The Mad Historian's Athenaeum, Vol. 1, No. 17

Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1971. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. xviii + 829 ppg.

            Another entry in the growing line of the Oxford History of the United States, Grand Expectations covers the post WWII era through the beginning of the Watergate years for the Nixon administration. James T. Patterson earned the Bancroft Prize for this entry. He managed to explain the dizzying heights that Americans reached for before coming to grips with the problems that limited that grasp. He conveyed how Americans saw themselves after the worst war in world history as saviors of democracy. He then contrasted that with some of the views the rest of the world held of the US in many cases. 

            The book is a fabulous compilation of the various types of history the US went through in this time. The emerging field of social history is on full display in the book which manages to add to the complexity of the true story of this time period. The ugly clash of conservatism versus liberalist is shockingly apparent as well as the realization that both parties used communism and dissension as weapons against each other. However, as the country began to develop a conscience over the concept of equality, the forces split on the issue with both parties undergoing a transformation in the 1960-70 years which would result in the Reagan conservatism of the 1980s and beyond. 

 

            Patterson shines with his explanation of the Civil Rights movement and doesn’t pull punches as he describes the brutality of southern whites in suppressing the civil rights of the black minority. The sheer ugliness of one group of people using violence to deny equality to another is vivid. He also covered the insanity of the anti-communism years as both parties used Red Scare tactics to rally party faithful in their platforms. Later he would detail how this fear factor would move headlong into standard GOP political tactics in his sequel to Grand Expectations; Restless Giant.

            All in all, the book is a good and detailed explanation of how America moved during these years and fell into the morass known as Vietnam over time. In the process the country finds the rest of the world catching up economically and politically in many ways while America battled its own internal demons. The twin forces of egalitarianism and liberty are shown in their full panoramic view for it was during this time that equality for all truly began to be realized after its budding beginning in the American Revolution.

            It is definitely a worthy inclusion in the Oxford series and one most historians will want on their shelves. It is useable in many classes covering the period, especially the survey classes or any other ones that need information from the period. I use it in my own American film history class as context material for the students. The result is historical information meant to be read by any level of adult audience interested in American history.

Tilting at Windmills, Vol. 1, No. 16

     Recently at Teaching US History Ben Wright discussed the lack of education research exhibited by college professors. I agree with his line of thinking regarding this. Unlike Ben, I arrived at my ideas in history education after taking education courses following the earning of my MA in History. He learned his education training as an undergraduate while I did mine in a doctoral level program. Either way, the ideas are still the same. How does a professor teach students when the professor often has no idea how to teach beyond his or her own experiences as a student?

     What often occurs is that these new professors fall back on the traditional lecture supported by PowerPoints. Students are expected to sit quietly in class listening attentively to what the instructor says. Let's look at this in reality. First of all, today's students have the attention span of a gnat. I call them the MTV generation. Everything is down in five minute segments of time in their world like a video. I'm probably dating myself because MTV doesn't even show videos any more, but the concept remains the same. Have you ever noticed how TV shows and even books are more and more scene driven before the commercial or chapter breaks? The people we are teaching are conditioned to pay attention like that. If you want to stand there for 30 minutes lecturing, you've exceeded their attention spans and lost the class 20 minutes ago.
 
     Lecture does not cause students to learn. Why say what the book says? Is that not redundant? If all you are doing in your lecture is restating the book, what is the point? Furthermore, if your assessment of student learning goes no farther than what is in the book as many of the pre-made assessment tools that come with the textbooks cover, why should they pay attention to what you say? They just need to read the book! Is that learning or is that memorization? What did they learn? Are they really learning or just marking time in your class checking off another three credits on their way to a degree?

     In the Tilting at Windmills section of this blog I have covered teaching in some form or another. As readers know, I hate lecture. I think it is dead. If you do nothing but lecture and use per-generated tests in your classes you are wasting your time and your students. You are not teaching them. They are not learning anything especially the critical thinking skills that they are supposed to be learning as the main point of a four year degree. In short, you suck at teaching today's students. I would suggest you resign your position, but the sad truth is you would almost certainly be replaced by someone else who has no clue how to teach history.

     There is however an alternative to continuing wasting everyone's time. That is of course learning how to teach. I am going to explore the art of teaching history over the next several weeks in this section. I have my own experiences teaching history, other instructor's experience, educational courses on education itself, and some interesting courses and sessions conducted by long time history teachers to work with. Do not expect a formal course on how to teach history. What I am going to do is cover the bits and pieces of teaching history in a pretty disjointed manner. From there I will be able to assemble those parts into a definitive work that could be used to construct a course or even a written work on teaching history.

    I will label the posts "The Art of Teaching History" so that readers know when a post is covering this area or not. I will probably have some other posts mixed in as things pop up like they always do. If readers have suggestions, advice, or want me to cover something specific, please drop a comment in and we will go from there.

History According to Jim, Vol. 1, No. 16

      What to chose for this week's topic? I could go with the usual CBF defense where people try to ignore the baggage that comes with using a racist symbol for their modern political ideology such as we saw on The Historic Struggle and now seems to be spilling over into Exploring the Past, but oddly enough not this blog. I could also go with the continuing saga of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who has decided that gay marriage is wrong and refuses to issue marriage licenses, a decision that has her sitting in jail. Then I could go with the removal of statues from the University of Texas which has some comparing it ISIS destroying ancient temples.

     Obviously there is plenty to work with here. The removal of a JEB Stuart painting has some abuzz, but nothing really jumped out at me except for what will happen next week when PBS presents the remastered Ken Burn's The Civil War beginning on Monday, September 7th. My DVR is already set. I really enjoyed watching this series in 2010 when I took a Civil War class at Columbia College with William Carney as the professor. I did a lot of fact checking as I watched the series and realized that it was not perfect, but was still very accurate. Despite what some wish to belief it does not present a Lost Cause vision of the conflict, although it does not dispell it as forcefully as I wish it would have.

     This series first premiered in 1990. This was two years after the release of James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, a masterpiece which earned McPherson the Pulitzer Prize. The historiography of this conflict has undergone a massive change since the 1980s when Burns was putting this series together. There is no doubt in my mind that he edited the film so that he would present the broadest interpretation to a wide audience. It was the biggest show in PBS history and cemented Burns' reputation for documentary film making. A lot of historians were involved in the research for the nine episodes which are jam-packed with information. They did not all agree on everything which is not a surprise for anyone who knows historians.

     The Lost Cause and Southern Heritage crowd has spent the last 25 years claiming that Shelby Foote supported their views based on his clips in the episodes. This past week an individual named Mike Musick posted on Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory. Mike gave us some information which has literally shattered the idea of Foote as a Lost Causer.  I will let Mike speak in his words:

Let me add a few words in defense of Shelby Foote and Ken Burns. I was one of the advisers on the series, and vividly recall the several days long meeting at a Washington, DC, hotel at which many of the advisers were present to discuss an early version of Geoff Ward’s script. Since I spent most of my time grubbing as an archivist in the stacks at the National Archives, I felt somewhat like Cinderfella at the ball. It was a chance to meet Shelby Foote, C. Van Woodward, Eric Foner (who left after expressing outrage at what was then no mention of reconstruction), Don Fehrenbacher (who noted his direct descent from a Union officer killed during the war), Barbara Fields (she expressed disapproval of the use of the demeaning word “flocking” to describe enslaved people coming into federal lines), and many more. At one point there was an animated discussion of the conflict’s causes, with state rights brought up. Foote essentially ended the topic when he quoted N.B. Forrest as saying “If we ain’t fightin’ for slavery, then I don’t know what we’re fightin’ for” – a quote, by the way, I’ve never been able to substantiate. The emphasis he put on slavery was not reflected in his on-screen appearances."

   In case you are wondering who Mike Musick is, check the credits on the series. He is listed as a consultant along with Shelby Foote, C. Vann Woodward, James McPherson, Eric Foner, Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Don Fehrenbacher, and more. The fact that he was there and conforms Shelby Foote as definitely not being a Causer is pretty big. It also makes me wonder just what was actually said by Shelby and what was edited. Ken Burns is a pretty smart guy. He has made a lot of documentaries and he knows how to craft a production to suit an audience. The best filmmakers do this. Clint Eastwood is a master of producing a movie that suits multiple audiences such as Gran Torino and American Sniper.

     I have no doubts that Burns tailored this series to fit the biggest audience he could. You know what? I am glad he did. This film inspired a lot of people to begin to look at history and this particular era. He pointed out the primary sources which people began to look at as the Internet entered more and more homes. If anything has destroyed the Lost Cause in the last quarter century, it has been primary sources and the easy access to them. The Civil War has been a major player in pointing that out.

     Some people really dislike the Shelby Foote clips, but I think they were the highlight of the film. They drew people to it. Today you can go on YouTube and catch The Best of Shelby Foote which is a compilation of his segments. Not everything Shelby said was correct. The most noticeable was the United State are and is, but he may have believed that in the 1980s. Computer technology allowed for a study of that idea and it was shown to be false. Even with that said, a lot of what Foote said was right on target.

    More than anything, Shelby Foote told stories. That is what drew people to him. That is history in a nutshell. Telling stories is something that goes back before recorded history. That is how history was passed down for generations and still is. I can tell you from firsthand experience that when I use stories to tell history to students they pay attention and remember it. When I am lecturing and throwing facts around left and right they don't remember them. Take a look at the instructors who students consider to be the best history teachers. Every one of them is a story teller. Burns was right to use Foote like he did.

     I wish Foote were alive today. A master story teller could go a long way to eliminating some of the garbage going on with the CBF and all today. Many of them do exist, but right now the Causers have closed their ears to anything that they don't want to hear. I expect that next week we will hear some screams from them and others as The Civil War plays once again. We will hear the charges laid against Ken Burns that he supports the Lost Cause, but those that make that claim will be fools because Ken Burns states that the Civil War was about slavery.

      Rather than continue on, let's watch the series next week in HD and observe Americans discuss the war. I have a feeling it will be educational and show more Americans understanding the role of slavery in causing the conflict instead of the fiction of state's rights. We will also see how some continue to equate the Civil War with modern political ideology which speaks far more about their modern political views than it does the actual Civil War.

Blog of the Week, Vol. 1, No. 16

    

 Taking a bit of a different tack this week, I look at History News Network, a blogging platform operated by George Mason University. Instead of a blog like the ones I’ve covered in previous weeks, History News Network (HNN) works by serving as sort of central posting operation. Instead of traditional blogging, the site features op-eds by historians with comments open to the public. It is sort of like an open source history news and comment section arrangement which you really cannot find anywhere else. The comment sections can sometimes be trolled pretty heavily as anonymous trolls love to make their opinions known, especially on hot button issues involving political ideology.

      I check the site daily for new articles. I find them to be interesting. Jim Loewen is a regular contributor and commenter. Several other historians are putting regular posts there as well. You can find their most recent work in the blogs section as well as the regular page. There is an active Twitter feed running alongside the page as well. The top toolbar has several buttons to choose from which expand the range of uses HNN provides. There is a lot of information on this site and a lot of it is relatively up to date and covers not only history, but deals with the intersection of history and the present.

 I have no idea how old the site is, but did find published articles from 2005.  The site is a non-profit operating independently of George Mason University through the Roy Rosenzweig  Center for History and New Media. Richard Shenkman, associate professor of history at the University, was and still is the editor and founder of HNN. What I like about the site is that the articles are opinions, yet opinions rooted in actual history, not a fictional past. This is an important distinction because it allows for the presentation of opinions from all sides of the spectrum which is very good for debate. Debating people who refuse to use facts is pointless. With that said, HNN does not run op-eds that are obviously incorrect. They point out their refusal to publish anything by Holocaust deniers as an example. 

I like the site, but really have issues with the comments section. As my readers know, I am not a fan of anonymous posting or commenting. I feel that allows the trolls an opportunity to make a lot of posts that are flat out erroneous because they dislike the published opinions. Disagreement is perfectly natural, but many of the comments are just attacks with no merit whatsoever. HNN has a disclaimer that they do not attest to the accuracy or truthfulness of any of the views or facts posted on the discussion boards. The boards are Disqus which is yet another reason I am not fond of them. 

Other than that, I encourage readers to visit HNN at http://historynewsnetwork.org/ . I think they will find the site to be interesting and while not every article will be their cup of tea, there will be some that are.