People learn through stories. Jesus told parables. Abraham Lincoln charmed his way with humorous tales. Ronald Reagan enthralled audiences with anecdotes he kept on 3-by-5 cards.
Too many history textbook writers don't understand this, and the result is abysmal historical memory by many Americans. Most historians can't write, and so too many Americans "don't know much about history."
One way to get them hooked is historical fiction, which emphasizes the "story" in history.
The subject popped into the news recently with Sarah Palin's rambling mangling of the story of Paul Revere, a level of ignorance which has to be seen (YouTube) to be believed.
It was followed a few days later by the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which showed only half of American students are "proficient" in history and only 2 percent of high school seniors understood the significance of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision striking down segregated schools.
This is not a new lament. Historians have been bemoaning Americans' lack of memory since the early 20th century, with survey after survey showing students and adults retain little historical literacy.
As a historical novelist, I study history for a living. Motto: I read boring books so you don't have to, and glean the good stuff for historical thrillers.
From Blood of the Reich a reader could learn about pre-War Nazi SS exploration of Tibet, the cost of a 1938 plane ride across the Pacific, or a capsule summary of particle physics -- but all that amid a yarn of shootouts, escapes, and rescues. From Napoleon's Pyramids and The Rosetta Key, I explore the early perils of Western intervention in the Middle East, but only through the misadventures of an American rascal. From The Dakota Cipher and The Barbary Pirates, I key off more somber books about the heroic French voyageur fur trade, and an ingenious submarine invented by Robert Fulton a century ahead of its time.
So here's an idea: why not use more historical fiction to hook kids on history? Make our astonishing past a life habit, not a skills exam forgotten hours after it's taken.
Historical fiction worked for me. I loved reading history while growing up but despised history textbooks; even as a teen I knew tedious writing when I saw it. I suffered through history class and then went home to read popular history and historical novels for fun.
While I did score 15 out of 15 on a history quiz of questions given to high school seniors posted on the NPR site, like most adults I've forgotten more about the Missouri Compromise or Vasco de Gama than I remember.
What I do remember are stories.
Sarah Palin might benefit from the children's Revolutionary War novel Johnny Tremain. I remember the tale of Squanto helping Pilgrims from a juvenile novel read in grade school. I got the Indian side of the Little Big Horn way back in 1958 from Disney's movie and novel Tonka, a decade ahead of its time in attitudes toward Custer's Last Stand. I use Benjamin Franklin in my own novels, but first got hooked on him from Ben and Me, a novel about his (yes, fictional) mouse Amos.
At a higher reading level, perhaps The Red Badge of Courage or Gone With The Wind could get students interested in the Civil War as a lead-in to what all the shooting and shouting was about. The Great Gatsby on the Roaring Twenties. The Grapes of Wrath on the Depression. The comic novels The Mouse That Roared, Slaughterhouse Five, and Catch 22 on the lunacy of modern conflict. The Man Who Would Be King or The Sand Pebbles on colonial imperialism. The Help or Beloved on race relations.
Websites like librarybooklists.org have far more complete juvenile literature suggestions that teachers could draw from.
History textbooks are carefully calibrated to offend as few school boards as possible, but the result is that they lack what historical fiction frequently has: attitude. My hero Ethan Gage views great events with a skeptic's eye. Fiction personalizes history and injects humor, tragedy, romance, and peril: exactly the kind of thing to get teens interested in something beyond comic book superheroes. Our ancestors were not just inspiring but flawed, and more interesting because of it.
Shakespeare knew this too, and mined history relentlessly.
Yes, we learn history to take lessons and avoid mistakes. But we also learn to be inspired and appalled by all that humans are capable of. The laws and treaties so prized by textbook authors are the dry embalming of passion and courage, ambition and desire, fear and prejudice. Why do schoolbooks leave all the fun stuff out? History is whip and disease, immigrant journey and slum survival, scurvy and silly fashion. It is march, riot, strike, festival, and ball.
It's about a comfortable Boston silversmith risking his life to warn about a clever British night march to seize colonial arms and stop a revolt in its tracks.
Yes, Paul Revere. Hell of a story.
Yes, I'm in 100% agreement. History can be very entertaining but not the way it's presented to students.
Dave
www.dmmcgowan.blogspot.com
There is much history that can be interesting. Good military strategy books (and the books about those books) bring eras to thundering, bloody life. Good social history books, like the kind written by Richard Hofstadter or Victor Navasky (Naming Names) can deal with history in an up-close fashion as compellingly as fiction and all the more enlightening or disturbing for being non-fiction. Sometimes they provide a shock of surprise at how much they discuss has been forgotten or covered up.
Exact dates and names of treaties are a bit harder to personalize and generally less than critical to one's practical understanding of history. But they do make history easier to teach. Perhaps that's the crux of the problem -- they take no dares, brook no discussion, require little thought to teach, and can be graded by computer. Much of the problem comes down to surrendering the fight to make kids care because it's easier and less controversial to do something else.
I love history from the point of view of a normal person.
Imagining someone getting up 1000 years ago, using the bathroom (probably outside?), eating breakfast... being grumpy in the morning... going to work... laughing and crying, stubbing their toe, catching colds... living their life. Just like I do... without the cars, Internet, Diet Pepsi, or indoor plumbing.
Historical fiction is a good source for these kind of stories.
Like Mr. Dietrich, I have rebelled and written a historical fiction novel set in pre and WWII Naples Italy based on actual events and people.
A father dies and seventeen year old Carina's mother forces her daughter to leave her childhood love
and marry "the Prince of Naples," a man of wealth (and unbeknown to her, the head of the Naples Mafia). When an aerial bombing leaves her husband deaf and dumb, Carina dons her husband’s persona to take his place—thereby seizing control of the "no women allowed" world of the Camorra to protect her three small children and twelve siblings from the threats of the Nazi Gestapo, the war, other crime organizations and her own family.
Ron Russell
Author of WWII Naples crime drama "Don Carina"
http://www.DonCarina.com
Unfortunately, there is so little real reading in schools nowadays... few novels of any sort are actually read... that the idea of the historical novel is a virtual not starter. What reading that is done, is done in fits and starts... Is it any wonder that there's little understanding of continuity or retention?
I believe that part of the reason historical knowledge is only growing worse is the use of sidebars and photos that are placed on textbook pages w/o much regard to the main text. The interactive nature of websites as well. This constant skipping around without any depth leads to a total timeline confusion. I can't tell you how many people I've encountered in the past 20 years who do not know the order of the wars that the US has fought. I had a co-worker who believed that the Civil War and the Revolutionary war were the same war. Another did not seem to understand that our war against Japan in WW2 was not the Korean War... after all Japan and Korea are geographically close. At least the person knew that both countries were in Asia.