Teaching History for the Common Good

Barton, K.C, Levstik., L, Teaching History for the Common Good, Laurence ErlBaum, Associates, MahWah, 2004.

1) What is the book’s main idea?

The purpose of history education in United States schools is to use the past to provide a context for deliberating the Common Good, defined as a pluralist, participatory democracy, whereby students are equipped to take action in the present.

2) What is significant about this book for teachers?

This book forced me to think about why I do anything in the classroom. (Pity it took so long for that to happen - but again in the current system the why? is far less important than the how?) For example, I was going to send students off to research the history of a memorial. Reason: “it’s inquiry”. This isn’t enough. It has to be, according to Levstik and Barton for the common good. (See upcoming posting on History Memorial Project for ideas about this).

The Common Good (CG) helped me see how history concepts can add complexity to my social studies teaching. One problem with Photovoice projects done with young people (see posting on Photovoice project) is that students' basic theory of change is that “awareness raising” will change a situation. Some researchers have found that when students fail to make any difference on an issue they have attempted to change or improve they become even more apathetic and unengaged in society. CG talked about the importance of teaching about agency. Perhaps if social studies teachers attempting to help students engage in social action spend some time unpacking that "awarenes raising" (or fund raising) alone is unlikely to make much difference when there are deep structural conditions preventing change, students will have a more realistic understanding of what it takes to seriously enact change. Perhaps teachers could use historical examples of groups such as the women suffragists or slave abolitionists to explore what they were up against and what kind of commitment it took to create the climate for real, structural change.

3) What surprised you about this book?

That socio-cultural theory could be so important to a teacher’s daily practice. That this is surprising is no doubt a result of the hyper-behaviourist classrooms I was educated in at school and university. However, how society uses and remembers the past is pretty crucial to the kind of society we are (or are not). A couple of quotes are instructive:

"An assumption of sociocultural theory is that human thought and action are embedded in social contexts that extend beyond the individual”

and


“We need to pay attention to the kinds of history they encounter not only at school but in other settings that contribute to their ideas about the past. We need to know how history is represented in the museums and historic sites they visit, in the television programs and movies they watch, and in the historical literature they read outside school; we also need to know what kinds of historical information relatives pass along”. (p.17)


If I want to know why and how students think about the past and to mediate those thought and ideas towards deliberation of the Common Good, everything matters! What they watch on TV, how much time they spend with their grandparents, what their interests are, where they live, gender, politics, ethnicity, class, but also the level of contact they have with cultural tools - abstract ones such as “narrative” or concrete ones such as museums, songs, monuments, plaques, Che Guevara T Shirts, street signs, heritage trails, Labour Day, Waitangi Day, the media, Memorial halls, parks, swimming pools... Whenever we are teaching, considerably more time needs to be spent on attending to the knowledge and assumptions that students bring with them. This is pretty basic stuff really. It's a pity the assessment system does little to encourage this kind of teaching to take place with its focus on shunting students through NCEA so they emerge with their so-called certificates of achievement.

4) What don’t you agree with in this book, why?

I wonder if a socioecological analysis would have revealed something different, especially in regards to why history teachers fail so dismally to get beyond coverage and control.

Lack of personal teaching examples from the classroom, by the authors, also made them seem distant but it didn't really matter.

This book was all about time; in an academic climate of interdisciplinary collaboration, and explorations of non-western approaches to the traditional assumptions of academic disciplines, what about space? And unfortunately the book didn’t go into how other subjects that might complement history such as geography, anthropology, archaeology could contribute to the Common Good.

It was very logically structured but also a little clunky with the 4 stances, each with 3 parts, and 6 tools which were conceptually slightly different. This is not a very well substantiated comment but there was something about the structure that didn't quite flow for me.

My main critique is that while I would hope participatory democracy and the Common Good can be experienced in our nation's classrooms, for most of the time that is not where it happens. It happens, as the authors point out, in our churches, committees, clubs, local government, etc... History educators could take a more place-based approach to our teaching to really make our teaching democratic. Students could be doing and using history in places and with people outside of a classroom. But all the examples and evidence that I could see in CG came from inside classrooms. Perhaps a book called Teaching History for the Commons" might have been more apt had the authors gone down this line.

5) What questions does this book raise for you?

What narratives do we tell ourselves about the nation and the past in New Zealand? What evidence, or lack of evidence are these based on?

What is the difference between social studies and history?

Is the purpose of science and maths education the same as history? If so, what would a book like this one for those subjects look like?

If someone wrote a book like this with the focus on New Zealand, what would its conclusions be?

What role does history teaching have in place-based education? What are the purposes of each literature base? Where do they overlap? What can they offer each other?

Buber and Freire are said to embody different types of humanism. Interesting given a critique of Friere is that he appropriated so much of Buber. What is the story here?

Why did we not get a section in the New Zealand Curriculum on the Nature of History like the Science teachers got?

6) If you could ask the author of the book a question what would it be?

What is the most interesting critique of this book that you have read?

What chance does the New Zealand history curriculum have of helping teacher’s help students deliberate the Common Good?

The NZ curriculum has a focus on “significance to New Zealanders” which seems to be interpreted from a content level. Teachers are being encouraged to show how overseas topics can be related to New Zealand. Does this focus make it difficult for teachers to justify teaching topics about the Roman Empire or Medieval days, which could be a useful tool for understanding how we think today?

7) What books would you like to read that came from this one?

Tom Holt’s “Thinking historically”, James Percocco’s “A Passion for the Past”, David Kobrin’s “Beyond the text book”, Monica Edinger’s “Seeking History”. Peter Stearn’s “Meaning over Memory”.