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.