On making up your own mind

In Chapter 4 Barton and Levstik discuss the need to search for connections and relationships in history—a need that requires an “analytic stance”. I found it interesting that while young American students can articulate the first two criteria of the analytic stance--history as a means of explaining the present and learning lessons from the past--but do not make any mention of the third; namely, learning how historical accounts are created (in laymen’s terms, learning about how historians know what they know, the process of using research and evidence to create historical knowledge). As opposed to their American counterparts, students in Northern Ireland do mention this last piece of analysis as a reason for studying history: “…so we can make up our own mind.” I was struck by this because I remember “making up my own mind” vis-à-vis history, but it certainly wasn’t in my early school years. I was, however, in Great Britain (though not Northern Ireland, thank god), studying abroad as a third year college student in a (so they say) prestigious program. Maybe I’m just undeserving of the title prestigious, maybe I’m not enough of a questioner, maybe my thinking stays inside the box more than it should, but I very much subscribed to the school of thought that emphasized narrative, reading, and lecture from an expert when it came to studying history. At any rate, history was very much (to me) story-telling, and it was even more exciting for me to hear it from a stereotypical Oxford don in a tweed blazer complete with a classy Ralph Fiennes-esque accent. I’m not sure what made that day any different, but I finally questioned my professor about his underlying assumptions that colonized group X needed British colonization to better themselves. Perhaps I had reached my tipping point in the study of Eurocentric slave owners and their progeny, be they actual Europeans or Americans cast in their mold (I’d like to give a shout out to Barton and Levstik and their dislike of George Washington as a meaningful historical figure). Whatever it was, I felt like I was, for the first time, seriously and publicly making up my own mind about the past. So perhaps in a way I am jealous of the little Northern Irish and their belief that history helps them think for themselves. This is no small realization. I think it is the most sophisticated of the three critiera making up the analytical stance, and frankly, I think it will be very difficult to have students to as much in my classroom. I did like Barton and Levstik’s suggestion of having students decide if there is a “lesson” to be learned from history and if so, having them articulate it. I think this sets them on the right path of thinking for themselves, but it just that, setting them on a path. I can’t control where their path goes and realizing that they can and should make up their own mind isn’t something I can hope to accomplish with every student in a school year. I can hope that having my students consider alternative views and reining in lecture and reading (as much as I freakishly love it) they will begin to think about what history, or anything means for them. It is a daunting task to make up the minds of 90-odd young ones. Much better for them to do it themselves, I think.