Teaching with Museums

“For the exhibition of historical information to contribute to humanistic education, it must involve information that other people want and need. This is a tricky proposition. Those who have information to display typically control the form and content of its presentation, and they may have the power and the resources to impose their conception of ‘needed information’ on others. This dominance is a particular problem within the exhibition stance because it is less obvious: Analysis, identification, and moral response are easily recognized as social constructions, but information that is simply displayed can take on the appearance of a natural, inevitable, or objective representation of the world. It appears to “mirror” historical reality rather than to interpret it.”

Barton, K. C. & Levstik, L.S. (2004) Teaching History for the Common Good.

Lawrence Erbaum Associates: Mahwah, New Jersey. p. 121.

The “exhibition stance” of history, as explained by Barton and Levstik (2004) is the part of the demonstration of knowledge aspect of learning history. Part of knowing history is expressing what is known, and this performance can be positive, a way to reflect what has been learned and to teach others, however there is also the risk of it being detrimental to the goal of educating students to be active participants in democracy. The harmful possibilities range from the idea of being “good at history” as having the ability to debate encyclopedic knowledge of historical minutiae, to the teaching of history “to the test.” While it is easy to get caught up in the negative aspects of the exhibition of history, Barton and Levstik reassure us that this performance of history is not all bad. Many people find purpose in learning history as having the ability to pass it to others (p. 124), whether it be a grandparent passing down experienced history to their grandchild, an older sibling teaching what they learned in school to their younger sibling, or a historic site or museum showing their history. However, while admirable, these forms of exhibition also pose risks, namely in the fact that these presentations of history are often taken as fact by students, because they come from an authority figure they trust (family member, historical institution) and forget that this is just another source, among many, and that it will have its own purpose that needs to be taken into account.

On Wednesday (2/20) I attended a workshop organized by Facing History and Ourselves about teaching rescue and resistance and the Holocaust. The first part of the workshop was a tour of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) led by the museum’s director of education. While I have visited the museum many times before, I interned in the archives department as an undergrad, this tour, aimed at educators and focusing on the museum as a learning resource, was a very different experience. Learning about how the museum’s layout, exhibits, even lighting, are designed to provoke different thought processes in visitors, and how these all reflect the mission of the museum reinforced Barton and Levstik’s (2004) warning that even if information in the exhibition mode appears “natural, inevitable, or objective”, it is in actuality another way of interpreting and presenting the history, and like all sources, has its own purpose. The purpose of the USHMM is stated as such:

“The museum’s primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy, to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.” (USHMM.org)

The emphasis on the role of the museum as a “living memorial” that is still evolving in order to both connect with new generations and to ensure the continued teaching and connection to the Holocaust was reflected in the museum through the described changes that have been made to the museum over the years, and their continue focus on understanding how their visitors respond to the museum, and how they can affect this response. I personally believe that the USHMM does a wonderful job of taking extraordinarily sensitive subject matter, intellectualizing it, while still allowing for the emotional response and reflection that is necessary when learning about something of this magnitude. However, this is part of its purpose, and it is important, especially when learning about a topic historically affected controversy and requiring sensitivity, like the Holocaust, that students be aware of how information is being presented to them, and why, and not take any information at face value without thinking critically about it.

            Observing student groups going through the museum, I thought about how teachers can take an intense learning experience, like USHMM, and ensure that students are both learning about the subject matter and thinking about how it is presented to them. Some students I watched were completing “scavenger hunts” –searching for specific information in different parts of the exhibits, while others had journals which they would pause to write in, while others were going through it in small groups with a teacher. Each of these systems will accomplish a very different learning objective. Understanding the purpose in using any resource, even a historical site or museum that may be part of the annual field trip circuit within a department, is extremely important. Resources are out there to help educators in figuring out how to best use these sites. For teaching the Holocaust, the museum’s education web site (http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/) and Facing History and Ourselves (http://www.facinghistory.org/antisemitism) that can help guide deciding on what the purpose of the unit would be and how to utilize the museum as one, wonderful, yet not-without bias, source.

Teaching with Narratives

Narratives may help use understand history, but in their selectivity they also stand between us and history. Out of the pasts’s unlimited expanse of people and actions, narratives necessarily set limits –they tell stories about these people and not others, and they group actions into these events and not others. In itself, that is no constraint, because selectivity is unavoidable. Constraints arise when narrative is confused as history itself, so that alternative stories and alternative ways of conceptualizing history appear illegitimate. Precisely because stories are so powerful, we tend to think they are true in and of themselves rather than representing the outcome of choices people have made about how to organize a set of (selectively) true statements.

Barton and Levstik’s Teaching History for the Common Good (2004) pages 146-147

One of the main cultural tools used to teach history in the United States, according to Barton and Levstik, are narratives. They use narratives to describe when historians choose particular events, order them through causal links in order to tell a story. These stories are often easy packages of history that translate well to the classroom. Rather than examining one time and everything that was happening at that moment, simplified narratives that students make connections from, understand change, and identify with history. Teachers use narratives for many reasons beyond these. Students are familiar with the narrative structure, they have been exposed to it all their lives and are used to learning within it. Furthermore, a good story is engaging, which is a goal in the classroom.

While Barton and Levstik describe the advantages that narrative offers, their text seems to focus more on the constraints, the pitfalls that is easy to fall into when using narrative structure. While teaching history is all about gatekeeping – it would be impossible to teach everything about any time period in the time allotted – when told within a narrative the people and events mentioned get credibility, while those not mentioned can loose their legitimacy in the eyes of students. There is a danger in students becoming attached to certain narratives, it can be argued that many in our nation are, or seeing them as the truth, and the only truth, rather figuring out for themselves what they think our history means.

In my introductory post to this blog, I already exposed my love for the narrative structure of history. I came to love history through stories, and stories are still the way I find history the most engaging. However, I also agree with Barton and Levstik about many of the constraints of teaching history with the narrative structure. One page 5 of Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (2001) Sam Wineburg writes: “achieving mature historical thought depends precisely on our ability to navigate the uneven landscape of history, to traverse the rugged terrain that lies between the poles of familiarity and distance from the past.” This balance is hard to find in the classroom and narratives can trap students on the familiarity side. While I want students to be engaged and feel connected to history, I also want them to understand the distance and differences that allows for critical examination and coming to their own understandings.

What then are the alternatives? In “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”  Bruce Lesh found an alternative in helping his students create their own chronology of a historical event. This historical thinking tool exposes students to how narratives come to exist, and helps them to think critically about the narratives they are exposed to. As Lesh wrote on page 90, “chronology, when developed by historians, is not simply placing documents in chronological order, but making determinations about the relationships among information contained within a historical source and then using that information to craft an accurate telling of the event.” His activity helps students see that historians decide the order of events, what to include, and how this shapes the story that students then see and learn from (Barton and Levstick, p. 131). This is a skill that will help students interpret current events, and look critically at the stories they encounter outside of the classroom.

There are other ways of solving the narrative “problem,” both through historical thinking activities like Lesh’s as well as through presenting alternative narratives to students. While it can be a polarizing source, resources like the Zinn education project http://zinnedproject.org/ provide teachers with access to alternative narratives and can help them think of different ways of presenting history or different stories to tell. I still like the use of narratives, I think they have a use, and that getting students to be engaged and feel connected to history should not be overlooked. However, an awareness of the narratives being used, who relates to the, and what they say about history is important not only for teachers, but for students as well.