WHAT WE ARE TEACHING WHEN WE TEACH WHAT WE TEACH!
Let’s face it. Those of us who have elected to make a career teaching a particular subject, in my case History, did not make this decision because we believe our subject to be especially transformative. I did not get into teaching history for some abstract noble construct, “those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are bound to repeat them.” It’s not my belief that certain historical lessons are of intrinsic value in and of themselves and must be passed on for the sake of human progress. History wasn’t my way of understanding who I was by learning where I came from.
No. I decided to become a history teacher because history is just a wicked cool subject that I like talking about. I’m passionate about history and can think of no better life than to be able to spend my days studying and teaching history. I’m sure this is true for those who teach science, or literature, or woodshop. Learning about this stuff is just freakin’ awesome!
Here’s the problem with this simple truth. Almost nobody agrees with me about how fun history is. In any given class I may have one, if I’m lucky two, students who see history as a fun subject. There may be five to ten who think history is okay. The rest do not understand why we have to study a bunch of dead folks and events that took place thousands of years ago. A teacher can pour their heart and soul into the class, especially those lessons that she is especially passionate about, and might be convincing to one or two students. The rest…not so much
There is nothing more disheartening than to present a lesson on your favorite topic within your favorite subject, a story that you find inspiring and soul-lifting, only to be met by a couple dozen blank stares.
You’re thinking, “Come on! This stuff is awesome!”
But the dead eyes looking back at you say otherwise.
I remember one parent conference with the teaching team for a student who was all of his classes. When it came my turn to report on how this student was doing in my class (badly) his father stopped me mid-sentence and said, “With all due respect, Mr. Andoscia, we really don’t see how learning about the Roman Empire is relevant.” I was dumbfounded. Before I could say, “well…then bye!” my principal interjected and explained that World History was a required class that the student needed to pass regardless of how they felt about it.1
I thought that was a rather tepid incentive.
Yet, oftentimes this is the response we end up with. You need to pass this class. To pass the class you need to learn this stuff. It doesn’t matter if you like the stuff or not.
Thirty years of teaching and I have never seen this approach work any better than the cliches elaborated in the first paragraph.
Oh, there are some strategies to help make the material “relevant.” You can tie the lesson to something going on in current events, or the students’ lives. You can show where this material is referenced in popular music, movies, or TV shows.2 You can “gamify!”
None of that works either.
It pained me, but over the years I had to accept the horrible truth that most people just don’t like history and they are not going to like history no matter what I do. As cool as I thought the story of the Fall of the Roman Republic was, and as powerful as I believed the intrinsic moral and political lessons of that moment were, the vast majority of my students were not going to embrace my passion.
This is likely true for all subjects. You’re inspired by the First Law of Thermodynamics, or the magic of the quantum world, or Romantic Poetry, or Transcendental Philosophy. Great! You might actually get a couple of your students to agree with you.
Then the practical kid in the middle of the class raises her hand and asks, “Is this going to be on the test?” and it feels like your soul has been ripped from your body, curb-stomped, and then crammed back in sideways.
Because the unfortunate answer to the question, “Why do I have to know this?” is…
…you don’t.
You can choose to be ignorant. There are folks who do quite well and know absolutely nothing about the French Revolution, or the Theory of Natural Selection, or Italian Sonnets.
That being said, you do need to know how to know about these things. Realizing this completely transformed how I taught.
My breakthrough moment was reading C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination. Mills defined and defended the value of possessing a sociological imagination as that which, “enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.” So, when teaching sociology, one is not just transferring cool sociological knowledge from my head to the students’. Optimally, my goal should be to teach students to think like sociologists. Students may not remember Emile Durkheim or the principles of Symbolic Interactionism. If they have a better, more rational and empathetic understanding of how larger social structures, interactions, and historical contingencies shape human behavior, then I’ve done my job and they have stronger minds.
If generating a sociological imagination, a way of seeing the world like a sociologist does, is the underlying goal of this subject, then this must be true of other subjects. There must be a historical imagination, a scientific imagination. Learning all the chords on the neck of a guitar does not make one a guitarist.3 One must learn to think like a musician, specifically a guitarist imagination.
In anticipation of the question, “Why do I need to learn this?” and accepting the truth that they don’t, I’ve learned to take a different approach.
On the first day of class I informed my history students that yes, they will learn a whole bunch of historical “stuff.” They will learn the people, places, and events. Knowing this stuff is important for the sake of cultural literacy. You don’t need to know it, but you’re going to feel awful silly in a room full of educated people who do know it, and you’re trying to make yourself invisible. You’re going to have a hard time understanding a movie based on this history, or a song that references a moment in time. Knowing this stuff will lead to a more substantial and fulfilling understanding of your own life. But your sixteen and couldn’t care less. Therefore, historical stuff is not the focus on the class.
Instead, I tell the following story:
“Jimmy just asked you out and you are soooo excited because Jimmy is just dreeeeaaamy. He’s cute and popular and dresses well. He even has a car! Jimmy is the thing, and he asked you out.
“Yes, Jimmy has cheated on his last three girlfriends, but you know that deep down he’s really sweet. All he needs is the right girl who can bring out that those great qualities, and Jimmy will be transformed into the Prince he really is. And you are that right girl!”
I then pause for impact. Maybe prompt some of the young women in class to nod approval.
Then I continue, “Three months later you’re crying, ‘Ooooh, I can’t believe Jimmy cheated on me! Bwaaaaaaaaa!'” [I really lay on the drama!]
Here’s where I throw the curveball. “You’re crying on the shoulder of your best male friend. For the last two years he’s been there with you, loyal every step of the way. Through good times, through bad times, he’s been there. He’s there to lift you up when you need encouragement. He’s there to support you when you are down. He’s there to celebrate your victories. But for the last two years every time he asks you out you’re like, ‘I like you, but not in that waaaaaay.’ or ‘I don’t want to ruin our friendshiiiiip!’
The class laughs. Now they guys are bought in.
I continue, “Both you and your male best friend have all the information you need to make smart decisions that will vastly improve your lives. The data is there. The patterns are clear. But you weren’t thinking like a historian. If you were, you never would have gone out with Jimmy. And if your male best friend were thinking like a historian, he’d drop you like a hot plate.”
Gasps and laughs from the class.
I go on to explain, “Throughout your life you are going to have to make decisions that will in some way impact your life in little ways or big ways. You can feel your way through and hit or miss if you want, or you can use the information that is available to you and make informed decisions. But all of that information is historical. You have no crystal ball to tell you the future.
“Do start a relationship? Do I end it? Should I buy this used car? Do I go to college or trade school? What college do I go to? What do I study? The information is there but you need to access it. What do your grades look like? There are documents for that. What’s my best option? Let’s look at some college brochures…but you need to be aware of their bias. Are there other sources of information? Other stories I can look at that can validate what I read in the brochures? When you collect that information, you can make a better decision for yourself. This requires you to think like a historian.
History is not just a subject about dead folks and forgotten events. History is about exercising one’s Inductive Reasoning Skills. In other words, a skilled historian can look at numerous specific facts and from these facts, discern patterns by which they can draw conclusions.
But it goes further than that. Because the human brain is a pattern seeking engine, often finding patterns that don’t really exist. That’s why the random water condensation of clouds will often look like fluffy bunnies or racecars or a guy riding a banana or whatever. The historian knows how to identify patterns and then test those patterns for validity and reliability. Furthermore, the historian can subject the patterns that others describe to evaluation to make sure that what is being described is the truth.
All academic disciplines are, in essence, practices of truth seeking. The more of these practices one gets under their belt, the stronger their minds.
So, yes, I would love it if my students are inspired by my Atomic Bomb Lesson (one of my favorites). If not, that’s okay because that lesson is not the point.
Applying Imagination
I’ve been very fortunate in that throughout my career I’ve not only taught every level from middle school through to early undergraduate. I’ve also taught every major subject. Most of my time I spent teaching history or sociology as well as economics. However, I’ve also taught science, language arts reading and literature, math and even electives like PE, art, computer science, and graphic design. I even started my high school’s first philosophy class. My experience has been wide.4
Each time I found myself teaching outside of my wheelhouse, I asked myself, ‘what is the one underlying skill I want my students to possess when they walk out the door on the last day of class?’ or ‘what kind of imagination am I trying to instill in my students?’ How do I get my students to think like a historian, an economist, a sociologist, a scientist, or an artist?
Below are some general principles though I claim no expertise in all but the social sciences. If a reader has better ideas, let me know and I will be happy to add them.
Social Studies
All of the social studies are dedicated to understanding how larger social forces shape our behavior. The underlying imagination is one of Induction. History, of course looks for patterns in documents, artifacts, and stories requiring the practitioner to be able to analyze and evaluate each to maximize validity or reliability. The great strength of the social studies is that in each there are often multiple models for understanding the world, multiple perspectives that can be pulled in that make the world look a little bit different. The practitioner must be able to recognize that ‘this is the pattern that I see, this is the model that I’m applying, and these are the conclusions that I’m drawing. However, there are other ways to look at this pattern, and other models, that might lead to slightly different conclusions. They may even be better conclusions…and I need to be open to those possibilities.
Another great strength of the social studies is the breadth and width of knowledge that is required to do it well. I’m old enough to remember when Interdisciplinary Units were all the rage. Interdisciplinary Units were those in which teacher who taught different subjects would overlap around a particular theme to reinforce learning. This required significant coordination and collaboration with other teachers. In such a strategy, the social studies become central. I had a department head who always reminded us that “social studies is the interdisciplinary unit.” Teaching social studies there’s always an opportunity to throw in literature, science, math, foreign language, art…everything you can image.
Science
Science emphasizes deductive reasoning. It’s built into the scientific method. You start with a theory, formulate a premise or a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and draw conclusions.5 The goal is to understand and to interact with the world as it is, not as it seems to be.
The bottom line is that the scientific method is the greatest contribution to human thought ever developed. The scientific method is why we have everything we do, from potato chips to computer chips. This process is how we went from a species using sticks and rocks to shape our environment to actually living in space.
The most important lesson from science is the understanding that, “I could be wrong. How do I find out?”
Mathematics
If there’s a subject that can benefit from this Imaginative Approach to teaching, it’s mathematics. When that student raises his hand and insists, “This is stupid! How can I have negative apples!” you better have a better explanation than, “Someone might put a gun to your head and force you to solve a quadratic equation.” Nobody is going to believe that. There are no roving bands of Pythagorean gangs in the big city.
The truth is, almost none of your students are ever going to use Cosine to calculate the distance of x from y. They know it. You know it. Don’t even try.
Remember, the goal is not that the student can implement Pascal’s Triangle to expand a binomial. What you are teaching, in my mind, is a systematic and sequential approach to problem solving. It’s the story of the truck driver approaching an overpass that was two inches too short for his rig. He can’t turn around because there’s a barrier. What does he do? Well, he can’t lift the bridge, so he’ll have to find a way to lower the rig. How does he lower the rig? I know, he can let three inches worth of air out of his tires. That will get him under the overpass. Then he can refill his tires at the next gas station.
That’s mathematical thinking.
Literature and the Arts
Literature and the arts is another of those larger subjects that students spurn. “I am never, ever going to write a sonnet. Why do I have to learn this?” “I can’t even draw stick figures. Why am I taking an art class.”
Classes on the expressive arts are, in my mind, the most important of them all. It is through these disciplines that the student learns how to see the world through someone else’s eyes. They learn that there are other possibilities in the universe than just their own lived experience. It’s through the arts that students learn that others, even and especially the weird others, have something to say, and it might just be worthwhile to listen. It is through art and literature that we learn the most important lesson of all.
Empathy.
Deductive reasoning without empathy leads to the atomic bomb.
Inductive reasoning without empathy leads to manipulation.
Mathematical reasoning without empathy leads to genocide.
Reason without empathy is sociopathy.
The above are just some observations on my part. I think the underlying lesson here is that all of the disciplines, from academics to shop class, to PE is driven by their own particular imagination. We forget this when our job depends on the students learning the requisite “stuff” associated with following the academic plan, or even worse, raising test scores.
None of us became teachers because we were excited about the academic plan or raising test scores. We became teachers because we love the subjects that we have dedicated our lives to teaching and we want to impart that love, that passion to everyone.
Well, that’s a big ask.
At the end of every course my final exam always included a “what did you get out of this class” long response. The rule was that they had to answer, they had to have learned something in the many hours we spent together, but the answer did not have to relate to the course subject. One student responded with the following:
I came into this class hating history. I can’t say I learned to love history. I still hate it. But I did love how much you loved it. I hope I can find something that I love as much as you love history.
I call that a win!
Footnotes
- In this case the parents divided up the classes that they would supervise and make sure that their son got their work turned in. Father took responsibility for History. The boy did not pass. ↩︎
- Xena: Warrior Princes was the bane of my existence for many years. ↩︎
- Trust me! I know this first hand. ↩︎
- I wish I could say I was equally skilled at teaching all of the above, but…no so much! I was especially bad a teaching Geometry. “It’s a right angle! Just look at it! A squared plus B squared equals C squared! Just plug it in!” Ugh! ↩︎
- The goal is to identify dominant themes in the thinking and the imagination of real practitioners of these disciplines. Obviously, there are plenty of examples of social scientists using deductive reasoning as well as hard scientists using inductive reasoning. The goal is to make students competent with both. ↩︎
Mr. A's Underground Classroom 