Methods
Been up since way before dark-thirty scoring student exercises in HIST 390, the methods of research and writing course. This blog is devoted to writing interests, and early-morning grading may seem far from those, but there is a connection.
Now, most faculty in all disciplines are chary of teaching the required methods course. It's a thankless task, it puts your work on exhibit to peers who don't or won't teach it (yes, Bill Caraher, I read what you said!), and it's a time sink. Done right, it requires countless hours like those of this morning and unending student consultations in order to shepherd the flock through to the green pastures. (I like to see every one finish successfully.) It scores you no points in the profession.
I do teach the methods course, I require an unusual quantity of work, and I labor to bring it up to professional standard. While still trying to convey the joy (what W. P. Webb called the "high adventure") of doing History. I'm stuck, it seems, and sometimes discouraged, but never ambivalent about this teaching assignment.
As a scholar who writes for scholarly and public consumption every day, and, like all such, bemoans the dearth of time to concentrate on that, I might try to get out of this assignment. As the senior teaching faculty member in my college, not to mention my department, I might try to pull rank. On the other hand, as an old guy who writes--writes a lot--and a great-grandfather to boot, I may have peculiar qualifications to teach rising historians how to research and write. I have walked the walk for five decades, have seen a lot of students, and now possess, I hope, the modicum of patience required to bring initiates along. Yes, I'm busy, and yes, I'm absent-minded. There are trade-offs. I also get up at five in the morning, which made it possible to get the grading done this morning.
None of this addresses what is the main consideration for me in this particular enterprise, which is its place in the larger enterprises of History and learning. The methods course situates me to do good, to have a positive role in the preparation of teachers and historians. History, like the other liberal arts, is in eclipse in this country now, with results obvious not only in the academy but also, and moreso, in the public sphere. Every historian has to look to the restoration of the profession, for the good of the country, and I want to do my part. Every educator, at whatever level, has to strive to reverse the decline in public intelligence (yes, it's documented) in our country, has to labor for the elevation of learning, and I want to do my part toward that, too.
This labor is not without joy. My students, as the old song says, don't know much about History, but they are good people, good to spend time with. They possess their own intelligences and latent abilities, which now and then spring forth as remarkable insights and felicitous phrases. There is hope. And satisfaction.
Better check up on me in April, when the paper drafts come in.
Now, most faculty in all disciplines are chary of teaching the required methods course. It's a thankless task, it puts your work on exhibit to peers who don't or won't teach it (yes, Bill Caraher, I read what you said!), and it's a time sink. Done right, it requires countless hours like those of this morning and unending student consultations in order to shepherd the flock through to the green pastures. (I like to see every one finish successfully.) It scores you no points in the profession.
I do teach the methods course, I require an unusual quantity of work, and I labor to bring it up to professional standard. While still trying to convey the joy (what W. P. Webb called the "high adventure") of doing History. I'm stuck, it seems, and sometimes discouraged, but never ambivalent about this teaching assignment.
As a scholar who writes for scholarly and public consumption every day, and, like all such, bemoans the dearth of time to concentrate on that, I might try to get out of this assignment. As the senior teaching faculty member in my college, not to mention my department, I might try to pull rank. On the other hand, as an old guy who writes--writes a lot--and a great-grandfather to boot, I may have peculiar qualifications to teach rising historians how to research and write. I have walked the walk for five decades, have seen a lot of students, and now possess, I hope, the modicum of patience required to bring initiates along. Yes, I'm busy, and yes, I'm absent-minded. There are trade-offs. I also get up at five in the morning, which made it possible to get the grading done this morning.
None of this addresses what is the main consideration for me in this particular enterprise, which is its place in the larger enterprises of History and learning. The methods course situates me to do good, to have a positive role in the preparation of teachers and historians. History, like the other liberal arts, is in eclipse in this country now, with results obvious not only in the academy but also, and moreso, in the public sphere. Every historian has to look to the restoration of the profession, for the good of the country, and I want to do my part. Every educator, at whatever level, has to strive to reverse the decline in public intelligence (yes, it's documented) in our country, has to labor for the elevation of learning, and I want to do my part toward that, too.
This labor is not without joy. My students, as the old song says, don't know much about History, but they are good people, good to spend time with. They possess their own intelligences and latent abilities, which now and then spring forth as remarkable insights and felicitous phrases. There is hope. And satisfaction.
Better check up on me in April, when the paper drafts come in.
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Willow Creek: A Writing Journal
From the home office on Willow Creek, in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, historian Tom Isern blogs about his (literary) life on the plains.
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