One Hundred Years of History Teaching

Ron Briley

Teaching is sometimes perceived as the neglected stepchild of a historical profession focused on research and scholarship. This perception, however, was certainly challenged by the session on teaching sponsored by the Centennial Committee of the OAH at the 2007 Minneapolis convention. Five presenters from various walks of the historical profession chronicled the expanding role that teaching and outreach play within the OAH, but the audience was most energized by the concluding commentary presented by former OAH president Leon Litwack. While acknowledging that the OAH is to be congratulated for increasing its commitment to teaching in both the schools and colleges, Litwack, nevertheless, challenged the organization and its members to assume a more active role in addressing the savage inequality present within America's public schools. Based on audience reaction, Litwack clearly struck a nerve with those in attendance, many of whom teach history in the nation's schools.

The session began with introductory comments by another former OAH president, Gary B. Nash. Nash praised the OAH for its support of the National History Standards project which was attacked by Lynne Cheney of the National Endowment for the Humanities for ostensibly abandoning more traditional political and diplomatic topics while promoting a more diverse American history focusing on race, class, and gender.

After Nash's brief opening remarks, I presented an overview of the role of teaching in the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (MVHA). Teaching was not a major priority in the early years of the MVHA as social studies replaced history in the school curriculum following the First World War. In the late 1930s, however, the association launched a new initiative in history education by instituting a Teacher's Section in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review (MVHR). The wartime idealism of the MVHA regarding its obligations to history education, nevertheless, could not be sustained in the postwar period. In 1947, the MVHA executive committee appointed a subcommittee, chaired by Thomas D. Clark, to study the relationship of the association to the teaching of history. The subcommittee concluded that the core of the MVHA consisted of research-oriented scholars, while the secondary school teaching profession was "neither research-oriented nor stable as a long-range professional organization." The Teacher's Section of the MVHR was dropped in 1949, and in his 1953 MVHA presidential address, James L. Sellers concluded that the organization's endeavors to attract public school teachers of history was unsuccessful. But the reconstructed OAH was prepared to make a new outreach toward teachers in the schools following the issuing of such reports as the Bradley Commission on History in the Schools (1987) and A Nation at Risk (1993).

The effort of the OAH to establish a Focus on Teaching Day and provide a framework for collaboration in K–16 history education was addressed by Howard Shorr and Marjorie Bingham. Shorr, who currently teaches at Portland (Oregon) Community College, was a renowned history teacher at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles when he was tapped by the OAH leadership to organize the first Focus on Teaching Day at the 1984 Los Angeles conference. Although funding was made available for teachers to attend the convention through a Rockefeller Foundation grant, which awarded the OAH a three-year grant of approximately $250,000 for teacher activities, Shorr recounted his fears that few teachers would attend the meeting. Speaking before an overflow room in 1984 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, Shorr recognized that there was considerable interest in improving history teaching and fostering collaboration between the schools and universities. Shorr, however, noted that the dialogue between history teachers in the schools and university professors of history was still somewhat strained. The OAH maintained a separate registration process for teachers and professors, and Shorr asserted that he would not be treated as a second-class citizen and enter through the back door.

This separation was dropped for the second OAH Focus on Teaching Day at the 1988 Minneapolis convention. The local organizer for the 1988 Teaching Day was Marjorie Bingham, a member of the Bradley Commission, founder of the Organization of History Teachers, and a teacher at St. Louis Park High School in suburban Minneapolis. In her remarks for the Centennial teaching session, Bingham emphasized three major reasons for the establishment of a Focus on Teaching Day: to encourage the participation of more teachers in the OAH, to demonstrate good teaching, and to provide opportunities for unintended outcomes. As an example of these unintended outcomes, Bingham cited the network of OAH Rockefeller Scholars who constituted a pool of teachers for positions within the OAH and who played instrumental roles in the formation of the OAH Magazine of History, Organization of History Teachers, and the National Council for History Education. Bingham concluded that the Focus on Teaching Day has a "tradition to uphold for good thought, creative ideas, and shared plotting."

Charles Zappia of San Diego Mesa College cautioned that in the discussion of collaboration, the contributions and challenges of community college historians not be ignored. Recovering from surgery, Zappia appeared via a well prepared DVD package. He congratulated the OAH for recent initiatives to recruit community college teachers into the organization's leadership and committee structure as well as for the regional workshop series for two-year faculty which began on June 21-23, 2007, at El Camino College in Torrance, California. Zappia, however, observed that major obstacles remain for teaching at the community college level where adjuncts are often employed. Teaching loads are heavy, research assistance is often nonexistent, and pay is generally low. Community college teachers feel isolated from the historical profession. Zappia, nonetheless, insisted that he was proud to be among the community college historians, who teach the majority of American history surveys at the collegiate level.

While Zappia warned about the dangers of a two-tiered system within the profession on the collegiate level, Timothy Thurber, who is a member of the OAH Teaching Committee and teaches history at Virginia Commonwealth University, emphasized the commitment of the OAH to improving history education and teaching at all levels over the last quarter century. Specifically, Thurber touted the organization's sponsorship for the Magazine of History, collaboration with the Teaching American History Gant Program, cooperation with National History Day, adoption of the public radio program Talking History, honoring of an outstanding K-12 educator with the Mary Kay Bonsteel Tachau Precollegiate Teaching Award, and promotion of history through the National Coalition for History. Thurber also commended the Journal of American History for paying greater attention to teaching issues, concluding that the OAH has evolved from "primarily a scholarly organization to a more broadly-based professional body that views teaching as central to its mission."

In his commentary, Leon Litwack agreed with all the speakers that the OAH has expanded its commitment to history education and the schools in recent years, but he raised serious reservations regarding the state of education in the public schools. According to Litwack, too many of the initiatives in education sponsored by professional organizations such as the OAH serve private or well-financed suburban public schools. Litwack challenged the OAH and his colleagues to address the essential question of economic inequality in the nation's schools. He urged professional historians to work with teachers in the public schools to break down the class and racial barriers contributing to the inequality in America education. In fact, Litwack suggested that one of the greatest reforms for the nation's educational system would be the abolishment of private schools and education. The idea was greeted with considerable applause by many of the public school teachers in the room.

Audience reaction focused on Litwack's remarks, which resonated with many of the teachers present. Several teachers called on the OAH to work with teachers unions in questioning the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, which by emphasizing punitive standardized testing restricts the ability of teachers to foster critical historical thinking. Whether one fully agrees with the ideas of Litwack or not, this lively session provided ample proof that teaching issues matter to the historical profession. While there has been considerable expansion of the organization's mission from the MVHA to the OAH over the last hundred years, issues of how to achieve a democratic citizenship education for all Americans will continue to confront the OAH and the nation during the twenty-first century.