It’s not a comfortable time for our country right now. For some reason, perhaps due to our enforced confinement, my husband and I started remembering family stories—our own family histories, good, bad, indifferent. Stories in which personalities peek through the misty past.
I’d love for you to share such stories, those that you like to tell but may not have an audience for, especially if you have exhausted the patience of children and grandchildren. To me these stories bring the past alive. Here are two of mine:
First story:
My great-grandfather’s parents came from Ireland in 1837 and farmed in Ohio. (I always praise the potato because without it they [and thus I] would probably not have been born, and they were lucky to miss the horrible famine of 1847). Their son John was born in 1847 in Ohio. Like many countrymen, the family moved west around 1860. They reached St. Louis, where they were to wait for a boat to take them up the Mississippi to Wisconsin. The family briefly dispersed, with plans to meet at the port. But John, then aged 14, never arrived. Continue reading “You and I Are What History Is About”
I have enjoyed nearly all my courses at NC State, but I have sometimes been disappointed with my fellow students. Frequently, they fail to speak up. Maybe they aren’t prepared or, for some reason, they just don’t want to talk. This occurs mostly with undergraduates but graduate students, too, can avoid participation in discussion for long periods of time.
I know it’s frustrating to the professors, some of whom go to great lengths to encourage discussion—requiring students to write short essays for each class or having a student present a five-minute précis of the day’s readings. Sometimes these work and sometimes they don’t. Some instructors also have pop quizzes to persuade the students to be prepared—although no professors of mine have used this tactic. Oh, and then there’s grading attendance and participation. That doesn’t seem to work at all.
I recently came across a guide for college instructors in the Chronicle of Higher Education that sheds some light on this problem.[1] Written by Jay Howard, a sociologist who has studied classroom interaction, “How to Hold a Better Class Discussion” explains that two “classroom norms” protect students from having to speak up.[2]
In academia these days, you can get into trouble for what you say. Megan Neely, a Duke assistant professor in biostatistics, lost an administrative position for pleading with Chinese students to speak more English—for the sake of their careers. Calling them out (in an email) was considered insensitive. Jeffrey McCutcheon, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, had to apologize for suggesting that students who claimed excessive test anxiety (and thus sought special accommodation) might simply be unprepared rather than suffering from a disability.[1] That too was considered insensitive.
Until now, I have been fairly comfortable writing about history. True, I’ve found some words you shouldn’t use, such as “barbarians,” but that’s okay with me. We don’t have to echo the Romans or their prejudices. But here’s one I’m beginning to wonder about: “universal.”
A couple of months ago in class, I said (all too confidently) that some human tendencies can explain similarities between the history of one region and that of another. The explanation doesn’t have to be that the regions were connected through trade or other contact. I gave a few examples: governments tend to grow; people tend to rebel; knowledge accumulates; cultural similarities tend to support territorial consolidation, etc.
I was criticized (by another student) for “universalizing.”
A few years ago, at a used bookstore in Leonardstown, Maryland, I picked up How to Study History. [1] Written by two well-known historians, Norman F. Cantor and Richard I. Schneider, it was published in 1967 and reflects views about history that prevailed when I was in college. They differ quite a lot from those I’m being taught now, as I will point out.
But first, you’ve got to love this book! It was written to give undergraduates a play-by-play description of how to study history. Somewhat patronizingly, it reminds the student “to carry with him [yes, him; it’s 1967] at all times a pen and some kind of note paper” and, ”as a general rule, avoid group study.”[2] But it also helps the student distinguish between demonstrable proof and inferential proof and analyze both literary and artistic primary sources.
It sets high standards. The book includes two sample papers by freshmen. Overall comment on one: “A superior paper, yet you can do better. Try to be even more concise and to the point. B+.”[3] It’s been a long time, I believe, since superior papers received a mere B+
“The Political Drama,” from the British Library (1834-35). “I govern the people. I pray for the people. I legislate for the people. I fought for the people. I preserve the peace for all four. And above the devil on the extreme right is; And I’ll have all five.”
Recently, I was asked whether historians avoid humor. My recent experience shouted “yes,” but I recalled that when I was a child my parents owned a small, amusing book about history. The author’s name was Richard Armour. I googled him and bought two of his books. I find him funny.
Armour was the author of at least 35 books and all kinds of poems, jokes, and essays. He was also a professor at such schools as Northwestern University and Claremont Graduate School and even dean of the faculty at Scripps College.
His best-known book, It All Started with Columbus, is a riff on the education that most Americans received in the 1950s.[1] (Every year in elementary school, like clockwork, we learned about the explorers: we never seemed to get further.) It All Started. . . is often just silly, as Armour makes puns or tangles up the facts, most of which Americans probably knew at the time.
