The principal expectation of history teachers advanced by non-history teachers has been remarkably consistent over the last century: that they teach fact. As Cornell Carl Becker argued in 1931, and a chorus of critics echoed more recently, the expectation is blinkered, or by psychologist Sam Wineburg’s diagnosis, outright “crazy.” Time and again, standardized testing has shown that students know far less about names and dates and customary causal narratives than their elders think they should. When we add to this the fact that “substantive,” fact-based teaching was the norm a century ago, but yielded results little different from today’s, the view that students know too little because they’re taught too little what and too much how—not least how good history is conducted—is specious.
So how might digital technology help history teachers turn back the tide of fact-obsessed curricula and tests in favor of a more “inquiry-based” model that empowers students to conduct historical research, with teachers acting as coaches rather than spoon-to-mouth instructors? Mills Kelly’s call for teachers to have students “make, mine, mark, and mash” offers a hint; but Kelly’s laundry list no more specific on how to do so than I do when I write under student outcomes for my course: “[students] will interpret sources mindful of the biases they carry.” And herein lies the challenge. The digital turn offers teachers and students a toolbox different from the notebook, laptop, and textbook. Yet historical scholarship remains unchanged: in print with a few illustrations at best, and not a drop of real-time interaction with the reader. Digital history, meanwhile, is set aside for teaching purposes by history professors, rather than for citations in upcoming publications. And yet, when the time does come to teach, modules like the ones in “Reflective of my Best Work” remain on the shelf. We heard at the end of our first class a professor comment on the digital syllabus that she had written in the course, but hadn’t yet “had a chance” to teach. I could not help wondering whether it was that the department didn’t allow it, or that the gravitational pull of familiarity proved too strong. That same pull of tradition works is even harder on the general public than it is on teachers. So to return to the question of when digital technology will jar history loose from the constraints of substance over procedure, knowing over thinking, it’s only when parents and PTOs and lawmakers acknowledge the digital toolbox as a vital component of any public education that history curricula assignments will be allowed to evolve. What the history paper was to 20th-cen. lawyers—a first step on the way to writing thesis-driven briefs based on legal precedent—Wordpress might train to their 21-st cen. successors.
