Our history textbooks consisted of long strings of dates and facts, peppered with text-boxes (“Women in the Industrial Revolution,” “The Underground Railroad”), and superficial glosses of powerful ideas (“Humanism,” “Capitalism”). We studied history as if preparing for a game of trivial pursuit, not as if we were inquiring into processes which have made us into who we are. We were tested accordingly, with instruction focused on passing state tests and AP exams. We displayed our ability to "think critically" through formulaic five-paragraph essays.
It took me a few years to develop an interest in history. It really didn't bloom until I read Herodotus in college.
In college, I respected my professors not just as teachers, but as historians, astronomers, philosophers, literary theorists, and so forth. They actually had something to say about the books we were reading.
I've often thought about the kind of high school I would have liked to have attended. My dream high school would recast the role of the high school teacher so that it more closely resembles the role of a college professor. The best professors are passionate both about their subject and about the process of communicating the value of their subject to others.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
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7 comments:
I have taught both high school and college hhistory. I am now teaching at a college, and am teaching Herodotus to first-year students in an introduction-to history course. I hope that this course is unlike their high school history classes, and I hope that they do the sort of reading of Herodotus that you have done.
My students have just written a "What is History for Herodotus?" paper, which should give me a sense of what notions of history they have brought with them from their high school classes, and how they have read Book 1 of The Histories.
I will see if I can get some of them to post their comments...
In my high school I had a great history teacher. His enthusiasm really showed his love of Ancient Greece. We even read bits and pieces of Herodotus. I am looking forward to continue learning about the interesting events of the past.
As a student who has studied a number of histories (European, American, etc.), I must say that the ancient histories detailed by Herodotus are, while certainly difficult to follow at times, the most interesting I've read. It is fascinating to see the ways people acted and thought back then, versus now; how it's evidently different, and yet in some respects shockingly similar.
While my field of study as a chemistry major will not require much historic inquiry, I still intend to continue historic study as an interest.
It has been quite a while since I have had the pleasure of studying ancient history of any kind, and by that I mean it has sadly been absent from my education since around the 6th grade. I did, however, take the AP US in my sophomore and junior year, and I enjoyed it very much. In many ways I feel that it was structured somewhat like a college class, or at least as close as it could be in high school.
My current history class in many ways seems to me to be a combination of a history/classical lit class, in that we discuss not only historical events but also analyze and discuss a translation of an ancient piece of writing and the style of the man who wrote it.
Reading the Histories has exposed me to a much different approach to the interpretation of historical record, and I continue to find interest in his writing.
In my high school class all we did was read a textbook and take notes on it. It was not a sufficient way to learn the materialbecause none of the students wanted to have endless reading everynight about a topic that doesn't interest them.
Herodotus definitely is difficult to follow at points but as a reader you can make connections to what he is saying about the time and place he lived in, because it has been done in movies and tv shows so it makes it easier to make correlations.
I for one didn't have a good history teacher or history class in high school at all. It's sad really. All we did was basically repeat U.S. history again and again. In middle school I had a good history teacher but it was still the same material. I have never before studied any ancient history at all besides spending about two weeks on Athens and Sparta in a Western Civilization class.
Herodotus' The Histories is so far, by far the most interesting history book I've ever read. I feel like he's telling a story or as if the work itself could be a literary piece. Sure he might not have had all his facts straight but its the story and passion behind it, not necessarily the bare facts, that are at the "meat" of history.
Thanks everyone for stopping by! What are you reading after Herodotus? Thucydides, Nietzsche's Greek intellectual Great-Grandfather?
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