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| [a] Clustered RF |
We left our discussion yesterday with Jimbo, who is frustrated by the way that history professors discuss "sources." He is confused by the continual drumbeat of questions about "perspective" and "authorial voice," and does not even begin to know how to "compare the perspectives" of two different authors. Yesterday, we gave the example of Jimbo's head-scratching when asked to evaluate two authors with differing opinions about Emperor Hirohito, as we call him in the West, and his role in World War II. One book is extremely critical, while the other de-emphasizes his influence. But all Jimbo sees are facts. He busily takes these down in his notes, and comes to class ready to show the teacher and his classmates all of the things he learned.
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| [b] Influence RF |
Yo! Jimbo!
Yojimbo!
That's why we have quizzes in my classes. You see, Jimbo has prepared for class (this beats not reading at all) in what we might call the "traditional" (K-12) way. Although there are brilliant exceptions, schooling and testing (remember AP European History?) tend to focus on what happened. Can you imagine a computer-read exam that deals with subtleties of historiographical interpretation? Well, Jimbo has just done what every other smart kid does...when the smart kid hasn't really learned how really to learn history.
Quizzes help to bridge that gap.
Jimbo comes to class ready to spew facts onto the page. Instead, he gets questions such as "describe the audience for whom the author is writing," "what kinds of primary sources does the author use?," and "how does the author organize the book?" Jimbo is bewildered, and it gets worse when he is asked (as we have seen) to compare the way that multiple authors treat these questions. It gets positiv(istically) forbidding when Jimbo is asked to interpret ways in which his authors are "fighting" with one another. That's historiography, and it is something he mostly missed on the History Channel and in AP classes.
But do not fret, for our young scholar. Jimbo—remember, he is a young sports fan—knows all about argumentation, perspective, bias, and infighting. He knows this because he is a Minnesota Vikings fan living on the "state line." He goes to Beloit College, right north of the border, between Wisconsin and Illinois. He loves football, and watched every Vikings game since he was six years old (he is untainted by the misery experienced by his parents, grandparents, and other elders, dating back to the late-1960s and all of the 1970s). He has merely endured mediocrity. Still, in Wisconsin he cannot get regular broadcasts of his cherished Vikings. He opens the newspapers and watches local television, only to hear about the Packers and the Bears, his hated rivals in the gridiron totemism defining Midwestern athletics.
He hears nice things about the Packers almost every day now.
He has gotten used to it, but he cannot remember a day before he started college when anyone said anything at all nice about the Packers (or da Bears). He winces when the announcers on WBBM-Radio (780 AM) sneer at the Vikings for being a "pampered, indoor team."* He had always heard it differently: the Vikings are sleek, mobile, fast. True, they can't seem to win a game when the temperature is below forty degrees Fahrenheit, but, well, they're fast. Really fast. Now the rival "authors" are saying his heroes are pampered. He dislikes this; he argues back, if only to himself (while shaving).
* Dear Reader: This was 2012.
Jimbo already gets historiography; he just doesn't realize it.
Yet.
Have you ever (I am thinking mostly of sports fans here) despised an opponent so thoroughly—perhaps your crosstown rivals during high school—that you vowed never to have truck or commerce (or affection) for any part of that other school? Have you ever ended up getting to know someone from that other school? Did it, perhaps, change your perspective a little? In short, is it possible, if not to switch allegiances, at least to see as fully human your erstwhile opponents—to spread a little Man City among the Man U crowd (or Real Madrid among the Barcelona fans)?
You are beginning to get historiography, then. You are on your way.
This is the deepest purpose of quizzes in my classes. It is one thing to gain the perspective of a Bowdoin student while attending Colby, and still another to understand students at a variety of NESCAC colleges, even as you hold to your own positions. When students start thinking of books as authored, they start to see the ways in which historical study can be just like...the rest of life (only better researched and written, usually). They start to realize—through repeated questions, followed by classroom discussions—that, just like their sports fan friends, authors of historical works shape their accounts and interpret their data. They begin to see that the answer to the question "how was the game?" only differs from "tell me about the role of the Japanese emperor in the Pacific War" in levels of detail.
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| [d] Detail RF |
Both are crafted answers with perspective.
This is the most important thing I teach, and not (oh, ye critics of little faith) because it tears down knowledge. I've heard all of that nonsense before. Bring back the old-school approach; let's learn what happened and get rid of all of that namby-pamby interpretive stuff. I've heard it all. I know when I hear such words that the invective of postmodern (gasp!) is not far behind. Isn't all of this author and perspective talk just another way to tell students that we cannot really know anything? Isn't it meant to tear down the greatness of our institutions and the memories we share and cherish? (Isn't this what Allan Bloom told us twenty five years ago)?
Uh, no. No it isn't.
As I said, this is utter nonsense. I could invoke the National Football League as a defense (all fans have different perspectives, yet the league is successful and strong beyond compare). I choose to invoke a higher authority, though—one Immanuel Kant. Let's not kid ourselves. Most people haven't internalized Kant's sophisticated arguments about subjectivity even now, two hundred years after he wrote The Critique of Pure Reason. In a nutshell, though, so-called traditionalists don't have a clue when they argue for a "just the facts" approach to history teaching. All human knowledge is subjective, but the human sciences (not to mention the natural ones) are capable of very great rigor. Kant was no wishy-washy, hand-wringing, relativist. Still, he taught that everything—everything—is perspectival. Everything is seen and interpreted and analyzed from an angle, or angles.
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| [e] Angles RF |
Except for demagogues, this is not difficult.
Quizzes are my big chance to show how this works. Wedged neatly between Jimbo's reading and note-taking, on the one hand, and formidable class discussions about historiographical interpretation, on the other, quizzes open a new space for thinking about authorship. They allow us to break down the crusty old foundations based on spurious notions of "objectivity" and to create the fresh space to build anew, on the solid ramparts of rigorous interpretation.
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We're going to round things out with just a little more detail in the next few days. For now, though, let me give you a hint. For all I have said thus far about nuance and interpretation, the "fact" of the matter is that quizzes help you remember stuff. Really. We will finish our introduction to Quotidian Quizzes with a post (or two) that brings our journey from "facts" to "interpretation," and back 'round to, well, solidly remembered stuff. It'll be fun. You have traveled too far to turn back now.See you Thursday (music is on the agenda tomorrow, on twelve-twelve...eighty-four).
This is one part of a multi-post introduction. Click below for the other posts:
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| [f] Finished RF |
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