KELLEY, ROBERT - On The Teaching of Public History

On the Teaching of Public History
Author(s): Robert Kelley

Source: The Public Historian, Vol. 9, No. 3, The Field of Public History: Planning the
Curriculum (Summer, 1987), pp. 38-46
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the National Council on Public
History
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On the Teaching of Public
History
ROBERT KELLEY
Robert Kelley, former chair of public history at University of California, Santa Barbara,
well-known textbook author and a founder of public history instruction, suggests that "hab-
its of mind and charqcter" are the quintessential needs for public historians. An over-
reliance on skills training, he argues, may leave students too narrowly trained for employ-
ment opportunities. Kelley emphasizes professionalism, especially treating students in a
professional way, so that they learn early what it means to be "a professional person." This
will help them acquire a "professional outlook" which will enable them, after entering the
ranks of the employed, to grow and change with the needs of the profession.
ACADEMIC HISTORIANS pay little attention to their training programs, yet

at meetings of public historians, the subject is often discussed. Why is this
so? We are new at this business, and the task of how best to prepare our
students for a career in public history is by its nature a fresh and puzzling
topic. It is natural, therefore, for professors of public history and practic-
ing public historians to be interested in the issue. This concern with how
the field is taught is not something new and strange, but something that in
most professions is a hardy perennial. In medicine and in law, for exam-
ple, things are not so stable as in college teaching. Because society and
technology are constantly changing, practitioners regularly find them-
selves faced by new and complicated challenges for which, commonly,
they were not well prepared by their training. Thus, there is a built-in and
persisiting flow of dialogue and criticism between doctors and lawyers and
those who have taught them, because much needs to be said.
This is a most important fact for us to remember. Unaccustomed to
observing animated discussions of training methods, we might conclude
that criticism from practicing professionals indicates something fundamen-
tally-not simply peripherally or incidentally-wrong in the training pro-
grams. The professors, it could be concluded, should simply listen to their
critics and change their curricula accordingly. After all, are not those who
actually engage in the practice of public history the best judges of what
should be taught to public historians?
The issue is actually more complicated and subtle than that. The opera-
38
The Public Historian, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer 1987)

? by the Regents of the University of California
ON THE TEACHING OF PUBLIC HISTORY * 39
tive fact may be simply stated: the interests and responsibilities

who teach public historians, and those who practice the pro
not the same. In fact, they are in some senses divergent from e
A few words on this perhaps surprising comment are in order.
It has been rightly said that West Point's task is not to tr
lieutenants but generals. There are volumes of wisdom in this ob
for those whose task it is to build curricula. Are we engaged pri
training people for specific entry-level jobs? Few could blam
or employers for saying, yes, this is what we need. Their in
their responsibilities impel them to say such reasonable thing
ers must think primarily of their particular firm. With the bo
their most pressing consideration, they must keep their cos
possible, and their unpredictable factors minimized. Everyth
them to think of short-range calculations, because the bills mus
every month, or the budget justified regularly. Hiring someo
particular needed skills is a risk, and training people in them is
avoided. Graduates, for their part, must think of survival. They
fully interested in being given skills that will apply in their pa
right now.
Note that the graduate and the employer do not have direct obligations
to the entire profession. Who, then, is paid to look out for its long-range
needs? Only those who do not have "right now" responsibilities, who do
not have bottom-line imperatives. It is precisely because someone, some-
where, needs to be freed up from bottom-line demands in order to think
about the larger needs of the community that societies like our own have
evolved such institutions as tenured faculties at colleges and universities.
They may not do this thinking as well as we would like, but that is their
job.
Teaching faculties, then, must raise and answer the query, are we
training people for lifetime careers, people who will display an enduring
capability for disciplined growth, for flexible response to new challenges,
and for vision and leadership (are we training second lieutenants, or gener-
als)? Teaching faculties are also fundamentally responsible for locating and
teaching those bodies of knowledge, theory, and concept, and those basic
skills, which do in fact lie enduringly at the heart of the profession, and
whose passing on to each generation of practitioners is essential to the
profession's continuing health and vitality.
What do all of these general reflections, admittedly abstract, mean in
practice? They certainly do not mean that teaching faculties should ignore
the advice of professionals in the field. They must, however, keep in mind
that they have their own special set of responsibilities which are not
necessarily shared by their practicing colleagues. Keeping these responsi-
bilities in mind, let us see where they lead us. What about the question of
a skills-centered curriculum? Or one that specializes, with the needs of
particular employers in mind?
40 * THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN
In fact, of course, applied-skills undergraduate majors in

universities, such as those in business, accounting, and eng
do train students primarily in what are called marketable sk
dously popular, and there is no question that their gradua
greatest immediate success in landing entry-level jobs
show, however, that while applied arts graduates land jobs
than those in the liberal arts, thereafter they tend to fall b
liberal arts students work through their initial job-gettin
move, in the long run, further and rise faster in their pro
their applied arts rivals. It is not usually engineers who m
tions, but liberal arts graduates. Their knowledge is wider
enduring, more supportive of growth and change, and
better for larger responsibilities.
As to the issue of specialization, it is sometimes said tha
grams should not try to be "general" in nature, for that a
intensive enough. Students trained in generalist programs
emerge with the particular skills that allow employers to
their particular kind of research operation. The proble
faculties, however, is that their students go into many ki
usually unanticipated, and they move from position to posi
the University of California, Santa Barbara, program has
annual entering classes, running to more than ninety stude
summary of the kinds of employments they have gone int
the following (in some cases, a number of graduates h
particular careers indicated): litigation support researcher
archivist/historian for a large corporation, contract histori
historical research firm, environmental impact historian/
resource historian/analyst, historical organization adminis
teacher, historical museum director, strategic planning staff
major public utility, criminal justice historical consultant, m
and government department historian, foundation staff p
ment consulting analyst, historical editor.
The realities, then, of our students' career trajectories me
ization in curriculum can be limiting for the student. What
the specific job trained for closes down, or the field is glu
cants, or new and different opportunities open up? What
the profession as a whole is faced by change and new tasks?
Teaching faculties also have a limited hand that they
cannot do everything. Staff, resources, skills, time: all of t
restricted. If they only have a year of study to plan for, as
master's programs, that allows just so many units of study
academic terms. When something goes in, something el
Only those who have gone through the task of constructin
curriculum can know how frustrating it is, how much each
its price. Even doctoral students, whose programs are not
cific unit limits, cannot stay around forever, though some see
the attempt. Furthermore, each faculty has only certain skills
to impart. They must build programs out of what they have,
professors and resources, not out of what they would like to
not going to get.
What teaching faculties must do, then, is think to themselv
the most fundamental elements in the profession of public hi
habits of mind and what skills are widely shared in the f
public historians their essential virtues? Of these, it is the ha
and character that are the most important. They are the m
persisting elements in the profession, and in successful indivi
That is to say, whatever public history skills professors may,
particular bodies of expertise, be able to teach to their studen
will vary widely, from department to department-teach
must put their efforts primarily on turning out a particular k
Here is the task, common to all of us who teach, that we are a
to grapple with, whatever the specific skills component of ou
With this as our primary objective, what is our teaching age
we must remember that identity, self-concept, is crucial.
our students must early on get used to thinking of themse
historians. Wide reading in the field, and broad discussion
and of its ethical issues, must be central activities as the prog
along. For the student, making a bridge between themse
still-distant career is quite difficult. As in all teaching, one
valuable bridges can be the professor who stands before th
she, as is most advisable, carries on at least periodically a p
career and can talk about it directly, naturally. Bringing in vi
ers, even for one day, so that students will be able over a num
to listen to and talk with several practicing public historians i
precincts of the profession, goes far to make it all real to them
ing role models. It also gives the students some direct awar
profession's networks, which are of such crucial career im
perhaps some entry into them. Equally important are fie
going to national and regional meetings of public histori
achieve surprising results in firming up, for students, a sense
are and where they are going.
They are going to be, however, not simply public historians,
sional persons. We tap here into an ancient role and status
very great social importance. From the first day of classes, pro
awaken in their students a consciousness of what it means to b
sional person, and help them acquire a professional's outlo
for treating them in this way, speaking directly in this languag
professional-level challenges. The undergraduate aura, norm
dominating presence in colleges and universities, must be r
away.
42 P THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN
Thus, students must be early put under heavy intellectu

demands. The teaching faculty must require much of them
the way of reading, speaking, and writing, and the fol
immediate and uncompromising. Within the first few we
says on large topics and on groups of books must be insiste
the groans, and they must be promptly given a rigor
handed back. Students, furthermore, must be asked to ma
presentations to the seminar on what they have written.
are often in what amounts to forensic situations, whether i
or before clients and commissions, and the ability to speak
point, succinctly, is most important. Women in particu
rated to be soft-voiced and self-effacing, and such qualiti
harmful in a professional person, as are the wandering, "y
bal habits of the undergraduate. Changing speaking styles
an assertive (not aggressive), articulate, and convincing pe
respect and trust is, however, a slow and difficult process
chologists tell us, the presentation of self in everyday life
in lifetime personal character. Usually, only a beginni
here, though I have seen remarkable transformations.
It is at the very core of the matter, in short, that our s
the habits and attitudes which equip them to handle tough
ing situations, work beyond what they thought they coul
vive--with credit. Above all, they must learn how reward
discipline, being able to focus intensely and work at depth
over many years as a teacher of graduate students is that
good ones finish undergraduate studies with much to lear
tion. The forcing-house atmosphere can in the early stage
ods of tension, it certainly produces fatigue, but that is r
sient. Though self-doubts will always persist, the end resul
is to build an enduring sense of basic assurance about
essential quality in the professional person. They need
fundamentally, they are all right, and they can handle it.
Here we should observe, too, that something else nee
students need to learn, early if possible, but in any event
unmistakably, whether public history at a professionally
is really their cup of tea. Our inclination in the academic
be kind, for we are, after all, continually around young p
grow best in the presence of a certain considerate and enc
gence. We needed it ourselves, when in that time of li
study, however, this kindness, though still an essentia
teacher, can easily be misplaced. If it lets people slide
regular stiff challenges to do professional-level work and u
tion of performance, it simply harms them by impeding th
it is they can most successfully do with their lives.
What else is in our teaching agenda? Public history st
taught in such a way that they are equipped to grow and chan
profession, and with its shifting opportunities. The world of
at large, for that matter, will be in a much healthier conditio
broader internal understanding, interchange, and group feelin
sionals in its various precincts have an informed apprecia
their colleagues in other public history fields are doing, and c
them intelligently, if the need arises. This means giving stud
acquaintance with-if not actual extended training in-sever
the fields of public history. For this reason, among others, it
thing if a training program has more than a single emp
reading colloquia in each of several fields may be required of
This has a most valuable side-product. If a core of such cour
together by all of the students, a strong sense of commu
emerges among them. This is highly strengthening. As they
habit of helping one another and studying (and socializing) to
begin the process of learning from each other, always a v
enriching influence. In this process the students create, too, t
most enduring network: their colleagues in their particular en
It is striking how alive and interactive these class-networks c
long after the students have left the campus, and how much
of these networks aids the graduates' careers as public historian
Training students for innovation and flexibility shapes
curriculum, it affects what is done even in admissions proced
ing faculties must search applicants' dossiers for evidence of a
neurial, risk-taking habit of mind. Public history is not an
enter and do well in. Those who lack the entrepreneurial
tend to fall by the wayside. Research itself, in public hist
being imaginative and innovative. We are all aware that one of
tive and identifying characteristics of public history is the fac
most of our academic colleagues, we must carry on our resear
in in situ bodies of documents which are not conveniently
organized in university libraries. We must dig them out, in
records, commission hearing transcripts, voting records
dusty basements, ill-organized active files in ongoing offi
memories prompted by skillful oral history techniques.
With this fact of life in mind, the professor must stand ba
possible, after setting guidelines and tasks in seminar, so that
forced into real-life situations as they pursue their research.
tempting to lift phones and ease the opening of particular arc
doors to particular persons, but it must be resisted. Studen
their own way, learn how to gain access, and how to work
often politically charged. Most important, they have to learn
ways of getting around a research barrier and finding things
itous and unusual routes.
A talent for dogged and innovative research in a wide array
must after all, in our profession, be capped by comma

effective, and intelligent writing style. Again and again t
to me, over many years, by people in an extraordinary va
settings. Writing-writing-writing: it is our most fundam
trade. It is historians, among social scientists, who speak t
in ordinary English (just as it is historians, among hum
trained to do research in the public's documents and distil
lic's story). The English language is a wonderfully supple in
powerful one, when it is used well, for it slides right into
listener without having first to go through the process of t
jargon. In brief, we can be understood. Historians, us
preferably simple and ordinary-English, write of things i
lay person's mind works: in narrative, involving specif
specific things in specific times and places. This is why se
historiography, of how great historians of the past have don
be so lastingly valuable for anyone heading toward a c
history.
It is a skillful touch in analyzing a complex and diverse body of facts
which are not simply quantitative or organizational in nature, such as
economists or political scientists deal with, but involve persons and values
and the unquantifiable, joined to an ability to write well, which sets public
history graduates on a strong rise through the ranks of their institutions,
or makes them successful with clients. "You can't imagine," said one of our
graduates, now a corporate archivist-historian in a major urban public
corporation, "what garbage they usually have to put up with! And how
quickly they respond when they get something different." Writing, fortu-
nately, happens to be a skill in which extraordinary improvements can be
made in remarkably short periods of time, given basic but undeveloped
abilities in the student. Oftentimes it is little more than showing them in
detail, on something they have written, specifically what they are doing
wrong.
Training students to write well puts admittedly heavy demands on the
professor. However, public history teachers who do not with painstaking
care and inflexible standards work through every word, sentence, and
paragraph of everything their graduate students write, whether in the
form of a brief essay or a lengthy seminar paper, and who do not litter
each page with recast sentences, queries, and firm instructions, are guilty
of malpractice. This is exactly what the students in later life will be ex-
pected to do: to think clearly and informedly, and to write with clarity and
intelligence. It is only through criticism of their research and writing
efforts that they most enduringly learn.
It is of course much more than just a matter of lucid style. Public history
students are going into a profession which absolutely demands accuracy,
promptness, making deadlines, being thorough and positive. The amia-
ble, drifting, and vague standards in research and writing that are excus-
able in an undergraduate seminar are directly harmful to t

student in public history. Though not every public historian wi
into litigation support, and serving as an expert witness in
every word must stand up to hammering cross-examination, com
that level of responsibility and accuracy should at the least
guiding ideal. Perhaps it makes sense that it is in litigation s
public historians win the largest incomes, since they must meet
dard routinely, in written and verbal form.
Public historians wind up in many situations, but wherever
be, their work almost always consists of meeting the needs
This, too, is a distinction which sets our task sharply off from
our academic colleagues. It is important, therefore, to get st
to working with clients, and thinking about that relationsh
their own intellectual interests which will set their research tas
needs of a client. They need to know how intriguing it can be t
topics "given" to them by someone else, and how satisfying
help a client solve a problem, or meet a need.
The most important product of such undertakings is resea
dence. Teachers simply must find ways, however they do it, to
people out into the profession who have acquired an instinctive,
feeling: "I can handle it. It may look strange, it may be at the o
how to do it is not at all clear, indeed it all looks very dicey
handle it." How many public historians encounter simple, straig
research problems? Few. It is almost always a situation of missin
apparently blind alleys. And it is usually a situation of surp
clients, finding the "smoking gun," working out a problem that
lieved insoluble--and were mistaken about anyway.
It is valuable, too, for students to learn how to work coo
with others in their research and writing, though of cours
public history situations, as in contract history, where lik
historians they will work essentially alone. It is possible to m
two objectives--learning how to relate to a client, and how
joint projects---by setting up a real-life commission with an
client, whether public or private, and approaching it in a tea
seminar. There are subtle small-group dynamics to learn, i
operations, and they can be learned only by doing. Taking u
problem creates lively, intensive seminar sessions, and meeti
ent's deadline, jointly, creates another forcing-house learnin
which is enormously valuable.
If the topic is of enough public interest, and the local campus
erly equipped--as most now are--students can even be called
up a videotaped "press conference" with representatives of l
This is a challenge which puts them under heavy personal st
that unblinking and unresponsive glass lense, and the audience o
ists, can be and usually are frightening, and in this circumstanc
never have more than a few minutes to sum up months of r

analysis. It all concentrates the mind wonderfully. Subsequen
watch their performance on play-back, a chastening but instr
Experience demonstrates that such ordeals, built as they are
life professional challenges, have great carry-over value in t
later professional work.
Where funding allows (clients can be prevailed upon to
matter), students in the program can also turn the team-res
into a published book, learning by this process how to edit a
authored manuscript into common form, locate and organ
develop budgets, and work with printers. Team-research pro
local client, in short, are surprisingly fertile in the teaching
they offer.
Research confidence is born in challenging seminar tasks, if possible
those which get students involved in off-campus situations or at least off-
campus research. So, too-to look now at the culminating steps in public
history teaching-it is greatly aided by real-life internships. In these, the
student must research and write about something of real importance to the
hosting organization, so that the information they develop is useful. It
should lead to a solid master's thesis or doctoral dissertation. This is the cap-
stone experience in building research confidence, for after undertaking the
kind of major, large-scale research and writing project that is called for in a
first-rate thesis and especially in a dissertation, the student can well feel
that he or she is ready, now, to take on pretty much anything.
I am not certain that these reflections on teaching public history have
done more than restate the obvious. Possibly they have done something
else: by describing too ideal a situation, they have perhaps made this kind
of teaching unrealizable. We shall never achieve fully what we know, as
teachers, we must do for our students, but it is our task to continue
working as best we can at realizing, to use Reinhold Niebuhr's language,
our impossible possibility.

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On the Teaching of Public History

Author(s): Robert Kelley

ACADEMIC HISTORIANS pay little attention to their training programs, yet

The Public Historian, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer 1987)

tive fact may be simply stated: the interests and responsibilities

In fact, of course, applied-skills undergraduate majors in

Thus, students must be early put under heavy intellectu

must after all, in our profession, be capped by comma

able in an undergraduate seminar are directly harmful to t

never have more than a few minutes to sum up months of r

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