Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History National and International Perspectives EDITED BY Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg fi New York University PressChapter 4 — Dilemmas and Delights of Learning History David Lowenthal led problems and promises for student and cet [first suggest why istory may be harder te thought. One reason i that it i a uniquely ama: realm; other reasons arise from or are magnifi in historical understanding—notably an erosion of referents, a vogue for essentialist apologetic, ané postmodern denials of judgmental value. | then discuss three reasons ‘why itis crucial to study history: the contribution of historical under- standing to everyday affairs; the Benefits of recognizing the Foreignness o* ‘ongoing conse- quences. I end by suggesting how history teaching may be enlivened by stressing History as Amateur Scholarship ‘More than any other academic profession, history is amateur in its ap: ' appeal, and its apparatus. Unlike the physical and social sc jargon and requires no grounding in some ners generally strive to be accessibly straightforward, even to the point of eschewing irely. Many historians share Richard Cobb's old-fashi the methodology of history asthe invention of solemn Germans and the ruination [of] future historians.” 664 bavin Lowen rH ae Not only are we inclined to think that anyone can learn history; we are ie to feel that everyone should learn history. Only geography among other disciplines makes similar claims to universality, and geographers have tely become more and more narrowly professional, addicted to scien social or natural. ‘The days when historians preened themselves on the a uous opacity of historical science are happily for the most part past? History’s amateur character leaves it highly vulnerable, however, to as~ saults on the integrity of historical knowledge. Nonhistorians mise ceive amateur as dilettante. And because it is open to all and matters so passionately to so many, history is readily seized on as a weapon for this oor that cause, this or that faith—it continually risks being turned into civics or heritage.’ But just because history is amateur does not mean itis easy; just because itis ideally open to ll is not to allow that one historical ion is as good as any other. We forget at our p Special Demands of Historical Understanding "The skills that history requires a for the natural and social sciences, exegesis, but itis worth ni in history: many ways unlike those necessary is is no place for an ¢ ing a few modes of thinking 5 fate a substantial common shared past. Comparative judgment: Ability to absorb and critique evidence from a wide range of variant and conflicting souress. Familiarity: Ability to recognize and si store of references about a consensu: Awareness of manijold truths: Ability to understand why different viewers are bound to know the past differently Appreciation of authority: Ability to acknowledge debts to forerun ners and to tradition while avoiding blind veneration or ungques- tioning adherence to earlier views. Hindsight: Awareness that knowing the past is not like knowing the present and that history changes as new data, perceptions, con- texts, and syntheses go on unfolding. p Delights of Learning History 65 deste although I dwell explicitly here What follows touches on these five ski ‘only on the first and the lat. Enduring Impediments to Historical Learning ts of historical insight just noted have one principle in common: for some degree of maturity. History may involve young people intensely, but it is a mode of discourse traditionally central to their elders. [As a young historian, I was discouraged (though not dissuaded) from writing a biography as my doctoral thesis, on the ground that no callow juvenile ha the experience needed to ina life from cradle to grave, shove. ane Immaturity Early childhood does preclude historical insight. At the start of life we are immured in the present. No time exists except now; past and future are unimaginable. Self-absorbed, sell-eentered, we appreciate only the imme- diate, As we grow, memory and expectation provide awareness of our personal past and future; but history, that remote epoch before our own being, long remains shrouded in obscurity, even in disbelief. Youngsters scarcely conscious there has been a past give little thought to what it may have been like. To engender empathetic interest in the past, teachers need ‘magic skills to transmute the substance of their own maturity in the dion of young minds. Many remain historically apathetic as well as ignorant. For Tracy, the English sixteen-year-old school-leaver of an exemplary tale, means coloring eighteenth-century costumes, Tracy not only knows ki history but has no notion of historical time: “Was the eighteenth century before or after the war?” she asks her teacher (An actual American sta- dent worried that if Socrates lived from 469 to 399 he must have died be- fore he was born.) Most of us at length become aware that other times have happened and that it makes sense to view them in sequence, But the autonomy of past epochs remains dubious, as with Virginia Woolf's Mrs, Swithin, who could not believe there ever was a nineteenth century, “only you and me and William dressed differently"* That dedizens'of past times were actual people, yet unlike us in countless important ways, is not an unstudied intuitions it isa hard-gained reflective insight.66 pavin LoweNTHAL Presentism For many, awareness of historical difference remains part tive. Folk of past times are usually viewed in comparison with our own, as better or, more commonly, worse than ourselves: benighted, cor or just id, as Peter Lee and Ros Ashby's essay in shows. Even bright students are ahistorical. Their own moralities become infamy. College history students equality a a given: They condemn any society, past or pre- sent, that fails to honor it, Slavery and servitude are not historical condi- tions but unnatural perversions. Students who have been properly introduced to Western II know that inequality has not only been a fact but also a norm throughout most of history,” contends the Stanford historian Daniel Gor- don,’ But how many are properly introduced? The assertion that “all the students ate egalitarian meritocrats” as Bloom charges, unable even to imagine “any substantial argument in favor of aristocracy or monarchy, [those] inexplicable follies of the past” may exaggerate.’ Yet, Gordon himself admits that many Stanford students refused to discuss “the values of these antiquated beings Young and old, we all risk being blinkered by present lenses. Young Derek, in Sam Wineburg’s study, denies the patent historical fore him, because he cannot conecive that American colonists would choose to emulate the suicidal etiquette of eighteenth-century English soldiers. In conforming what he sees “to the shape of the already known," Derek resembles Marco Polo, who conflated the thinoceros he saw with the unicorn he expected. Lforts to make social history at Colonial Williamsburg more sophisti «ated show how persistent presentism can be. Trying hard to be nonjudg- ‘mental, guides stil end up displaying the past as an aberrant present— sometimes superios, usually inferior to today in aesthetics, behavior, and beliefs. When change is noted, visitors are invited to pity the past, to laugh at its absurdities or mock its backwardness. Past motives are ex- plained in terms of present morality, past social hrerarchy palliated by a Horatio Alger mystique of upward mobility. Craftspeople who “selfcon- sciously set out to puncture visitors’ notions about both the superior simplicity and the inferior crudity ofthe past” scarcely dent ingrained as- sumptions of nostalgia and progress? Sips She < ization idence be- ‘These dilemmas are not confined to living-history sites. They go to the heart of an ahistoricism that pervades textbooks and the media, Stanford and the Smithso shed present-day But Americans are not alone in being unable to ses or put themselves in others’ shoes. Responses to .eo-year-olds throughout Europe show students le to accept pre-modern reality and morality, even ights argument is accepted without doubt for an era before the invention of human rights. [Un aware of the exis of another logic... argue only fr and autonomy It is an enduring f cant, eventful, ankind to take charge; paleontologists divined sequences the anatomical perfection reached time; moderns fancy their epoch critical because it is dents need to realize that every present seems especially salient to self- centered denizens, who skew history to prove their point. Sacred versus Secular Time Sacralizing some chose ¢ impedes historical un- derstanding. Most societies attach special virtue to a point of origin Plucked from the stream of history, founding moments become tran: scendent verities. Thus, Americans decant the Declaration of Indepen- dence and the Constitution from history into sacred time."® Events so privileged confound chronological thought, disjoining the stream of history before and after the sacred moment. The effect in Christianity and Islam is obvious. Two lifestories, fourteen and twenty centuries back, fix the calendar and structure historical time for much of humanity, Bidirectional counting, backward before and forward since Christ or Mohammed, affects perceptions ofthe past in myriad ways yet le studied.” Though embedded in secular history, scriptural history is uniquely invested truth. But how can sacred time be reconciled with historical understanding? No wonder history is hard to tead contest sacred faith in the same temporal arena."® Most of us bbut do not resolve this dissonance. Yet similar smudging by pagans, for etern