Remember back in high school and college taking History courses that made you memorize the dates of famous battles? Some of those dates are stored in my brain forever. Why didn’t any teacher or professor personalize the course and make it important to each of their students? We all had ancestors who didn’t miss the boat, but gladly endured hardships to come here. Most came from lands to escape oppression.
Had we learned about our own families struggles,then topics like serfdom, the Potato Famine, the Austria-Hungary Empire etc. would have been more relevant. Many older members of our family were still alive then to ask about their ancestors. Today they are dead and we can no longer learn from them.
So a golden opportunity was wasted. I trudged through serfdom without understanding that my ancestors were serfs. I memorized when a war occurred without knowing that my ancestors fought in it, or were subjects of the winning side. Who knows what I might have learned from a classmate. Or from my own research.
So absolutely true, TonyK. Much more meaningful to people when they understand their own history. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that those dirty Commies saved my Grandfather’s family from starvation. Learning about your family background makes history much more personal and interesting, instead of a boring, dry subject.
I think many African Americans and Native Americans would disagree with you.
My grandparents on my mom’s side died when I was 3. My dad’s mom has nothing to do with us and his dad doesn’t talk much about his history.
As for why we don’t make it personal for each person? 1- I don’t know your history. I have had professors who allow us to explore an aspect of our history in term papers though. 2- are you always sure that you want to know your history? I’m not entirely sure my students would appreciate it if I brought to light the fact that their ancestors were totally fine with owning, raping, and slaughtering other humans or eugenic ideology including sterilization and euthanasia.
Though, honestly, I’d love it if I could open the eyes of students to atrocities that their American ancestors either committed or were complicit in.
I agree with you though that memorizing dates is ridiculous and unnecessary. Knowing the relative time period is enough IMO.
So will the school sponsor the DNA testing to find out where these ancestors were actually from? Not many people I know can tell you for sure where they came from much less anything more specific.
Teachers couldn’t possible be expected to tailor classes for potentially 100 different per term with aneverchanging mix per class.
What the OP reminded me of was all the tedious classes I took focused on military history rather than domestic history, which I usually find fascinating. I identify with common folk, not aristocratic generals.
A class taught with a focus on serfs rather than the gentry is a different class than was available at my college in the 1970s. And I certainly would have found it more worthwhile.
“I think many African Americans and Native Americans would disagree with you.”
I take your point on African Americans, but those we call Native Americans are only more ‘Native’ than the European and African immigrants in that they immigrated earlier. They endured often greater hardships as well. Also, contrary to what many people think, not all African Americans are descended from slaves taken here against their will. Not to diminish the dire circumstances of those forcibly moved to the US, but they are not the only African Americans.
I don’t think teachers have to make it personal to each student to get them to think about where the descendants of those people might be. I wish they had. I learned a lot of my family’s personal history by mentioning the topics we were studying in class. I bet many of my classmates didn’t. As a homeschooler, one of the ways I approached teaching history was by capitalizing on the connections we have to different times and places, but teachers don’t have to make the connections for the children to make them aware they exist.
The discussions I had with my parents made me think twice about some of the assignments too. I remembered the family tree we had to produce for our junior high history course when a badge requirement for a Scouting program I ran as an adult asked for something similar. It seemed to come as a shock to some of our leaders that not everyone knows a lot about their family histories and the parts they do know may be a source of sadness. I think if our teachers make those connections, even if just in a broad way, it would be helpful.
My older D’s history class in HS-can’t recall the name of it or which grade-had all the students in that subject do something interesting-each had to interview an immigrant or someone who had a recent immigrant family member. Then they wrote a research paper on immigration involving that population’s history in the US, and THEN some stories were selected to be turned into 5-minute plays to which the public was invited. It was FASCINATING to see these stories played out-some kids had lost family as they swam across rivers while being shot at, the play my D was in was about people walking from one war-torn country to another, stopping while one ancestor gave birth, then getting right up and continuing to walk, people escaping from the Holocaust, and more. It brought home to everyone from the kids in class to the audience that immigration isn’t just rose-colored glasses and happy stories. It made things less uncomfortable in that they kids weren’t necessarily asking their own family members or performing a play about them, but others willing to share their stories. I hope they still do this at her school.
My grandparents who were able shared their histories, but I did learn about the broader picture in HS and college. I guess I was lucky.
I’m trying to picture a history teacher at my local high school trying to make the subject “personal.” There are kids from approximately 20 nations and 4 continents. Every conceivable economic and ethnic level.
So whose “personal” story do you highlight – or even include?
My kids have had it incorporated into their learning at different points in time, as early as a 4th grade unit still done annually in our local schools. High school and college classes also incorporated the recording of oral histories of older family members as well as personal ethnographies.
One of the most interesting history classes I took was a women’s history course, precisely because instead of just focusing on politics and wars we looked at social history. It was a whole new way of looking at the world.
I don’t think studying my ancestors would be that interesting. On my Mom’s side they came over in the 1600s. On my Dad’s side they were German coming shortly before WW1, but I know very little about what they were escaping. My grandfather’s father though was murdered on the streets of Chicago shortly after their arrival.
One of my ancestors brought more Americans to Texas in the 1800s than anyone other than Stephen F. Austin. Another was captured by Santa Anna in Mexico and was one of the guys who was executed. I wish I had known those stories in the Texas History class everyone had to take in seventh grade.
I remember discovering the John Jakes novels on American history after a mini series on TV. I think it was “The B astard” ( with a really cute guy as the lead…
Up to that point I HATED history. But after watching the movie and reading the book (books–I read them all as they came out) I was drawn into the actual drama of history. All the dates and events I had learned about in school gained context.
Up until then history was random dates and events in some weird straight time line–afterwards it became a drama along the lines of “meanwhile, back at the ranch…” Yes, it was fiction but it definitely made me want to learn a lot more.
I think it’s great that people are able to look up more about their families now with the internet. And it’s great that the younger generation may be able to get those stories out of older relatives.
But years ago unless your own immediate family had some records and done the research already you were pretty well sunk for information. You would have had an impossible time researching anything from the local library card catalog.
As a freshmen in high school, our class was asked to interview a grandparent, or a great aunt/uncle, etc. about a topic from their lifetime that they felt would be relevant and discussed in the history books when we students got to be their age. We each had to give a 10 min presentation to the class, discussing the topic. This was one of the most meaningful, personal lessons as my great grandfather discussed his (and our family) account of the challenges of the dust bowl. My girlfriend at the time learned about her great grandfather’s position in the Calvary in WWI. Several kids relatives talked about WW2 - a couple of them interviewed Holocaust survivors who had numbers tattooed on their arms. Another friend’s great uncle talked about losing his son in Vietnam. One friend talked about how her grandmother met Jackie Robinson, and what his impact was to their family (his personal generosity was amazing).
Getting the perspective of those who lived through some of these topics does help make the stories more meaningful.
History is mostly written by the elites, since the elites tend to be the most able to get their viewpoints published in whatever media existed at the time. The lower classes may not have been able to learn to write in the first place.
In defense of the teachers, at least the ones in public HS and middle school. Like it or not, most are teaching to a test…the state standardized testing, the AP exam, etc. There are many things that the State requires they cover. If their kids don’t pass the test, they don’t move on to the next grade, they have to take summer school, they don’t graduate, they don’t receive AP credit. There are many teachers who would love to skip the dates and the battles, but if State requires it, they have to teach it.
Among your own circle, encourage the young ones to talk to the older ones. Maybe help guide the conversation a bit.
Encourage the older folks to write their memoirs. We should all write our memoirs. My parents did this, over time. They would write a paragraph or a few or a few pages on a topic…such as “The Dirtiest Man I Ever Knew.” (The guy had a job that dealt with coal.) You think you haven’t lived in historic times? What about watching the draft (military, not NBA) on TV? Or not being able to run track because it was for boys only?
I agree. I think everyone has a family history that is different, and personal to them. I am not interested in making the assumption that if your skin color is black, then your ancestors must have been slaves, and if your skin color is white, you must have come from those evil, slave owning Europeans. People have very diverse backgrounds and you can’t just group everyone together because of skin tone.
I wasn’t writing about history education today. My focus was on my own experience during the 60’s and 70’s. I tool a History of Ireland course, for example, that covered 600 years of wars and clashes with the British. Most of my classmates had Irish surnames and were interested in the course as you can imagine. Not once did my professor stop and ponder where some of these students came from(some of you may understand Irish history) and suggest research papers on their ancestry for credit. Or mention to them how they could learn more about their family trees.
I want to know everything about my family tree. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Imagine if my favorite History teacher had us start this quest back in 1965 when many of the immigrants in my family were still living? When they still recalled what life was like in another country. When cultural clubs were active in our cities, and when ethnic grocery stores had imported foods from the old country. Imagine a class discussion where a dozen students brought up their own families and what they went through and endured. As I said we missed the boat. We sat still and were drilled about answers to Jeopardy questions when very important questions were never asked.
On Veterans Day, I gave a presentation to 50 fourth and fifth graders about my own service. But I began my talk with my mother serving in the WAVES during WWII. I pointed out how little I knew about her service at Pearl Harbor and on an island where Top Secret surveillance was conducted.How I wished I had met her fellow WAVES before they all died. All of us lost important pieces of our family history never to get them back.
