One more try (#133524)
by Maarja Krusten on April 10, 2009 at 7:54 AM

History competencies naturally focus on preparing history majors for graduate school and the attainment of a PhD. As you note, this has been covered by a number of observers. But why stop there? Some undergraduate history majors end up with multiple degrees, in history but sometimes also in disciplines other than history (e.g., library and information science or law or public policy). Some attain history degrees only but work in public history or for the federal government rather than academe. Wherever they end up, they draw on a combination of what they learned in the classroom and practical lessons learned in the workplace.

That being the case, why not include more practical lessons about history at the outset? Even those who go into academe would benefit from more exposure to how decision making and governance work. My suggestion is meant to help all history majors, including those who do not plan on becoming professors. That may not have come across in my hurriedly written posts yesterday (one dashed off as I ran off to catch a train in the morning, the others tapped out on my Smartphone in a doctor’s office waiting room where I waited for a family member).

A friend, who once headed an academic history department and then came to work for the federal government, once told me that nothing in academic life prepared him for how government really works. Sometimes when I read pieces written by historians, I wonder whether that explains the lack of empathy in some narratives and analyses. Or why the Presidents and other government figures seem so cardboard and distant. (Some historians do well in how they depict the principals in their narratives but other really struggle to the point of making some of their subjects appear unnecessarily cartoonish.)

I also wonder why advocacy presents so many challenges for those trained in history. And why most discussions of the Freedom of Information Act or access to records or record keeping statutes seem remote, premised in a pristine environment which rarely can be found anywhere, or otherwise unrelated to how human beings behave. This is a longtime concern of mine. In the past, I've tried asking established historians to put themselves in the position of the creators of records in assessing how issues can appear very different to various stakeholders. Your essay turned my attention to the classroom, although in a different way than you may have intended.

Perhaps I’m just reflecting my 36 years of experience in working for the government, with some of my career spent as an employee of the National Archives and Records Administration. If part of the solution to writing better history, or using history more effectively in advocacy, is to take into account a helicopter level view as well as a broad picture view, as Philip Zelikow suggests, then why not teach more of this at the undergraduate level? Why not make some of the applied lessons more visceral, so they stay with students, wherever they end up? Why not use available tools, such as Web 2.0 mechanisms, to let students experience first hand what affects candor in records creation, what affects or inhibits group deliberations of the sort they study at the highest reaches of government, and how that an affect decisions and outcomes? It might reduce insularity and stovepiping and separation. It might help them to reach a broader audience later, whether they write scholarly works, turn to producing popular history or apply historians' competencies in advocacy or public service. Web 2.0 can help in understanding the beginning of the life cycle of archival records -- including why people sometimes avoid creating them in the first place, as John Earl Haynes of the Library of Congress once noted on H-Net's H-Diplo list -- as well as the end (information sharing and dissemination of digital records by archival institutions and library special collections units).

Good luck!

Maarja

Best,

Maarja