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So, the number of students taking history degrees is declining except in the ruling-class colleges, is it? I was fortunate enough to attend a ruling class coll

So, the number of students taking history degrees is declining except in the ruling-class colleges, is it? I was fortunate enough to attend a ruling class college a long time ago. I graduated from a high school where the required history course was simply propaganda. The teacher never asked for the slightest bit of critical thinking. That's 2019 me reflecting on the experience of 1969 me. 1969 me thought it was over-the-top boring. That high school class gave history a bad name. I suspect nothing much has changed. So, why should the UW Stevens Point students waste their time and tuition? They aren't. They are behaving rationally. Knowing how to examine the past--to learn from the dead--is a part of mastering ANY trade. Reading about Alan Turing and John von Neumann makes me a better programmer. Knowing how Jon Postel (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) worked is key to understanding how the Internet became what it is. Do future nurses need to know how existentially frustrating it was for Dr. Ignatz Semmelweis to persuade his fellow surgeons to wash their hands before touching patients? Yes, they do. Do would-be social workers need to know how various religions understood human sexuality a century ago? Only if they want to know how people got to be the way they are. Do marketing people need to know how upstart Pepsi gained market share from Coca-Cola early last century? Yes. Therefore: here's a CALL TO ACTION for History Departments in colleges. Work with other departments to build and teach good history segments in other courses of study. Build it into the content of various classes, don't just teach a required history class. And, if you educate future K12 teachers, help them know history. Stop wringing your hands about fewer history majors. Take a page from the way many English departments teach writing, and build it into other courses.

billman 8y ago
"An aged man is but a paltry thing"
yostrovs 8y ago
A response I'm imagining you'll get from college administrators today: "To truly teach history, we must first begin with those who were not part of it and understand why they were not. Why weren't there any important early black computer scientists? Why were women mostly absent in elucidating the laws of motion? These questions should form the basis of further historical study of physics, surgery, etc."
- matt4077 8y ago
  I love how you’re making fun of people by making up quotes they never said.
  - smhost 8y ago
    what do you mean? those are all valid questions.
- OliverJones 8y ago
  That's a good point. When we learn from the dead, we often learn what NOT to do and how NOT to behave. Domain-specific history is full of examples of people who started out being silenced, struggled hard to be heard, and then changed their professions. Why didn't Franklin get the Nobel Prize along with Watson and Crick? The kind of history teaching I propose can lay out those examples. It's called "lived experience" history, not "birth dates of heroes" history.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>I was fortunate enough to attend a ruling class college a long time ago. I graduated from a high school where the required history course was simply propaganda. The teacher never asked for the slightest bit of critical thinking. That's 2019 me reflecting on the experience of 1969 me. 1969 me thought it was over-the-top boring. It hasn't gotten any better. I went to highschool a couple decades ago. My brother went to highschool in an adjacent state. I later found out that I got a version of history where the state where I attended school was portrayed as a utopia from the nanosecond the first European set foot on it. He got something that was more nuanced (to put it charitably). It's quite frankly disgusting how much is left out of history curriculum because it's inconvenient to the ideology of the average person on the committee that determines the curriculum.
runyor 8y ago
Interesting is also that you can learn history much better outside of school. In contrast to education institutions youtubers for instance usually succeed at presenting the stuff in an interesting fashion. And if you listen to these kind of presentations in several languages or from diverse political influenced sources then you can also get a rather objective overview. This series taught me in a few hours what I didn't learn in school over years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB...
- vaughnegut 8y ago
  I think it's important to define what "learn history" means. I think a lot of these pop history vidoes are good to supplement or replace poor high school history. However, studying history at a university is a different beast. My experience was an incredible focus on context-building to understand what the sources are actually saying. This usually means building up a large amount of background knowledge (historical, literary, cultural, etc.) before even beginning to study the target period. It also means more critical thinking when looking at the sources themselves. I've found that most podcasts and youtube videos, although good entertainment and better quality than a lot of high school courses, deeply lacking in the kind of critical thinking and study it takes to make the generalizations that they're making. This makes it difficult for me to listen or watch pop history video/audio, since the methodology they use is usually poor (the only exceptions I've found thus far are: /r/AskHistorians (usually, not always) and the Revolutions Podcast (his methodology is good)). I suppose the point that I'm trying to make is that these popular medias are a good at what they do and function as a great starting point. However, they contain factual errors and conclusions, and they should not be confused with the study of history.

billman 8y ago

"An aged man is but a paltry thing"

yostrovs 8y ago

A response I'm imagining you'll get from college administrators today: "To truly teach history, we must first begin with those who were not part of it and understand why they were not. Why weren't there any important early black computer scientists? Why were women mostly absent in elucidating the laws of motion? These questions should form the basis of further historical study of physics, surgery, etc."

matt4077 8y ago
I love how you’re making fun of people by making up quotes they never said.
- smhost 8y ago
  what do you mean? those are all valid questions.
OliverJones 8y ago
That's a good point. When we learn from the dead, we often learn what NOT to do and how NOT to behave. Domain-specific history is full of examples of people who started out being silenced, struggled hard to be heard, and then changed their professions. Why didn't Franklin get the Nobel Prize along with Watson and Crick? The kind of history teaching I propose can lay out those examples. It's called "lived experience" history, not "birth dates of heroes" history.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

>I was fortunate enough to attend a ruling class college a long time ago. I graduated from a high school where the required history course was simply propaganda. The teacher never asked for the slightest bit of critical thinking. That's 2019 me reflecting on the experience of 1969 me. 1969 me thought it was over-the-top boring. It hasn't gotten any better. I went to highschool a couple decades ago. My brother went to highschool in an adjacent state. I later found out that I got a version of history where the state where I attended school was portrayed as a utopia from the nanosecond the first European set foot on it. He got something that was more nuanced (to put it charitably). It's quite frankly disgusting how much is left out of history curriculum because it's inconvenient to the ideology of the average person on the committee that determines the curriculum.

runyor 8y ago

Interesting is also that you can learn history much better outside of school. In contrast to education institutions youtubers for instance usually succeed at presenting the stuff in an interesting fashion. And if you listen to these kind of presentations in several languages or from diverse political influenced sources then you can also get a rather objective overview. This series taught me in a few hours what I didn't learn in school over years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB...

vaughnegut 8y ago
I think it's important to define what "learn history" means. I think a lot of these pop history vidoes are good to supplement or replace poor high school history. However, studying history at a university is a different beast. My experience was an incredible focus on context-building to understand what the sources are actually saying. This usually means building up a large amount of background knowledge (historical, literary, cultural, etc.) before even beginning to study the target period. It also means more critical thinking when looking at the sources themselves. I've found that most podcasts and youtube videos, although good entertainment and better quality than a lot of high school courses, deeply lacking in the kind of critical thinking and study it takes to make the generalizations that they're making. This makes it difficult for me to listen or watch pop history video/audio, since the methodology they use is usually poor (the only exceptions I've found thus far are: /r/AskHistorians (usually, not always) and the Revolutions Podcast (his methodology is good)). I suppose the point that I'm trying to make is that these popular medias are a good at what they do and function as a great starting point. However, they contain factual errors and conclusions, and they should not be confused with the study of history.