MONTHLY BLOG 5, STUDYING HISTORY FOR LOVE AND USEFULNESS COMBINED

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If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011)

History as a University subject will have to fight harder for its custom – and why not? It has strong arguments for its cause. But they do need to be made loudly and clearly.

From 2012 onwards the success or failure of subjects will depend upon student choice under the new tuition fees regime (outside the protected ring-fence of state funding for Science; Technology; Engineering; and Mathematics). For good or ill, that sudden policy change creates a competitive market. It will be based on the choices of eighteen-year-olds, for all teaching (and hence research) in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

For History (meaning History as a subject for study), there is a risk. Not that interest in the endless ramifications of the subject will die. An interest in the human past is very pervasive among humans who live in and through time. It may take the form of ancestor worship. Or maybe swapping anecdotes about past sporting heroes. Or watching history programmes on TV. Or a myriad of other ways. In sum, a generalised interest in the human past is completely safe from the vagaries of fashion.

The risk, however, applies to the academic study of History. It may be marginalised by a stampede to take courses which seem more immediately ‘useful’ and/or more likely to lead to lucrative employment. Law, business management, and – for the numerate – economics might seem like the hot choices.

In fact, however, studying History is a good career choice. It focuses upon a great subject – the living and collective human past. Nothing could be more wide-ranging and fascinating. It is open and endless in its scope. And simultaneously it inculcates an impressive range of skills, which are individually and socially useful.

For that reason, History graduates go on to have careers in an impressive variety of fields. They experience relatively low levels of graduate unemployment. And they find mid-career changes much less difficult than do many others.

Forget old moans about ‘History is bunk’. Henry Ford who is credited with this pithy dictum (in fact, it may have been polished by a journalist) came to regret it deeply. It took a lot of accumulated human history to be able to manufacture a motor car. [For more on Henry Ford and the motor car, see P.J. Corfield’s Discussion-Piece pdf/1 All People are Living Histories: Which is Why History Matters – within this website section What is History?]

Forget too easy comments such as ‘History is dead’. In fact, the human past is a complicated mixture of things that have departed and things that survive. Like human DNA for a start: individuals come and go but, as long as the species survives, so does human DNA as a collective inheritance. The same applies to human languages. Some do disappear, with the communities who spoke them. Some mutate into different but related forms, like Latin into Italian. And most languages evolve slowly over many centuries, with all sorts of transfusions and minglings on the way: like English. The incredibly complex human past is far from over. It lives as long as humans as a species live.

The point is that History should be studied both for love of the subject AND for its individual and collective usefulness. It is not an either/or choice. But a rational choice to get BOTH.

People have many times listed the benefits to be gained from studying History, in terms of its high-level synthesis of both Knowledge and Skills. So the following list is not unique. These are the points that occur to me (Feb. 2011) and I look forward to learning of others.

THE STUDY OF HISTORY AT UNIVERSITY:

  • teaches students about their own society and its past
  • teaches also about other countries in the same part of the world
  • also takes a world-wide perspective and teaches about far distant places
  • enables students to switch their analytical focus as appropriate between close-focus studies AND broad surveys
  • teaches about periods of history that are close in time and also far distant in time
  • therefore encourages students to think through time and about time; and
  • allows extensive choice of specific periods, countries and/or themes for study, drawing upon the huge documented range of human experience
  • trains students simultaneously to analyse a magnificent array of sources, from words to numbers to pictures to sounds to physical objects – and even, in some cases, the smells of the past
  • teaches students to detect fraudulent use of sources
  • trains students to search for and use appropriate sources for their independent studies
  • requires the continuous weighing and assessing of disparate, imperfect and often contradictory evidence to formulate reasoned conclusions
  • inculcates the expression of cogent argument both in writing and in communal debate
  • also trains students to read and to assess critically a huge quantity of writings by expert authorities, who often disagree
  • trains students to use historical websites and databases both adeptly and critically
  • encourages students to think cogently about the links (and disjunctures) between the past and present
  • studies the meanings and often conflicting interpretations attached to the past
  • trains people to help with dispute resolution through historical understanding (‘where people are coming from’) and through empathy even for causes which are not endorsed personally
  • teaches the distinction between sympathy (personal support) and empathy (contextual understanding without necessarily endorsing)
  • allows students to distinguish between history as propaganda and history as reasoned (though still often disputed) analysis
  • allows students to analyse and debate the nature of studying the past; and
  • above all, inculcates an understanding of the human past within a historical perspective.

In sum, studying History at University can be undertaken for love and usefulness combined. It offers access to a huge, fascinating and endless subject, drawing upon the entire range of human experience and requiring a high synthesis of skills and knowledge.

No wonder that Francis Bacon (1561-1626) long ago praised an understanding of the human past simply as: ‘Histories make men [humans] wise’.

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MONTHLY BLOG 3, WHY DO HUMANS STILL LEARN CHIEFLY VIA FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION?

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If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2010)

Having written last month about the power of Continuity, my next discussion-point reverts to an issue within Education that is much influenced by Continuity. And that is the question of why face-to-face group teaching is not only surviving, in this time of technological alternatives, but remains essential. So why do humans still learn chiefly from face-to-face live communication?

Of course, it’s fine to agree that there is ample scope for learning via the wonders of advanced technology. The chances of television in its early days taking over from face-to-face teaching were never very great. That outcome is contrary to the predictions of some behaviourist psychologists such as B.F. Skinner (1904-90). He argued in the 1960s that the box would provide individualised tuition for students to proceed at their own individualised pace. There is much to be said for his concern for not pushing ahead until the student has understood. And much to be said for his opposition to teaching by flogging.

Yet, crucially, he was wrong about the quick switch to technology. Early television lacked interactivity. It was fine for conveying news in small bites or drama in big bites. The hard graft of day-in-day-out learning, however, proved to be very boring to pupils when seated alone in front of an inanimate box, which competed against the distractions of everyday life. Distance learning works at its best for the very highly motivated. And even then educational packages via TV have had to be gracefully standardised for mass delivery.

Today, the small screen and the web together have much greater educational potential. They allow scope not only for individual views to be debated interactively by peers and by tutors but also for students to pursue their own enquiries and research leads. The whole experience can be much more exciting. A cornucopia of information (and misinformation) awaits – with the potential for bewilderment but also endless stimulation.

So what remains so important about face-to-face education? Why does it survive, indeed predominate, all round the world?

An obvious answer is that it stems from our need, as part of a gregarious species, to be with other humans. Children reared in isolation from normal human contact are severely damaged. And this gregariousness applies to humans across the board – not just in education. But the question can be pushed further: why do we still rely on face-to-face communication when we humans have also invented distance communication systems – and worked hard to make those distance communication systems user-friendly for human requirements?

There are three big reasons: firstly, face-to-face teaching allows for improvisation and adaptation on the part of the teacher, with a speaker’s normal range of hesitations, repetitions, emphasis, perhaps humour, and personal style. That fluctuating flow of information and advice encourages listeners to concentrate and to co-think alongside. At the same time, the teachers’ presentations are subtly but definitely influenced by the response or lack of response of the students. As a result, teaching is a performance art, which is always in process of adaptation. It doesn’t always work perfectly, needless to say. But face-to-face allows for responsiveness. [One implication of this comment is that teaching at all levels should preferably be conveyed with a free flow of words, rather than via reading from a prepared text.]

A second important reason, closely related to the first, is that humans also interact via an even older form of communication. In the course of human evolution, a primordial reliance upon facial expressions, gestures, body language, and sounds of all kinds long preceded speech. And, while the power of words has become hugely important, notably aided by its collateral influence when translated into written words, the old ways have not disappeared. Instead, they co-exist.

So students are also learning, not just from the teachers’ flow of words but also from their entire bearing, as well as from their facial expressions and gestures, which accompany speech in rich counter-point. Of course, expressions and gestures can also be seen via some modes of electronic communication: but stylistic conventions have to be learned to suit different media. No wild gesturing (or even minor gesturing) on TV, for example. Look how the news-anchors rely upon facial expressions but firmly control their hands. [Again, another implication of this comment is teachers need social respect to do their jobs well. Otherwise, they may appear socially undermined in front of their students and their students’ families. Education is supposed to convey the confident message Knowledge is Power! But brow-beaten teachers convey the opposite impression. Thus politicians who loosely criticise ‘bad’ teachers tend to exacerbate the pedagogic problems which they claim to be trying to cure.]

And there is one third important point about the face-to-face encounter which applies particularly to education. The need for regular meetings of tutors and students means regular timetabling, at meetings where students learn from each other. Regular timetabling and unfolding programmes of study together help to prevent learning becoming bitty and fragmented. The regular timetabling of learning fits into a weekly rhythm, which fits into an annual cycle, which fits into an evolving lifetime.

Face-to-face teaching on a regular basis achieves its impact, not just for individuals but for social groups. We gesture; we talk; we observe one another doing the same; and together we gain access to the accumulating and ever-expanding stock of knowledge that has been created over the generations. More specifically, we began with gesture; then proceeded to talk; then to write; and now to invent and use machines. But it’s ultra-human to add the new ways without discarding the old. Indeed, far from discarding, the new communication systems enhance and still depend upon the old ones.

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