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history and civic engagement

The Trump White House does American history

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 / johnfea

On Thursday, Constitution Day, Donald Trump announced something called the “1776 Commission.” Here is a taste of his speech:

Today, I am also pleased to announce that I will soon sign an Executive Order establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education. It will be called the “1776 Commission.” (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. It will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding. Think of that — 250 years.

If you want to see what this “1776 Commission” will look like, watch the so-called “White House Conference on American History”:

I have written about the 1619 Project many times here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog. Read my posts here.

I have also written extensively about “revisionist history.”

I have also written about Howard Zinn.

As I and others have written, the 1619 project has many flaws, but what I witnessed in the above video is less about American history and more about an attempt to use the past to promote a political agenda. There is no nuance. There is no complexity. Or, as one senior historian wrote yesterday in a private e-mail, there is very little “on the one hand this, on the other hand that.”

I have a lot of respect for Allen Guelzo and Wilfred McClay. (I did not know McClay was moving from the University of Oklahoma to Hillsdale College until today). I agree with a lot of what they said in this session. There is a place for their view that the past should nourish civic identity and inspire patriotism. But this session makes it sound as if history is only about civic identity and inspiration. History is about the pursuit of truth, wherever it leads.

Recently I was talking to my dental hygienist about what her daughter was learning in her American history course. The hygienist was complaining that her daughter was learning that George Washington was a “bad person.” Another hygienist, who was in the next room eavesdropping, came into my room and said that her grandson was getting the same message in his history class. I told both of them that if their children’s teachers were telling them that George Washington was only “bad,” then they were not very good history teachers.

The next day, I was talking to a friend who lives in a very conservative part of the country. His kids were not learning anything about the fact that George Washington owned slaves, that many of the founders did not want the Constitution to abolish slavery, and that United States Indian policy was often immoral. Instead his kids were learning nothing but “God and country” patriotism. I told him that his kids had a bad history teacher.

There is also something deeply ironic about the defense of “patriotic” history as defined by this panel. When the primary focus of a history classroom is historical thinking, and not patriotism, kids learn the skills necessary to be good citizens and patriots.

Last night I watched the Netflix film The Social Dilemma. I am not going to elaborate on it here, but it is a film every American should watch. It is hard to watch The Social Dilemma and not walk away from the screen believing that we need to invest in the skills cultivated by the study of history and the larger humanities. We need to teach kids how to detect bias and how to see the world in terms of context, change over time, causality, complexity, and contingency. This is the only way they will understand what is fake and what is real as the endless content flows across their phone screens.

Social media and the proliferation of fake news may be the most existential threat to American democracy. While Trump and his team of historians worry about the 1619 Project, critical race theory, and patriotic education, our kids (and adults) are getting sucked into echo chambers and either don’t know how to get out, don’t want to get out, or have no idea they are even in one.

Meanwhile, Putin uses our addiction to these social media sites to undermine our elections. And large swaths of the country get their news and understanding of the world from a chat room god named Q.

In the end, the “White House Conference on American History” was a political stunt. Sadly, it looked like a sophisticated Trump rally.

The Trump administration believes that an attack on the 1619 Project, critical race theory, and what they claim to be “unpatriotic history” will help Trump win white evangelicals and other conservatives in November. I am really disappointed that Guelzo and McClay–both Christian historians– allowed themselves to be part of this political performance.

John Hope Franklin once called historians “the conscience of the nation.” This entire event is an example of what happens when historians get too cozy with political power.

Steven Mintz: “History is back with a vengeance”

June 11, 2020June 11, 2020 / johnfea

MArch

Steven Mintz, one of our leading authorities on the history of the American family, makes the case for history at Inside Higher Ed:

History is back with a vengeance.

After a decade-long holiday from history, when joblessness fell to record lows and the stock market reached glittering heights, history has struck back.

The pandemic, the joblessness, the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, the profound political polarization — all cannot be fully understood without recognizing their historical roots and historical precedents:

  • The global interconnectedness that facilitated transmission of pathogens.
  • This nation’s long history of racial inequity; racial disparities in wealth, health care, policing and access to jobs and credit; and antiblack racial violence.
  • A financial system that produced levels of inequality as extreme as those of the 1920s and that increasingly leveraged debt, leaving many companies extremely vulnerable to economic downturns.

Too many people think of history simply as a record of past events. But history is equally concerned with processes — demographic, geopolitical, ideological and climatic — that take place over time, often remaining out of sight until they become inescapable and unavoidable.

Much as our students’ grandparents and great-grandparents lived through history — the hardships of the Great Depression and the upheavals of World War II — our students are now living through history. As a result, they are learning history’s most wrenching, painful and sorrowful lesson: that historical processes are remorseless and often harsh and cruel, that these processes often drive politics, and that none of us, no matter how privileged, can escape history.

As our graduates enter an economy hemorrhaging jobs, as many of their parents lose their health and livelihood and deplete their savings, we also have an obligation to teach history’s other story: of persistence, struggle, resilience, of pressing forward in circumstances not of our own making.

Read the rest here.

Can History Help Us Understand the Present?

August 24, 2018August 23, 2018 / johnfea

Why Study History CoverOf course it can.

But even if it doesn’t have an immediate or direct relevance to a particular contemporary issue or event, the practice of doing history cultivates virtues that are essential to a democratic society.  In other words, I continue to stand by what I argued in Why Study History?: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past.

Over at History Today, University of Edinburgh historian Robert Crowcroft reflects on the way history can be “applied” to the present.  Here is a taste of his piece:

Given that history is so policy-relevant, the scepticism of the majority of professionals about ‘applied history’ is a shame. First, it displays a lack of awareness of the provenance of the discipline. Second, it implies a misunderstanding of causation – the very thing that historians are supposed to be specialists in. If one makes a claim to expertise in cause and effect, one should be trained to discern patterns and project trends forward. Third, it disregards what the public want from their historians (who they largely fund): a willingness to tackle big problems. Finally, the professional wariness about the ‘relevance’ of history is arguably one important reason why thousands of university students fret that their history degree will prove ‘useless’.

History is fascinating in itself, but what makes it so stimulating is that it offers deeper insights into the human condition that are of enduring value. The past is not a foolproof guide to the present or the future – it is simply the only guide we have. Here, Collingwood is again helpful. He believed that the past is ‘incapsulated’ in the present and thus ‘lives on’: when one peels back the layers, one quickly realises that the present is nothing more than the accumulated decisions and actions of the past. History is ‘alive and active’ and stands ‘in the closest possible relation to practical life’.

Read the entire piece here.

It’s Time to Reclaim Some Territory for History!

March 8, 2017 / johnfea

OFFICIAL U.S. MARINE CORPS PHOTO 113061

Fred Johnson, a history professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, insists that we “claim some territory” for history at our colleges and universities.  I appreciate Fred’s spirited call.

Here is a taste:

After years of sniping and hurling poisonous charges, the people who’ve been questioning the value of a liberal arts education and, specifically, whether disciplines in the Arts & Humanities are pathways to “real” jobs, are getting their wish. Because while articles and testimonials have repeatedly underscored the importance of the liberal arts in all fields, in all careers, in all phases of life, few opportunities have been lost to classify liberal arts disciplines as interests pursued by those who either don’t want or need a job.

So congratulations naysayers on believing that it’s actually possible to educate and develop superior workers, citizens, leaders, and human beings by starving their humanity. Yes, congratulations for being either unaware or unfazed [or, aware but unfazed] by the intractable dysfunctions in government, the workplace, and in society at large which, along with causing frustration, anger, and alarm, are becoming the new permanently normal. For you see, no nation that so profusely claims a desire to continue leading the world can expect to be taken seriously when it’s committed to finding ever more creative ways of denying future leaders the practical and conceptual skills necessary to lead.

All credit is enthusiastically given to the doubters and detractors of the liberal arts who have insisted on prioritizing matter over mind, thoughts over thoughtfulness, function over fit, qualifications over capabilities, knowledge over wisdom, and results over consequences. Their diligent dedication has been essential in helping produce the hyper-distracted, non-visionary, willfully gullible, increasingly balkanized, rampantly distrustful, antagonistic, self-centered, social miasma called—today.

Still, it’s not too late. Although the worst vitriol of the liberal arts harassers is spewed onto those disciplines in the Arts & Humanities, they can neither obscure, nor magically disappear the force of irrefutable evidence exemplified by the people whose lives and careers verify and underscore the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and, yes, financial benefits, advantaging those with an Arts & Humanities background. So in addition to sparing no effort to provide students with an education that’ll get them that [admittedly] all-important first job, the battered toilers in the liberal arts also provide the next generation with the lifelong skills necessary for keeping, advancing, and succeeding in any job. This is especially true with regard to the professional and personal preparation supplied by historians.

For historians have a uniquely critical role to play in bringing clarity and calm to the contemporary confusion that’s stifling the possibilities for progress. Historians and their resolute commitment to critical thinking, their bold determination to strive for objectivity [despite their acknowledged impossibility of escaping bias], and their stubborn refusal to dilute the precision and power of oral and written communication, stand collectively as a lighthouse of hope for a ship of state that, more than ever, needs to find a safe harbor ASAP!

Doubters need to look no further than the continued evaporation of civility in public discourse, gadget-bedazzled techno-prophets who minimize, or dismiss indomitable humanity, and, given the depth and breadth of national angst, the contemporaneous resurgence of fear-mongering, xenophobia, discrimination, and appeals to humanity’s dark side.

The scorched earth rhetoric of 2016’s presidential campaign ripped the scab away from festering concerns regarding the processes, precedents, conflicts, and conundrums that have generated confusion about the functional effectiveness of America’s republican democracy. Missing too often from the swamp croaking of bamboozlers, purveyors of fake news, merchants of blame, talk radio blowhards, and outright liars, was the rigorous, fact-rooted, fact-originated, and fact-tested perspectives of the historians.

Historians bring a myriad of reconciling benefits to the weary body politic. Rather than allowing disagreements to fracture their community, historians strive to embrace disagreement for its power to keep them from becoming too enamored with their own positions. They generally respect and hold dear the methodology and imperatives of historical inquiry which imposes an occasionally brutal but always thorough process of filtration. This helps keeps them honest and warns benders of truth that, for historians, when it comes to the truth, court is always in session.

Read the entire piece at the blog of the Hope College History Department.

The “Benedict Option” Versus “Confident Pluralism”

March 3, 2017March 3, 2017 / johnfea / 5 Comments

benedictIn his March 2017 Christianity Today cover story, conservative writer Rod Dreher introduces evangelicals to “The Benedict Option.”

I like Dreher’s published works.  I read his book Crunchy Cons at a time in my intellectual journey when I was also reading a lot of Wendell Berry, Christopher Lasch, and others writing about the importance of “place.”  Berry and Lasch provided a lot of the “theory” behind my treatment of Philip Vickers Fithian’s “rural Enlightenment” in The Way of Improvement Leads Home.  As I type this, I am looking up at the bookshelf above my desk where I see the green spine of my paperback copy of Dreher’s The Little Way of Ruthie Leaming.  I hope to get to it soon. I read Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative when I can, but I often find him to be a bit too much of a culture-warrior for my tastes.  (Although I imagine that some might say the same thing about me and my blog).

If I remember correctly, Dreher has been preaching the “Benedict Option” ever since the Obergfell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage in America.  He saw this decision as something akin to the collapse of a Christian civilization. (Although, to be fair, his argument for the decline of Christian civilization is much more sophisticated than this).

Dreher coined the phrase “Benedict Option” after reading this passage in Catholic moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s book After Virtue:

It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead often not recognizing fully what they were doing—was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict.

According to his forthcoming book on the subject, Dreher believes:

The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West, and only the willfully blind refuse to see it. From the outside, American churches are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. From the inside, they are being hollowed out by the departure of young people and a watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the triumph of gay marriage and the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicate, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age.

Dreher thinks that Christians should respond to these problems by retreating into communal enclaves along the lines suggested by MacIntyre.

Every now and then someone asks me what I think about Dreher’s idea.  I like a lot of it.  I think that Christians always need to sustain strong communities for the purpose of nurturing our young people in the faith and preserving our values.  As a professor who teaches at a church-related college, I often worry about the way the church forms its young people in matters of biblical and theological literacy, moral reflection, and the Christian intellectual life.  When these kids arrive in my classroom I can no longer expect them to be steeped in these in things.

Moreover, as I have written here and elsewhere, much of the current attempts by conservative Christians to change the world through politics or the forging of a “Christian nation” wreaks of idolatry. It conflates the church with the nation-state. The failure of evangelicals to make these distinctions mutes the prophetic voice of the church. The church needs to be the church–a community of believers with a common religious faith actively seeking to follow the teachings of the Bible and Christian orthodoxy.

Having said all that, I also like John Inazu‘s idea of “confident pluralism.”  I have written about this Inazu’s work here.  Over at the Christianity Today website, Inazu offers his critique of the “Benedict Option.”

Here is a Confident Pluralismtaste:

I agree with much of Rod Dreher’s cultural diagnosis, though we differ in posture and tone. Like Dreher, I believe many of my neighbors hold wrong-headed views with real-world consequences. But I also see a lot of good in those neighbors and a lot that I can learn from them. Tim Keller and I have argued that our confidence in the gospel lets us find common ground with others even when we can’t agree on a common good. This confidence in our own beliefs and the institutions that sustain them is also what I’ve suggested allows Christians to pursue confident pluralism.

I share Dreher’s desire for partnership across faith traditions—but I would go further. Dreher references the 1990-era effort, Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Today we might think about something like Evangelicals and Muslims Together. I don’t mean that as a call for theological unity but for real friendships and public partnership. Evangelicals would benefit from these kinds of relationships with Muslims in pursuing charitable work on behalf of others, advocating the value of pluralism in this country, and defending the importance of religious liberty.

I strongly recommend Inazu’s book.  I also recommend University of Virginia theologian Charles Mathewes on these issues.  I drew heavily from Mathewes’s book A Theology of Public Life and Republic of Grace in my own book Why Study History?: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past.

Here is what I wrote:

…Americans live in isolated enclaves that make it difficult for them to engage in public with people who are not like them.  American Christians are also guilty of this kind of isolationism.  God wants us to turn toward him, but he also wants us to turn toward others in a spirit of Christian love and understanding.  Yet it is much easier to escape to the comfortable enclaves we have created for ourselves where everyone is just like us.  Such cultural isolationism prevents us from getting to know people who represent a different political orientation, religious belief, class, race, or sexual orientation.  Or perhaps our escapism is more theological in nature–a belief that human history has already been “scripted” by God.  Such an eschatological approach to life teaches us that this world is not as important as the next one, so we do not need to invest in it with any degree of seriousness.  According to theologian Charles Mathewes, this kind of escapism weakens our spiritual lives, for public engagement cultivates Christian character, purified our souls, and prepares us for our heavenly home.  In the process of loving our neighbor–a practice that goes to the heart of civic life–we grow as Christians.   Humans need to live in society.  We fulfill our vocations as Christians in the world through dialogue with and service to others.  It is the place where we work out our salvation and exercise our spiritual gifts and talents.

Why Study History CoverWhat if we viewed the study of the past as a form of public engagement?  Like any type of public engagement, an encounter with the strangeness of the past can inevitably lead, in Mathewes’s words, “to contemplation of the mysteries of providence, the sovereignty of God, and the cultivation of the holy terror that is integral to true piety.  Even if the people we engage with are dead, we can still enter into a conversation with the sources that they have left behind.  In a passage strikingly familiar to [historian’s Sam] Wineburg’s and [Walter] McDougall’s thoughts on the discipline of history, Mathewes argues that when we encounter people in all their strangeness we “find ourselves decentered, we find that we are no longer the main object of our purposes, but participate in something not primarily our own.  This confession then is itself a turning to the other, not in the interests of mutual narcissism–which makes the other only a consolation prize for having to be already ourselves–but as an openness to transforming, and being transformed, by, the other.” (Republic of Grace, p.210).

It seems to me that Dreher, Inazu, and Mathewes are all correct.  Christians need strong. monastic-like communities, set apart from politics and public life, to cultivate people in the traditions of the faith so that they can pursue the kind of confident pluralism and civic engagement that Inazu and Mathewes suggest can deepen faith and public witness.

 

The Glenn Beck and David Barton History Roadshow is Coming to a Public School Near You

February 4, 2017February 4, 2017 / johnfea / 13 Comments

Watch:

It’s happening folks.  Beck and Barton have raised a million dollars to teach kids how to use primary documents “against the progressives.” In other words, they are going to try to teach students that America was founded as a Christian nation.

Don’t get me wrong.  We need to expose our students to more and more primary documents.  We need to teach students to put them in context, source them, and read them historically.   But the phrase “against the progressives” suggests that Beck and Barton are once again using the past to promote their political agenda. My concern is that they are going to teach kids that the purpose of studying history is to cherry-pick documents and quotes for political purposes.  This is bad history waiting to happen.

The older I get, the more I see the importance of money for shaping our understanding of citizenship and democratic participation.  While Beck boasts about his million-dollar project, funding has been cut for the humanities at both the national and state level.  The era of the “Teaching American History” grants are over.  Colleges and universities, ever driven by market forces, are reluctant to put money into the humanities because fewer and fewer students want to study them.  And as I have learned first hand in the last couple of years, the captains of private enterprise are only interested in funding history when it contributes to their economic or religious agendas.  I am getting closer and closer to becoming that guy who uses his platform to preach the collapse of the American republic.

We are trying to make a dent here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.  We blog every day.  We have a podcast.  We hit the road as much as possible.  I use my classroom to teach students that historical thinking is essential to democratic life.

But we just don’t have the funds or human power to expand our reach.

Watching Glenn Beck talk about his grand initiative to use history as a means of indoctrinating young people with the pseudohistory of David Barton is quite depressing.

Yet, the fight continues.  Let’s invest in our democracy.  Let’s invest in our civic life.  Let’s invest in history.

 

Historians and Trump: Thoughts From a Middle School Teacher

January 6, 2017 / johnfea / 2 Comments

historytrumpEarlier today we met eight-grade history teacher Zachary Cote and heard about his trip to “intellectual Disneyland.”  Tonight Zach discusses the AHA session “Historical Expertise and Political Authority.”  (You may recall that we did a post on this session earlier today).–JF

When I saw AHA Executive Director Jim Grossman  would be chairing the panel entitled, “Historical Expertise and Political Authority,” I figured it would be smart to attend. Apparently so did many others. It has been the most attended panel that I have been to thus far. The conversation was centered on the open letter released this past summer entitled,“Historians Against Trump” and Stanley Fish’s critical op-ed of that letter in The New York Times.

The panel opened with Fish, who has pages of academic achievements, ardently declaring that historians can analyze politics, but should not “dispense political wisdom.” Fish was adamant that the historian is paid to analyze the past, write about that analysis, and teach others how to do both successfully.  They are not in the business of engaging in politics.

Jonathan Zimmerman also disagreed with “Historians Against Trump,” but did so for very different reasons. He argued that historical knowledge should inform the present and engage with politics, but in a way that does not ostracize those of differing opinions. According to Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, it is important to acknowledge that people with equal levels of historical expertise can examine politics and arrive at different conclusions. By using language that harshly critiques the President-elect and those who voted for him historians, Zimmerman argues, are not practicing the historical virtue of “listening to diverse voices.” Zimmerman concluded by stating, “As an educator, my job is to try and understand people who have opinions different than my own.” This is a sentiment I resonate with greatly.

Professor Jacqueline Jones (University of Texas at Austin) came prepared to oppose Fish’s argument. She acknowledged that the teaching of history is often highly politicized. She cited examples of the Texas history standards and the backlash against her own department for the perceived “politically correct” curriculum that is taught. Jones acknowledged that simply choosing what to teach can often be interpreted as a political statement, and thus, by the very nature of the profession, historians are engaging in political discourse.

The final presenter on the panel, Steven Conn of Miami University (yes, that’s Miami, Ohio), took a more practical approach. He pointed out that if historians do not offer political wisdom, the vacuum will be filled by economists and in his words, “I just can’t stomach that.” There is a vast public who look to historians for their opinions on the present based upon their expertise of the past and historians should not ignore those people. After all, if history is to be more than “dry antiquarianism,” and we are serious about “Jefferson’s informed electorate,” then historians should engage in public conversation, even if they are polarizing.

After these presentations I had a lot to think about.  How did this dialogue impact me as a middle school teacher?  During the Q & A session Zimmerman noted that the majority of graduate students in history will not be able to have the same type of academic career that he has had. There simply are not enough positions in academia in proportion to the amount of graduate students earning PhDs. Grossman further illuminated this idea in his closing remarks by distinguishing between “history the discipline” and “history the profession.” By the nature of my job, in that moment, I felt like I had voice in this dialogue.

While I understand Fish’s point about the history profession, I do think that historians should break out of the profession at times and dialogue with those outside university walls on issues in which they can provide expertise and further dialogue. This is why I take pride in my job–a middle school teacher in Los Angeles. I work with students whose opportunities are much slimmer than mine were when I was growing up. I see it as a duty to give my students the tools and resources to overcome the odds and move toward success. As a result, if I see a prominent public person who directly speaks against their heritage and culture, I believe it is my duty to not only stand with them, but give them the analytical tools to disprove the misconceptions that this person, who probably has more resources, is disseminating to the public. My profession may not be academic history, but it does use the discipline of history to equip and inspire today’s youth to make positive changes in the world.

Is “Historian’s Against Trump” too broad? Is its language too strong? Perhaps. Should I teach my students to understand the perspectives of those who use rhetoric that disrespects them? I must.  But one can be empathetic and still voice opposition.

More on History Harvests

March 7, 2013November 20, 2017 / johnfea

Over at The Junto, Sara Georgini interviews William Thomas and Patrick Jones of the University Nebraska’s History Department.  They are the public history geniuses who have created “History Harvest,” a community-based approach to building a people’s history of America online.  (See our coverage here).  In this interview Thomas and Jones talk about how they got started doing History Harvests, the challenges along the way, and their community-based approach.

Here is a taste of the interview:

JUNTO: What’s next for the History Harvest? And how has it changed the way you teach?

THOMAS: Well, first we have had so many people at universities and colleges reach out to us that we plan to hold a History Harvest Blitz Week April 8-12. This will be a “virtual” brainstorming session for all interested parties, culminating on Friday April 12 with a NITLE seminar on The History Harvest that Patrick Jones and I will lead. We hope the blitz suggestions on our blog and through Twitter @HistoryHarvest (just established) and other social media will help shape the project’s next steps. The goal of the week is to open our broader History Harvest idea out through social media for participation and feedback. We see this as a form of open strategic planning for the History Harvest project. While we are glad to encourage everyone who leaps in and runs their own harvests (undoubtedly a good thing in the community), we are seeking ideas about a federated approach to this form of experiential learning, how to develop best practices for the History Harvest classes, and how to develop the cyber-infrastructure to support it. Should be interesting. We’ll capture the comments, twitter stream, etc. We will post an invitation to join in on the Blitz Week soon. To keep matters interesting each day of the blitz week, we are planning on releasing student-produced work, including a short video introducing The History Harvest, and we hope to have a series of community radio “interstitials” for “The History Harvest Moment” that indicate what students can do and focus on one object/story from a harvest. Finally, I’m planning to teach The History Harvest next year in a distributed format with classes running simultaneously at two other universities and colleges in Nebraska. This will be our first effort at a multi-site, multi-class History Harvest course. Very exciting. 

JONES: I will simply add that I am convinced that the History Harvest is a prototype for the kind of teaching we need to be doing in the 21st century across the humanities and social sciences. During exit interviews, every student in the North Omaha History Harvest class called it their most significant educational experience in their entire academic career at the University of Nebraska and stated that they wanted more of these “authentic learning” opportunities, not just in History, but across College of Arts & Sciences. I hear them and plan to continue to move my teaching in this direction.

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