Reflections on the question: How have external expectations constrained teaching and learning in history, and how might the digital turn disrupt those constraints?
Historians have to explain what they do, basically we have to explain why our stories may not be interesting to people who would rather be watching historical movies, docudramas or curled up with a novel. Historians have “rigor”, in other words, our stories are important and true. It is human behavior to retrench and defend when attacked. The discipline of History has two internal cultural reactions which have resulted in removing the discipline from the forefront of society – we talk to ourselves and we rely on the evidence of our practices, which others cannot see or understand.
Talking to ourselves. Our authoritative sources are documents and archives, which few people wish to spend time in and to gain authority, historians cite other historians. It appears that will not change as it is even included in Caldor and Steffes, Measuring College Learning in History’s list of essential concepts and competencies, which makes a valiant effort to identify, define and create measurements for the activity of historians, twice! Historians trace the evolution of thought through other historians. This means you have to ‘know’ the other historians (historiography) to participate in half the dialog.
Evidence & Historical practice. The common person sees an object (in the broadest sense of the term) of the past as interesting but useless. Historians value objects of the past as clues upon which to build connections to stories that have influenced our own.
History is so ‘academic’, but helpful in certain situations. Its place in learning is revered, but no one is quite sure why. Historians will tell you their work is important. Public monuments, parks and museums, where it is so prominently displayed, reinforce these conceptions that history is remote, but essential to our identity and understanding of ourselves. No one wants to be reminded of their faults, mistakes or shameful episodes from their past. So when a modern historian calls for “Uncoverage” (Lendol Calder) it is definitely a dangerous idea. Better to stick with the story we remember and can recite, it helps us conform and sets a tradition for our children to follow. The willingness of historians to be confined in that box in order to maintain the public’s respect and an established place in the public curriculum has had the unintended consequence of people graduating and relegating history to their school days or tourist sites.
Digital tools and digital historians are threatening to do what the social historians of the 1960’s and 70’s threatened to do – make history visible, accessible and relevant. The new fields of history brought new populations into the study of American history…African Americans, Native Americans and women, but relied on traditional methodologies and failed to move beyond stories of famous individuals in a meaningful way. Histories that framed separated groups bred ‘identity politics’ of competition that did not serve American society any better than a false conception of a ‘melting pot’.
Digital technologies stripped any and every thought or process down to the barest elements of 1 or 0, on or off. But 1’s and 0’s are aligned, arrayed, combined, shuffled, sorted and stacked to make all kinds of complex processes happen. Historians entered the digital world to see how technology could help organize records and make research easier. (Roy Rosenzweig and Sam Wineburg) The process and frustrations of learning new systems caused a rethinking of traditional historical practices: engagement in the process of research and collaboration. Historians had to explain what they did to or needed computer systems to do. (Anne Hyde, Calder & Steffes) As the ‘processes’ of history are broken down into its elemental parts, it is easier to see how they can be aligned, arrayed, combined, shuffled, sorted and stacked – differently. Communicating the process has become accessible, just like the documents and histories of “the public” can now be included in historical analysis because “big data” can be analyzed quickly. This new history touches more people, average people who can now see how ordinary tasks are historical. (Schrum, et al.) When we start looking into the stories of everybody, the ‘pretty pictures’ get messy. The story of “America” becomes broader and more complex, because more stories are included. For historians, solving the puzzles of human events and behavior is the excitement of “the work”, it is increasingly possible to engage more people in “the work” and the excitement rather than just showing them the picture.
