Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone)

by Sam Wineburg

E. D. Hirsch, educational critic and proponent of “cultural literacy,” is right when he claims that without a framework for understanding (i.e., the ability to identify key figures, major events, and chronological sequences), the world becomes unintelligible and reading a newspaper virtually impossible. So why do so many young people emerge from high school lacking this core knowledge?

When we tell kids (while trying to keep a straight face) that it is crucial to know the difference between the Zhou and Qin Dynasties when the only dynasty their parents and grandparents can remember had rulers with names like Blake and Alexis, we diminish the nature of standards documents themselves.

Few historians would argue that large-scale multiple-choice tests capture the range of meanings we attribute to the “historic sense.” Such tests are used not because they are historically sound or predict engagement with historical study, but because they are easily read by machines. The prototype of these, the Markograph, was invented in 1933 by a Michigan science teacher fed up with hand-grading student papers (later he sold the rights to IBM for $15,000).46 That a Depression-era technology still shapes the tests we give to students is a national shame.

Like an Old Testament Jeremiah, Byrd prophesied the ills that would befall the land if the study of history was ignored: Our failure to insist that the words and actions of our forefathers be handed down from generation to generation will ultimately mean a failure to perpetuate this wonderful, glorious experiment in representative democracy. Without the lessons learned from the past, how can we insure that our Nation’s core ideals—life, liberty, justice—will survive?6 History held Americans together with “civic glue,” binding the diverse strands of its polyglot, multi-ethnic mix into a single people.

History, for Zinn, is looked at from “the bottom up”: a view “of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican War as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army.”1 Decades before we thought in such terms, Zinn provided a history for the 99 percent. Many teachers view A People’s History as an anti-textbook, a corrective to the narratives of progress dispensed by the state. This is undoubtedly true on a topical level.

Accordingly, the atomic bomb did not so much end World War II as fire the first shot in yet another conflict: the Cold War.

In the thirty-eight years since its original publication, A People’s History has gone from a book that buzzed about the ear of the dominant narrative to its current status, where in many circles it has become the dominant narrative. It shows up on college reading lists for economics, political science, anthropology, cultural studies, women’s studies, ethnic studies, Chicano studies, and African American studies courses, along with history. A People’s History (in its various editions and adaptations) remains a perennial favorite in courses for future teachers, and in some of these classes, it is the only history book on the syllabus.

But this is not a story about Howard Zinn, the man. It’s about Howard Zinn, the curriculum. Zinn lived an admirable life, but who he was is not the issue when a teacher bases a lesson on the atomic bomb on secondary works written more than forty years ago; or teaches about the Cold War without taking into account evidence that has come to light since the opening of Soviet archives; or conflates a Nazi bombing campaign with that of the Allies, ignoring Hitler’s barbarous assault on Poland; or places Jim Crow and the Holocaust on the same footing, without explaining that as color barriers were being dismantled in the United States, bricks were being laid for the crematoria at Auschwitz.

And the process never ends. Its destination leads to a new beginning. True historical inquiry must end where it begins: with a question mark.

To a historian, critical thinking isn’t just collecting facts in order to pass judgment. It’s about determining what questions to ask in order to generate new knowledge.

Historians were not deaf to Washington’s religious references. But where the scientists and clergy understood such references as testaments to Washington’s religious devotion, the historians stressed the president’s precision in crafting a vocabulary that would unite the dizzying array of Protestant denominations in post-Revolutionary America without alienating the small but important groups of Catholics, Jews, and freethinkers dotting the American landscape. It was precisely because he knew that Americans did not believe the same thing (contrary to what one of the scientists claimed) that Washington was scrupulous in choosing language that would be palatable to a broad spectrum of religious groups.

To make sure students paid attention to the bibliographic information at the foot of a document, teachers would begin a document review by asking the whole class, “What’s the first thing we do when we look at a document?” to which the class would chime in unison, “Source!” As Reisman notes, while progressive educators might bristle at the thought of a teacher requiring that students echo in choral response, the need for such rituals eventually falls away. Over time, asking questions about who wrote a document became what John Dewey called “the familiar furniture of the mind.”43 By the end of the year, students spontaneously remarked how such ways of thinking spilled out of history class and into their everyday lives.

It was my doctoral advisor and unpaid life coach, Lee Shulman, who said to me one day, “You know, Sam, historical thinking may be a subcategory of something larger—a broader, more encompassing way of thinking about information in the social world.”

Chapter 2 of Net Smart, “Crap Detection 101: How to Find What You Need to Know, and How to Decide If It’s True,” caught my eye.

from a 37-page guide from Microsoft, “Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research Skills,” to a 24-minute YouTube video he himself had produced on “crap detection literacy.”

Dan Russell is Google’s “search anthropologist.” With a PhD in computer science and stints at Apple, IBM, and Xerox PARC, Russell serves as Google’s senior research scientist, studying “Search Quality and User Happiness.” He is also something of a web celebrity, with a dedicated following on his SearchReSearch blog,16 a veritable DIY column that draws on Russell’s capacious knowledge of human factors research, computer science, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and homespun common sense.

According to Andrew Rotherham and Daniel Willingham, the push to attain “21st century skills” diverts educators from pursuing more established goals. What’s essential, they argue, are capabilities that have been around at least since Socrates questioned market-goers in the Agora. “The skills students need in the 21st century are not new,” they proclaim.33 However, the performance of professional historians and talented Stanford undergraduates suggests that time-honored ways of evaluating information may not be enough to navigate a serpentine digital terrain. Critical thinking and reading remain indispensable. But these interviews show that they are not enough.

Clay Shirky notes: “Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society.”

“Native advertising,” a euphemism for ads that masquerade as news stories, has become journalism’s cottage industry.

For today’s teens, the most famous American in history is . . . the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., appearing on 67 percent of all lists. Rosa Parks was close behind, at 60 percent, and third was Harriet Tubman, at 44 percent. Rounding out the top ten were Susan B. Anthony (34 percent), Benjamin Franklin (29 percent), Amelia Earhart (23 percent), Oprah Winfrey (22 percent), Marilyn Monroe (19 percent), Thomas Edison (18 percent), and Albert Einstein (16 percent). For the record, our sample matched within a few percentage points the demographics of the 2000 U.S. Census: about 70 percent of our respondents were white, 13 percent African American, 9 percent Hispanic, 7 percent Asian American, 1 percent Native American.

A pedagogic misjudgment can be the handmaiden to epiphany. “I realized then and there,” Will recalled, “that I cannot lament my students’ inability to decipher fake news if I haven’t given them the chance to practice doing it.”5 Will had rediscovered Pedagogy’s First Law, credited to Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea: If you want to teach students to swim, get them wet. Similarly, if you want to teach students the difference between reliable information and tabloid gossip, you can’t confiscate their phones. You have to use their phones to show them what their phones can’t do.