How Has Studying History Affectistorians Affected Your Life?

Anne Firor Scott

Editor's Note: At the OAH 2002 Annual Meeting, three pioneers, Anne Firor Scott, John Hope Franklin, and Gerda Lerner were given Lifetime Distinguished Service Awards by the organization. Due to a long standing commitment, Anne Scott was regretfully unable to attend the awards ceremony. When we heard her describe that commitment, we asked for more detail.

The whole thing began almost by accident. Duke University has consolidated all reunions into one

large gathering in April, and people all over campus organize events, which they hope will lure

alumni to their particular domains. In April 2000 the Women’s Studies Program announced that a handful of faculty, of whom I was one, would be on hand to greet former students. Eight of my former students attended, and lingered long after the appointed hour. They spoke so enthusiastically about this chance to bring me up to date on their doings that in 2001 I let the Alumni Office know that I would be in a certain room on Saturday afternoon of the reunion for a conversation with former students. A single sentence in the fat program included this information. That time forty-nine people showed up. This caught the attention of the organizers who asked me to do it again in 2002 and offered an elegant venue—the Rare Book Room in the Library—and prime time. I thought it might be a good idea to provide a topic for the discussion and came up with “How has the study of history affected your later life?”

The response was overwhelming—ninety people attended. The group varied markedly in age, ranging from a member of the class of 1937 to a couple of students who graduated in 1992. Husbands and wives came—some even bringing their teenage children—and all sorts of careers were represented including doctors, lawyers, social workers, teachers, and volunteer leaders. Only a few professional historians attended.

The discussion was a bit like the best class one had ever taught: everyone wanted to talk about an amazing variety of things. They wanted to report on the books that they had read, ask for other people’s views, and make speeches. Some even wanted to argue.

But when it came to the announced question, there were surprises. I don’t quite know now what I expected. I suppose without too much reflection I had assumed that somehow the study of history would tend to make people wiser, more reflective, less dogmatic than their contemporaries who had little knowledge of the past. At the end of the discussion I realized that no generalization is justified.

All the participants seemed to think that their historical studies had been and still were important to their lives—exactly how these studies were important, however, was not so clear. The libertarian, for example, insisted that studying history would show anybody that the American people had been hoodwinked into accepting the sixteenth amendment. (Murmur around the room: “What was the sixteenth amendment?”) Others had equally firm convictions—not necessarily related to what they had been taught— about the significance of the past. Many people testified to an ongoing desire to read well-written, popular history. Some attendees wanted my opinion about the recent plagiarism scandals. (I tried to be judicious, which might translate as timid.)

One interesting moment came when I asked my students if they remembered our long and intense discussions about the Great Crash of 1929 and its aftermath. Indeed, they did—and demonstrated the fact. I then asked if that knowledge affected their decisions about investments in the past three years? There was a sudden silence and a good deal of embarrassed head shaking accompanied by murmurs of “Well, I should have remembered.” Nobody, however, testified to having recognized a speculative bubble when it was before their eyes.

What did I learn from this experience?

• The “uses of history” are not at all clear cut. People take from the past what they are prepared to understand, and not what some teacher thinks they should understand. Some summon their perception of the past to support whatever they want to do now. Others search for parallels and seek explanations for what is happening at the moment.

• Good teachers are remembered long after the fact. Names of a few of my colleagues came up over and over. “As Professor X said . . .” was a recurrent phrase.

• The attendees enjoyed challenging each other and me—they clearly would rather be challenged than entertained.

As I pondered this experience, I was reminded of an earlier encounter. Last fall the library celebrated my eightieth birthday and invited two former students to speak. One of the speakers, an engineering graduate, had taken several social history courses with me. He was, I should probably note, a top notch student; the best in his class. He told me that the primary sources he had read in my class two decades prior—which dealt with the lives of ordinary people in the rapidly changing society of the early twentieth century—profoundly affected his own life. He works for a major engineering firm in a major American city and has a disabled child. His resources and training are such that he has been able to become a major advocate for such children with his local school board. “Because of what I learned in that course,” he said, “I was able to recognize the number of families with children like mine, who had no voice and no way of making their needs clear to the powers in our town. So I have tried to represent them as well as myself.”

Although this is only one story it is enough to make any teacher forget all the blue books, all the neglectful or cocky students, all the hard work and occasional frustration. Think well—a few stories like this make it all seem worthwhile. q

Anne Firor Scott is professor emerita of history at Duke University, and past president of the OAH (1983).