Time to Abandon Textbooks?
David Cutler, writing in The Atlantic (January 31, 2014), argues we should abandon teaching based on textbooks. Here is the essay in full, with three short comments added.
When
it comes to teaching history, nothing destroys student interest faster and more
completely than a heavy reliance on textbooks.
During
my first three years of teaching high-school history I would see students’ eyes
glaze over as we reviewed from a 1,000 page textbook. Five years later, I don’t
blame them. So much is wrong with history textbooks, I hardly know where to
begin, but here is my short list.
- Textbooks present history as
unchanging, but as time passes, our understanding and interpretation of
the past constantly evolves.
- Textbooks are one-sided,
offering a top-down, often white-male-centric view of history.
- Without a thesis or any
semblance or argument, textbooks don’t accurately reflect how most
scholars (at least good ones) write and present history. Teachers should
assign readings that model effective historical writing.
- Most importantly—and this
merits repeating—textbooks are boring and intimidating.
- Textbooks can serve as a crutch
for teachers who don’t know history or the historian’s craft.
I
find affirmation from James W. Loewen, author of Lies My
Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. “The
stories that history textbooks tell are all predictable; every problem has
already been solved or is about to be solved,” he writes. “Textbooks exclude conflict or real suspense. They leave out
anything that might reflect badly upon our national character. When they try
for drama, they achieve only melodrama, because readers know that everything
will turn out fine in the end.”
[In an otherwise great piece, this interests me
most, because it suggests that when we approach teaching and learning through
textbooks we imply that learning is a conflict-free zone. We tell stories about leaders or
breakthroughs that leave out the doubt and lingering controversy. This seems, by design or oversight, to create classrooms that fail to prepare students for
success in the real world, where managing uncertainty, making decisions with
incomplete information, and finding common ground even when we continue to
disagree are all essential skills. They do not tell false stories; they tell misleading stories. Textbooks tell stories we might hear in films like Pleasantville.]
Loewen
has a theory on why textbooks thrive, despite their deficiences: “They meet a
need, but it’s a need that should not exist. It is the need for teachers who
are not, first and foremost, teachers of history or social studies," he
says. He adds that his own high-school American history teacher didn’t care how
he taught American history, that the school system didn’t care about he taught
American history, and that he was hired and fired on the basis of the
basketball team’s record.This isn’t to say that textbooks don’t include information.
They are chock full of information (however one-sided), but herein lies a
serious problem. With so much dense, mind-numbing text, too many students give
up trying to understand what’s really important.
We must abandon textbook-based learning in
favor of assigning a myriad of sources.
Teachers
who depend on textbooks are likely to test what is in the textbooks: long lists
of facts. They tend to give long multiple-choice tests that evaluate students’
memorization skills, not what they have actually learned. To do well, students
memorize mountains of facts. Worst of all, in my experience, success on these
tests isn’t an accurate indication of what students will remember the following
week, month or year.
I
learned this lesson as a rookie-teacher, before rethinking my textbook-heavy
approach. A returning senior asked if she could retake the United States
history final. She had earned an “A” just three months prior, but after a long
summer, she wanted to know how much she remembered. My once-shining star had
devolved into an average student. Little deep or lasting learning had taken
root, and I began to understand why. She really didn’t care about the
content—at least not enough to put any real effort into retaining her
knowledge. And why should she have? After all, doing so would have meant
revisiting Alan Brinkley’s 13th edition of American
History: A Survey, her boring Advanced Placement United States
History textbook.
While
I was earning my BA and MA in history, I never learned primarily from any one
book, and certainly not any textbook. My professors made learning exciting,
always assigning a diverse, thought-provoking array of primary and secondary
sources. For me, that made my understanding of history more meaningful, and
thereby lasting. I learned to
internalize information, not merely store it in my short-term memory.
[Connecting this back to the story about his
star student above and his conversation with his colleague below.... Learning certainly requires us to remember
facts, but if we want this memorization to last and inform our lives, to improve
our thinking and decision-making, then we need to internalize the information,
we need to care about both the specific content and, more generally, about
living an exciting life of the mind. One of the most important skills to learn is to learn to ask good questions and textbooks erase that challenge when they ignore conflict and uncertainty.]
Last
week, I talked about textbook-based history learning with Dr. Aldo Regalado, my
colleague in the history department at Palmer Trinity in Palmetto Bay, Florida,
and a history teacher at the University of Miami and Florida International
University.
“I
have never taken or taught a college-level U.S. history course that earnestly
used a textbook—ever,” Regalado says. “I provide my students with context using
far more efficient means, and then they go deep into case studies, either by
reading primary sources or, better yet, by engaging in their own independent
research, writing and presentation projects. They come out of that experience with a real passion—a real sense of
ownership and an appreciation for questioning and deeper thinking.”
There
has already been some movement towards this approach at the AP level. Next fall,
the College Board will introduce a redesigned AP U.S. history exam. This change
is happening in part, the company’s website says, to “relieve
pressure and free teachers to engage students deeply in exploring,
understanding, and interpreting major historical events.” I strongly support assessing
students on more relevant skills, especially historical interpretation and
periodization. I hope this encourages more teachers to move away from
textbook-based learning. I also like what I hear from Suzanne Sinke, an associate professor of
history at Florida State University and Co-Chair of the AP U.S. History
Curriculum Development and Assessment Committee. “There is still a body
of knowledge that is tied to the curriculum, but the emphasis will be based
much more on skills,” Sinke said. “It moves us toward making this not so much
what you have memorized, but what you have learned.”
If
high-school history teachers want to prepare students for college-level history
courses (which I hope all of us do), we must abandon textbook-based learning in
favor of assigning and teaching from a myriad of sources. My students purchaseThe American
Nation: A Concise History of the American People, a
significantly slimmed-down version of Brinkley’s AP U.S. History textbook. It’s
still over 800 pages, but the pages are much smaller (not that this makes it
any less of a textbook).
Still,
I don’t over-rely on Brinkley, nor do I assign every page or chapter. I
certainly don’t give multiple-choice tests. Instead, I give students
supplemental readings, which serve as their main learning tools. I elicit
excitement by assigning exciting sources, such as Action Comics #1,
which I use to help teach about Judaism and immigration in the early-to-mid
1900s. During a unit on the Cold War, I have students analyze and find sources
to better inform their understanding of singer Barry McGuire’s rendition of
“Eve of Destruction.”
In
an age where information is instantaneous, cheap and easily accessible, history
teachers will need to do even more to guide students toward credible sources.
We must also help students pursue worthy
questions in the context of areas that interest them, even at the expense
of giving certain periods short shrift. In that environment, there is little
need for a textbook-based approach. Students aren’t slaves to a textbook,
eventually forgetting a large chunk of what they store in short-term memory.
Instead, the learning becomes more meaningful, engaging and lasting by being
depth-centered, not breadth-centered.
Teachers
should always inspire students to learn more about their subjects.
Unfortunately, an overreliance on textbooks accomplishes just the opposite.
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