http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/RedefiningScholarship.htm

American Historical Association

Redefining Historical Scholarship

Report of the American Historical Association Ad Hoc Committee on

Redefining Scholarly Work

December 1993

Despite considerable differences in institutional missions and goals, most American colleges and universities agree on the basic criteria for faculty tenure and promotion decisions: the documentation and evaluation of research, teaching, and service. Although the relative weight given to each of the three criteria varies considerably from institution to institution, critics maintain that too much emphasis is now placed on the research component, with the other two relegated to considerably lesser if not irrelevant status. For example, Ernest Boyer of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching maintains that this equation of scholarship with research and publication, while perhaps having served many faculty and institutions well over the years, has perpetuated narrow individual and institutional priorities at odds with the broader interests of faculty and with the varied needs of colleges and universities today. In Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities for the Professoriate (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990), Boyer argues that "a wide gap now exists between the myth and the reality of academic life. Almost all colleges pay lip service to the trilogy of teaching, research, and service, but when it comes to making judgments about professional performance, the three rarely are assigned equal merit. . . . the time has come to move beyond the tired old 'teaching versus research' debate and give the familiar and honorable term 'scholarship' a broader, more capacious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work." (pp. 15-16)

This debate over priorities is not discipline-specific but extends across the higher education community. Nevertheless, each discipline has specific concerns and problems. For history, the privilege given to the monograph in promotion and tenure has led to the undervaluing of other activities central to the life of the discipline--writing textbooks, developing courses and curricula, documentary editing, museum exhibitions, and film projects to name but a few. Despite a number of efforts within recent years to give greater recognition to such work, a traditional, hierarchical conceptualization of what constitutes historical scholarship, based on the German university model, continues to dominate and restrict our profession's rewards structure. There is little recognition of the diverse interests and talents of today's historians or of the changes that they undergo over the course of their careers. The situation is unlikely to change until we as a profession consciously rethink the fundamental meaning of historical scholarship and the role of the historian as scholar today. While frustration over the academic rewards structure may be the catalyst, a re-examination of the meaning of scholarship has much larger implications for the profession--if scholarly activity is central to the work of our profession, then how we define scholarship determines what it means to be a historian and who is part of the historical community. The AHA defines the history profession in broad, encompassing terms, but is that definition meaningful as long as only certain kinds of work are valued and deemed scholarly within our discipline? If the historical profession is a broad community of individuals committed to "teaching, researching, writing, or otherwise providing or disseminating historical knowledge and understanding" (Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of the AHA,

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1988, p. 1), then the virtually exclusive identification of historical scholarship with the monograph is inappropriate and unfairly undervalues the work of a significant portion of professional historians. Just how many historians are excluded by a narrow definition of scholarship? According to data from a 1985-86 study conducted by the American Council of Learned Societies, only 41.8 percent of historians surveyed have published one or more scholarly books or monographs during their careers.

The AHA ad Hoc Committee

Within this context, the American Historical Association agreed in 1991 to participate in two initiatives that call for the development of discipline-specific redefinitions of scholarly work. The first, conducted by Syracuse University and supported by the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education and the Lilly Endowment, focuses on enhancing the status of teaching within the faculty rewards system. Eighteen professional associations are taking part in this effort. In the second project, eleven professional associations have agreed to undertake a variety of efforts to increase recognition for scholarship-based professional service. The cosponsors of this project are the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, the University of Maryland at College Park, and Wayne State University, with support from the Johnson Foundation. Those two projects have in turn contributed to a third initiative in which the Association has taken take part, the Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards sponsored by the American Association for Higher Education and funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education.

The Association's agreement to take part in these projects rested on five assumptions:

1. That problems associated with the faculty rewards system are not discipline-specific. Hence, individual disciplines and their associations may be a good place to start, but they cannot be expected to bring about reform single-handedly. Similar initiatives must be launched within higher education associations and college and university administrations if there is to be any substantial change.

2. That the AHA's role should not be to prescribe a certain formula but rather to suggest alternative ways of conceptualizing scholarly work and to provide examples of the different ways in which history departments have addressed this issue. The emphasis should be on what "can be" considered scholarship, not what "must be" or "is." Any statement from the Association must be adaptable to the varied needs of different departments and institutions and leave room for individual and institutional choices.

3. That a redefinition of scholarly work should not diminish or undermine historical research but rather extend and enhance it. Nor should a redefinition lead to a competitive situation--the relationship of research to other scholarly work should be viewed as complementary not competitive. Research--as well as teaching--remains at the heart of the profession.

4. That the Association's concern is with historians' activities that relate directly to their research and teaching, broadly defined, and not with public service, civic involvement, or other service to their institutions and communities. While the latter are valuable and should be encouraged, they do not draw upon the historian's professional or disciplinary expertise and cannot be characterized as scholarly.

5. That reform efforts should focus on increasing flexibility within the system and avoid the imposition of additional requirements on already over-burdened tenure- track faculty. Moreover, priorities should change concomitantly in institutional support for faculty. The point should be to change priorities and increase options, not to demand more or increase faculty workloads.

Rather than addressing the two issues (teaching and service) separately, the AHA decided to combine the two efforts into one and develop a more comprehensive statement on the nature of scholarly work

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and the structure of the tenure and rewards system. Toward that end an ad hoc committee was convened, composed of:

Robert A. Blackey, AHA Vice-President for Teaching (1991-95), California State University, San Bernardino

Blanche Wiesen Cook, AHA Vice-President for Research (1990-94), John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY

Susan Socolow, AHA Vice-President for the Profession (1989-92), Emory University Philip V. Scarpino, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, representing the

Organization of American Historians Noel J. Stowe, Arizona State University, representing the National Council on Public History James Powell, Syracuse University Roger Sharp, Syracuse University Carlin Barton, University of Massachusetts Gerald F. Linderman, University of Michigan David Miller, Carnegie Mellon University James B. Gardner, AHA Deputy Executive Director, ex officio

A Conceptual Framework

An essay by Eugene Rice, Antioch College, entitled "The New American Scholar: Scholarship and the Purposes of the University," provided the context for the ad hoc committee's work. The Rice essay provides an alternative conceptualization of scholarly work: he proposes that the trilogy of research, teaching, and service be abandoned in favor of a more inclusive four-part definition of scholarship. In so doing, the discussion broadens from issues of balance within the campus-defined function of professor to the larger roles and obligations of the scholar. Drawing on the work of Ernest Boyer, Sandra E. Elman, Ernest Lynton, Lee Shulman, and others, Rice breaks scholarship down into four distinct yet interrelated components:

1. The advancement of knowledge--essentially original research 2. The integration of knowledge--synthesizing and reintegrating knowledge, revealing new

patterns of meaning and new relationships between the parts and the whole 3. The application of knowledge--professional practice directly related to an individual's

scholarly specialization 4. The transformation of knowledge through teaching-- including pedagogical content

knowledge and discipline-specific educational theory

Rice concludes: We know that what is being proposed challenges a hierarchical arrangement of monumental proportions-- a status system that is firmly fixed in the consciousness of the present faculty and the academy's organizational policies and practices. What is being called for is a broader, more open field where these different forms of scholarship can interact, inform, and enrich one another, and faculty can follow their interests, build on their strengths, and be rewarded for what they spend most of their scholarly energy doing. All faculty ought to be scholars in this broader sense, deepening their preferred approaches to knowing but constantly pressing, and being pressed by peers, to enlarge their scholarly capacities and encompass other--often contrary--ways of knowing. (p. 6)

An Expanded Definition of Historical Scholarship

The ad hoc committee then applied this framework to the history discipline, using as a starting point the following passage from the AHA's Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct (1992): Scholarship, the uncovering and exchange of new information and the shaping of interpretations, is basic to the activities of the historical profession. The profession communicates with students in

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textbooks and classrooms; to other scholars and the general public in books, articles, exhibits, films, and historic sites and structures; and to decision-makers in memoranda and testimony. (p. 5)

That description is clearly broader than the traditional definition of scholarship as original research, and it provided the committee with the basis for developing an expanded list of activities appropriate for consideration under a more inclusive tenure and promotion system. The list that follows is basically an inventory of activities that can be scholarly but does not address when a particular activity is scholarly and when it is not--that is an issue of evaluation, as discussed below. For example, teaching can be a scholarly activity but all teaching is not scholarly in nature.

Using the Rice formulation of scholarship, the committee proposes that within history:

1. The advancement of knowledge includes: o Original research--based on manuscript and printed sources, material culture, oral

history interviews, or other source materials--published in the form of a monograph or refereed journal article; disseminated through a paper or lecture given at a meeting or conference or through a museum exhibition or other project or program; or presented in a contract research report, policy paper, or other commissioned study

o Documentary or critical editions o Translations

2. The integration of knowledge includes: o Synthesis of scholarship--published in a review essay (journal or anthology),

textbook, newsletter, popular history, magazine, encyclopedia, newspaper, or other form of publication; disseminated through a paper or lecture given at a meeting or conference or through a museum exhibition, film, or other public program; or presented in a contract research report, policy paper, or other commissioned study

o Edited anthologies, journals, or series of volumes comprised of the work of other scholars

3. The application of knowledge includes: o Public history, specifically: o Public programming (exhibitions, tours, etc.) in museums and other cultural and

educational institutions o Consulting and providing expert testimony on public policy and other matters o Contract research on policy formulation and policy outcomes o Participation in film and other media projects o Writing and compiling institutional and other histories o Historic preservation and cultural resource management o Administration and management of historical organizations and institutions o Archival administration and the creation of bibliographies and databases o Professional service--editing journals and newsletters, organizing scholarly meetings,

etc. o Community service drawing directly upon scholarship-- through state humanities

councils (e.g., public lectures), history day competitions, etc. 4. The transformation of knowledge through teaching includes:

o Student mentoring/advising o Research, writing, and consulting in history education and in other disciplines allied

to history o Development of courses, curricula, visual materials, and teaching materials

(including edited anthologies, textbooks, and software)--implemented in the classroom or disseminated through publications (books, professional newsletter

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articles, etc.), papers (annual meetings, teaching conferences, etc.), or non-print forms

o Organization and participation in collaborative content- based programs (workshops, seminars, etc.) with the schools

o Participation in developing and evaluating advanced placement and other forms of assessment

o Museum exhibitions, catalogues, lectures, film, radio, etc.--public programs as forms of teaching

While the charge to the committee was to develop a discipline- specific definition of scholarly work, the above formulation would be applicable as well to interdisciplinary work by historians. The committee did not address, however, the relative value of or weight that should be given to such work.

Weighting, Documentation, and Evaluation

As indicated earlier, this list of activities should not be viewed as prescriptive or definitive but rather as suggestive of how historical scholarship can be redefined to be more inclusive and multidimensional. While the breakdown provides a good starting point for departmental reassessment of promotion and tenure criteria, any such effort must also take into account the mission and goals of the individual department and the institution of which it is a part. Even if a department adopts the redefinition, it must still determine for itself the appropriate balance among the four components and the relative weight to be assigned to each. A central question that every department should address is whether there is a single mix or balance that each individual within the department must achieve or whether there is room for individuals to weight categories of work differently, as long as the department overall achieves a balance consistent with its mission.

But agreeing on an appropriate definition of scholarly work is only the first step--implementation is impossible without the development of appropriate strategies for documentation and evaluation. Work that cannot be documented and evaluated does not merit reward. But how is the work to be documented? It is relatively simple to provide copies of books or articles produced as part of one's research, but how is an innovative classroom activity or a museum exhibit documented? Advocates of the redefinition of scholarly work maintain that scholarship is strengthened when other activities are included, but it is difficult to demonstrate scholarly quality and rigor when documentation involves no more than counting or identifying. New forms of documentation such as portfolios and reflective essays must be implemented.

Attention also must be given to peer review and evaluation. Who will evaluate this scholarship? Do you require outside reviewers for teaching as you do for research? How do you secure the reviewers needed to evaluate work outside the usual expertise of faculty, such as museum exhibitions and computer software? What will be the criteria for evaluation? In a presentation on "What Makes It Scholarly" at a Conference on Redefinition and Assessment of Scholarship sponsored by Syracuse University in 1992, Ernest Lynton suggested that evaluation criteria might include: the expertise informing the choices made, the appropriateness and effectiveness of the choices, the originality and degree of innovation manifested in the activity, the difficulty of the task accomplished, and the scope and importance of the activity. Lynton's criteria focus on the process of scholarship rather than the product, thus encompassing a wider range of work than the monograph or journal article. For an example of how documentation and evaluation has been addressed for a nontraditional form of scholarship (museum exhibitions), see Thomas J. Schlereth, "Museum Exhibition Reviews: Introduction," Journal of American History (June 1989), pp. 192-95.

As each department or institution develops or adopts standards and criteria appropriate to its own mission and goals, the problem of transferability from one institution to another arises--will a scholar

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with nontraditional credentials find his or her mobility restricted? It is likely, for example, that the most prestigious research universities will continue to weight those activities classified under "advancement of knowledge" very heavily in appointment and promotion decisions. Thus senior members of a department have an obligation to counsel junior colleagues not only about the criteria for promotion in his or her own institution but also about the realities which govern advancement in the profession beyond that institution.

For further discussion of these issues (weighting, documentation, and evaluation) within the broader higher education context, see Robert M. Diamond and Bronwyn E. Adam, eds., Recognizing Faculty Work: Reward Systems for the Year 2000 (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993); Russell Edgerton, Patricia Hutchings, and Kathleen Quinlan, The Teaching Portfolio: Capturing the Scholarship in Teaching (American Association for Higher Education, 1991); Sandra E. Elman and Sue Marx Smock, Professional Service and Faculty Rewards: Toward an Integrated Structure (National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, 1985); and Ernest A. Lynton and Sandra E. Elman, New Priorities for the University (Jossey-Bass, 1987). Each addresses both theory and practice and provides additional bibliographic citations. The Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards of the American Association for Higher Education has assembled a resource packet that includes not only a bibliography of articles and monographs but also a list of unpublished campus documents that address issues of faculty priorities and the reward system. Contact the Forum at the AAHE offices, One Dupont Circle. Suite 360, Washington, DC 20036-1110, 202/293- 6440.

Case Studies in Faculty Roles and Rewards

For a discussion of these tenure and promotion issues within the specific context of the history profession, see the April 1988, October and December 1989, and June 1991 issues of The OAH Council of Chairs Newsletter and the spring 1993 issue of The Public Historian. The first and the last provide discussions of promotion and tenure within the context of public history, and the 1991 issue of the Newsletter focuses on evaluating teaching. The other two issues present case studies of policies and procedures at eight very different public and private colleges and universities, including a two-year senior college, three general baccalaureate institutions, two comprehensive institutions, and two doctoral- level universities. Moreover, the departments vary in terms of the highest degree offered--five offer the B.A., two the M.A., and one the Ph.D.--and in size--from ten to nearly thirty faculty each. These articles provide both valuable illustrations of alternative faculty rewards systems and direction in addressing documentation and evaluation questions.

The pertinent articles from The OAH Council of Chairs Newsletter are: From the April 1988 issue:

o Kendrick A. Clements, "Promotion and Tenure for Public Historians" From the October 1989 issue:

o Donald R. Whitnah, "Faculty Evaluation at the University of Northern Iowa" o Raymond G. Herbert, "Faculty Evaluation at Thomas More College" o Charles P. Carlson, Jr., "Faculty Evaluation at the University of Denver" o Louise E. Hoffman, "Faculty Evaluation at Pennsylvania State University at

Harrisburg" From the December 1989 issue:

o Robert W. McAhren, "Teaching Evaluation at Washington and Lee University" o Charles R. Bailey, "Assessing Teaching Effectiveness at SUNY-Geneseo" o Carol S. Gruber, "Evaluating Teaching at William Paterson College" o Anthony O. Edmonds, "The Evaluation and Reward of Teaching: Confessions of a

Department Head Who Agreed to Chair a Blue Ribbon Committee on Evaluating Teaching"

From the June 1991 issue:

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o Russell Edgerton, "The Teaching Portfolio-- Recognizing the Scholarship in Teaching"

o Peter Seldin and Linda F. Annis, "The Teaching Portfolio" o John Barber, "The Teaching Portfolio: At Last, a Panacea" o Anthony O. Edmonds, "The Teaching Portfolio: A Personal Witness by a

Department Chair" o James Wilkinson, "Documenting Feedback in the Teaching Portfolio"

From The Public Historian: o Philip V. Scarpino, "Some Thoughts on Defining, Evaluating, and Rewarding Public

Scholarship," The Public Historian 15 (Spring 1993): 55-61.

For copies of the newsletters, contact the Organization of American Historians, 112 North Bryan Street, Bloomington, IN 47408-4199, 812/855-7311. For The Public Historian, contact the Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9410, 805/893-3667.

http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/why/CHANG.HTM

Why Become a Historian?

Gordon H. Chang, Stanford University

One of my most unpleasant recollections of high school concerns an assignment to memorize all the names of the presidents of the United States and their terms in office. I squirmed to find a way out of the task, but failed to do so. I also failed to pass the test.

The point of this little story is not to show that one can become a historian without a strong memory (which I still do not possess); rather it is to illustrate how unfortunate some early learning of history can be. Too often, the study of history is associated with the boring memorization of names (usually unpronounceable) of distant politicians and kings, dates of battle and wars, and this or that "turning point" or "age of . . . ." After that high school class, I never thought I would wind up teaching history.

It was only some years later I learned that history should not be the tortuous study of irrelevance. Rather, the study of history, to define it succinctly, is simply the study of people, of ourselves. It is the study of what people have done before us, and what they have done to make us what we are today. The type of history study that really excites me, that is not just a rendition of dry facts, is history study that encourages me to think about why society developed as it has. Why are we, as a people, as a nation, as a nationality, or whatever, the way we are? How did those who came before face and meet challenges, questions, and feelings similar to those we face in our individual lives today, unique as we think they are? Ultimately, the study of history is essential to me if I am to gain any understanding of what I am today.

Why study history? To know what it is to live; to know how others have thought and lived; to know why society and the world are the way they are; to help us forge our own lives—and by so doing, to make history itself.

By the way, one way of making history is to help in the rewriting of history itself. There is a need for new historians who can write about topics that were long neglected or who can write in a way that is more meaningful for those of us today who were omitted or insulted in traditional accounts. The past is not dead; it is as alive as we are!

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http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/WhyStudyHistory.htm

Why Study History?

By Peter N. Stearns

People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past. Given all the demands that press in from living in the present and anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the desirable and available branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American educational programs do—on a good bit of history? And why urge many students to study even more history than they are required to?

Any subject of study needs justification: its advocates must explain why it is worth attention. Most widely accepted subjects—and history is certainly one of them—attract some people who simply like the information and modes of thought involved. But audiences less spontaneously drawn to the subject and more doubtful about why to bother need to know what the purpose is.

Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of history can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.

In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds its place in current education is because earlier leaders believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up with the theory of evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent. Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline.

History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.

History Helps Us Understand People and Societies

In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however

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imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be

The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so thefuture. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.

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The importance of history in explaining and understanding change in human behavior is no mere abstraction. Take an important human phenomenon such as alcoholism. Through biological experiments scientists have identified specific genes that seem to cause a proclivity toward alcohol addiction in some individuals. This is a notable advance. But alcoholism, as a social reality, has a history: rates of alcoholism have risen and fallen, and they have varied from one group to the next. Attitudes and policies about alcoholism have also changed and varied. History is indispensable to understanding why such changes occur. And in many ways historical analysis is a more challenging kind of exploration than genetic experimentation. Historians have in fact greatly contributed in recent decades to our understanding of trends (or patterns of change) in alcoholism and to our grasp of the dimensions of addiction as an evolving social problem.

One of the leading concerns of contemporary American politics is low voter turnout, even for major elections. A historical analysis of changes in voter turnout can help us begin to understand the problem we face today. What were turnouts in the past? When did the decline set in? Once we determine when the trend began, we can try to identify which of the factors present at the time combined to set the trend in motion. Do the same factors sustain the trend still, or are there new ingredients that have contributed to it in more recent decades? A purely contemporary analysis may shed some light on the problem, but a historical assessment is clearly fundamental—and essential for anyone concerned about American political health today.

History, then, provides the only extensive materials available to study the human condition. It also focuses attention on the complex processes of social change, including the factors that are causing change around us today. Here, at base, are the two related reasons many people become enthralled with the examination of the past and why our society requires and encourages the study of history as a major subject in the schools.

The Importance of History in Our Own Lives

These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives. History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most appeal to the general reading public know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography and military history appeal in part because of the tales they contain. History as art and

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entertainment serves a real purpose, on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places. The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts, far removed from immediate, present-day utility. Exploring what historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on human life and society.

History Contributes to Moral Understanding

History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration. "History teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.

History Provides Identity

History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical change. Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions, businesses, communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes. Merely defining the group in the present pales against the possibility of forming an identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes abuse it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment to national loyalty.

Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship

A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.

History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past. History provides data about the emergence of national institutions, problems, and values—it's the only significant storehouse of such data available. It offers evidence also about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship. Further, studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved. More important, studying history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.

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What Skills Does a Student of History Develop?

What does a well-trained student of history, schooled to work on past materials and on case studies in social change, learn how to do? The list is manageable, but it contains several overlapping categories.

The Ability to Assess Evidence. The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can. Learning how to interpret the statements of past political leaders—one kind of evidence—helps form the capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self-serving among statements made by present-day political leaders. Learning how to combine different kinds of evidence—public statements, private records, numerical data, visual materials—develops the ability to make coherent arguments based on a variety of data. This skill can also be applied to information encountered in everyday life.

The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations. Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations. Understanding how societies work—the central goal of historical study—is inherently imprecise, and the same certainly holds true for understanding what is going on in the present day. Learning how to identify and evaluate conflicting interpretations is an essential citizenship skill for which history, as an often-contested laboratory of human experience, provides training. This is one area in which the full benefits of historical study sometimes clash with the narrower uses of the past to construct identity. Experience in examining past situations provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories of national or group identity. The study of history in no sense undermines loyalty or commitment, but it does teach the need for assessing arguments, and it provides opportunities to engage in debate and achieve perspective.

Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change. Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our "ever-changing world." Analysis of change means developing some capacity for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more fundamental than others. Comparing particular changes to relevant examples from the past helps students of history develop this capacity. The ability to identify the continuities that always accompany even the most dramatic changes also comes from studying history, as does the skill to determine probable causes of change. Learning history helps one figure out, for example, if one main factor—such as a technological innovation or some deliberate new policy—accounts for a change or whether, as is more commonly the case, a number of factors combine to generate the actual change that occurs.

Historical study, in sum, is crucial to the promotion of that elusive creature, the well-informed citizen. It provides basic factual information about the background of our political institutions and about the values and problems that affect our social well-being. It also contributes to our capacity to use evidence, assess interpretations, and analyze change and continuities. No one can ever quite deal with the present as the historian deals with the past—we lack the perspective for this feat; but we can move in this direction by applying historical habits of mind, and we will function as better citizens in the process.

History Is Useful in the World of Work

History is useful for work. Its study helps create good businesspeople, professionals, and political leaders. The number of explicit professional jobs for historians is considerable, but most people who study history do not become professional historians. Professional historians teach at various levels, work in museums and media centers, do historical research for businesses or public agencies, or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These categories are important—indeed

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vital—to keep the basic enterprise of history going, but most people who study history use their training for broader professional purposes. Students of history find their experience directly relevant to jobs in a variety of careers as well as to further study in fields like law and public administration. Employers often deliberately seek students with the kinds of capacities historical study promotes. The reasons are not hard to identify: students of history acquire, by studying different phases of the past and different societies in the past, a broad perspective that gives them the range and flexibility required in many work situations. They develop research skills, the ability to find and evaluate sources of information, and the means to identify and evaluate diverse interpretations. Work in history also improves basic writing and speaking skills and is directly relevant to many of the analytical requirements in the public and private sectors, where the capacity to identify, assess, and explain trends is essential. Historical study is unquestionably an asset for a variety of work and professional situations, even though it does not, for most students, lead as directly to a particular job slot, as do some technical fields. But history particularly prepares students for the long haul in their careers, its qualities helping adaptation and advancement beyond entry-level employment. There is no denying that in our society many people who are drawn to historical study worry about relevance. In our changing economy, there is concern about job futures in most fields. Historical training is not, however, an indulgence; it applies directly to many careers and can clearly help us in our working lives.

What Kind of History Should We Study?

The question of why we should study history entails several subsidiary issues about what kind of history should be studied. Historians and the general public alike can generate a lot of heat about what specific history courses should appear in what part of the curriculum. Many of the benefits of history derive from various kinds of history, whether local or national or focused on one culture or the world. Gripping instances of history as storytelling, as moral example, and as analysis come from all sorts of settings. The most intense debates about what history should cover occur in relation to identity history and the attempt to argue that knowledge of certain historical facts marks one as an educated person. Some people feel that in order to become good citizens students must learn to recite the preamble of the American constitution or be able to identify Thomas Edison—though many historians would dissent from an unduly long list of factual obligations. Correspondingly, some feminists, eager to use history as part of their struggle, want to make sure that students know the names of key past leaders such as Susan B. Anthony. The range of possible survey and memorization chores is considerable—one reason that history texts are often quite long.

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There is a fundamental tension in teaching and learning history between covering facts and developing historical habits of mind. Because history provides an immediate background to our own life and age, it is highly desirable to learn about forces that arose in the past and continue to affect the modern world. This type of knowledge requires some attention to comprehending the development of national institutions and trends. It also demands some historical understanding of key forces in the wider world. The ongoing tension between Christianity and Islam, for instance, requires some knowledge of patterns that took shape over 12 centuries ago. Indeed, the pressing need to learn about issues of importance throughout the world is the basic reason that world history has been gaining ground in American curriculums. Historical habits of mind are enriched when we learn to compare different patterns of historical development, which means some study of other national traditions and civilizations.

The key to developing historical habits of mind, however, is having repeated experience in historical inquiry. Such experience should involve a variety of materials and a diversity of analytical problems. Facts are essential in this process, for historical analysis depends on data, but it does not matter

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whether these facts come from local, national, or world history—although it's most useful to study a range of settings. What matters is learning how to assess different magnitudes of historical change, different examples of conflicting interpretations, and multiple kinds of evidence. Developing the ability to repeat fundamental thinking habits through increasingly complex exercises is essential. Historical processes and institutions that are deemed especially important to specific curriculums can, of course, be used to teach historical inquiry. Appropriate balance is the obvious goal, with an insistence on factual knowledge not allowed to overshadow the need to develop historical habits of mind.

Exposure to certain essential historical episodes and experience in historical inquiry are crucial to any program of historical study, but they require supplement. No program can be fully functional if it does not allow for whimsy and individual taste. Pursuing particular stories or types of problems, simply because they tickle the fancy, contributes to a rounded intellectual life. Similarly, no program in history is complete unless it provides some understanding of the ongoing role of historical inquiry in expanding our knowledge of the past and, with it, of human and social behavior. The past two decades have seen a genuine explosion of historical information and analysis, as additional facets of human behavior have been subjected to research and interpretation. And there is every sign that historians are continuing to expand our understanding of the past. It's clear that the discipline of history is a source of innovation and not merely a framework for repeated renderings of established data and familiar stories.

Why study history? The answer is because we virtually must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness. The uses of history are varied. Studying history can help us develop some literally "salable" skills, but its study must not be pinned down to the narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is essential to function beyond childhood. Some history depends on personal taste, where one finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge. Between the inescapable minimum and the pleasure of deep commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp of how the world works.

Further Reading

Holt, Thomas C. Thinking Historically: Narrative, Imagination, and Understanding. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1990.

Howe, Barbara. Careers for Students of History. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1989.

Hexter, J. H. The History Primer. New York: Basic Books, 1971.

Gagnon, Paul, ed. Historical Literacy. New York: MacMillan, 1989.

Oakeshott, Michael. On History. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1983.

Stearns, Peter N. Meaning over Memory: Recasting the Teaching of History and Culture. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

©1998, American Historical Association. [Sunday, January 29, 2006]

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