussed wherever educators and policy makers met to discuss education.

Although the Magazine of History was launched only two years following the publication of the Nation at Risk report, and while the decision to launch the journal must have been influenced by public concern over the quality of school instruction generally, the Magazine has been remarkably free of the biases that were reflected in the report and the legislative actions that followed its release.  For example, the Nation at Risk report, and the dozens of other special studies that followed in its wake, promoted the view that schools were failing, that teachers were poorly educated and unmotivated, and that students were pampered and lazy.  This led to legislation and government regulation aimed at controlling who could become a teacher, determining how teachers would be rewarded and made accountable, and deciding what students would be required to study and achieve before completing high school.  The popular view of the time was that the road to school improvement lay in greater government control and regulation.  It must have been tempting to join the chorus of school trashing and teaching bashing, but the Magazine marched to a different tune.  It confronted fairly the complex problems facing teachers by assuming its teacher readers were serious, hard-working professionals who needed encouragement and support, not additional regulations aimed at overcoming the problems posed by the weakest among them.

In reviewing all of the issues of the journal published over the last decade, I was surprised by the relative absence of articles and commentary about many of the issues that were driving school reform generally and the reform of history instruction in particular.  Even major reform efforts that were expected to have an impact on the way history is taught in the schools—e.g., Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools, the Bradley Commission, and the National Commission on Social Studies in the Schools—have been scarcely mentioned at all in the pages of the Magazine.  Even the special issue on “History Education Reform,” published in summer 1991, is superficial regarding major issues confronting the profession.  The articles about the National Council for History Education, the National History Education Network, and the History Teaching Alliance seem more designed to trumpet OAH activities than to confront substantive issues.  Even the article on UCLA’s Center for History in the Schools is more a descriptive piece about the work of the Center than a direct look at the issues confronting history teaching.  From one perspective, the Magazine has been a timid observer rather than a major player in the effort to reform history instruction in the schools.  Most of the visible activity was conducted elsewhere and hardly reported in the Magazine.

From another perspective, the Magazine has been a quiet but powerful voice influencing the purpose and content of history courses in the schools.  The direction of that influence has been consistent with OAH’s philosophy.  One expression of that point of view may be found in the OAH position statement on multicultural education, published in the issue on “History Education Reform” cited above.  The first paragraph answers why history should be taught; the second suggests what should be taught.

“A primary goal of history education is to foster mutual understanding and respect among people of different backgrounds and traditions. . . . A successful history education should help students understand what binds Americans together while simultaneously promoting respect for America’s pluralism and diversity.  We hope it will contribute to realizing a common future of reconciliation and equality across the boundaries of race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

The history curricula of public schools should be constructed around the principle that all people have been significant actors in human events.  Students should understand that history is not limited to the study of dominant political, social, and economic elites.  It also encompasses the individual and collective quest of ordinary people for a meaningful place for themselves in their families, in their communities, and in the larger world” (1).

During its decade of publication, through its choice of topics and authors, the Magazine has promoted the OAH view of the purpose and content of history.  While no one can measure exactly what the Magazine’s influence has been, the perspective it espouses is the dominant one among historians and is prominent among school history teachers.  The professional acceptance of this perspective has been demonstrated recently by the publication of the American History and World History Standards; the rejection of this point-of-view by many outside of the profession can be judged by the reception given to the Standards by Congress, state legislatures, and editorial writers.  Thus, the Magazine of History, in a very quiet way, appears to have had a tremendous impact on the teaching of history in the schools.  It is, however, premature to judge the long-term effect of its influence.

However, during the same time that historians and history teachers have acted to reform history teaching, another movement, unconnected to the first, has been challenging the ways schools do their work.  Just as computers and telecommunications have been transforming other sectors of American society, they are beginning to transform schools as well; and the history profession seems poorly prepared either to take advantage of the opportunities these technologies provide or to resist their impact.  Indeed, with regard to the use of technology, some schools are well ahead of those colleges and universities where teachers receive their initial training.

The extent of the impact of technology on schools over the past decade can be measured quantitatively.  In 1983, there were fewer than 50,000 computers in all schools; by 1994, the estimate was 5.5 million.  In 1981, only about eighteen percent of schools had one or more computers for instruction; by 1994, this figure had risen to ninety-eight percent.  For all practical purposes, there is hardly a school in the United States without at least one computer.

Most American schools now have access to broadcast video, either by satellite or by cable.  Many schools will soon have two-way interactive video whereby teachers in one school can teach students in other schools.  The VCR has become the most ubiquitous piece of school technology.  Virtually every school has at least one, and history teachers are among the biggest users.  CD-ROMs and videodiscs offer additional ways to employ video.  In 1994, twenty-six percent of all school districts had videodisc players as compared to eighteen percent in 1992-93.  By the end of the decade, all teachers will have access to such equipment.  These tools, as well as others to come, are transforming the way history is taught in schools.  For example, the place of the textbook is eroding rapidly.  Who will want to use a pre-digested, 600-page printed book when a virtual library of information is readily available electronically to every student?  Technology also alters the roles of the teacher and the student.  In the past, the teacher set the instructional agenda; the new technology makes it possible to individualize instruction more than before.  Teachers have wished to be seen as content experts on topics under study; in the future, students will have access to people who are truly content experts.  Students can take greater charge of their own learning, and the role of teachers will become more a guide to resources than the primary source of information—a role more analogous to that assumed by professors in graduate seminars.

These changes are already taking place in leading elementary and secondary schools.  Even now, students participate in “electronic field trips” that take them by live broadcast to sites all over the world.  For example, in May, Turner Adventure Learning transported students electronically on a three-day field trip to Berlin to participate in VE-Day observances.  Students had the opportunity to interact electronically with students from Berlin, London, and Moscow in order to gain their perspective on the meaning and significance of VE Day.  Textbooks are changing as well.  For example, the Florida Department of Education has contracted with a computer software firm to build an entire social studies curriculum using CD-ROMs, videodiscs, and other electronic products to replace textbook-based instruction.

By the year 2005, when we hold the twentieth anniversary of the Magazine of History, the nature of history teaching in schools, and possibly in colleges, will have changed greatly.  The four persistent questions of why, what, how, and when will remain, but the answers will not be the ones we have discussed during the last ten years.
If the Magazine of History is to serve future teachers as well as it has assisted teachers in the past, it must take into account the impact that technology is having and will continue to have on   how teachers teach and students learn       history.