Sam Wineburg

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Sam Wineburg | Crazy for History | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Crazy for History

In 1917, the year the United States went to war, history erupted onto the pages of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Educational Psychology. J. Carleton Bell, the journal's managing editor and a professor at the Brooklyn Training School for Teachers, began his tenure with an editorial entitled "The Historic Sense." (A companion editorial examined the relation of psychology to military problems.) Bell claimed that the study of history provided an opportunity for thinking and reflection, qualities lacking in many classrooms.¹	1
Bell invited his readers to ponder two questions: "What is the historic sense?" and "How can it be developed?" Such questions, he asserted, did not concern only the history teacher; they were ones "in which the educational psychologist is interested, and which it is incumbent upon him to attempt to answer." To readers who wondered where to locate the elusive "historic sense," Bell offered clues. Presented with a set of primary documents, one student produces a coherent account while another assembles "a hodgepodge of miscellaneous facts." Similarly, some college freshmen "show great skill in the orderly arrangement of their historical data" while others "take all statements with equal emphasis . . . and become hopelessly confused in the multiplicity of details." Did such findings reflect "native differences in historic ability" or were they the "effects of specific courses of training"? Such questions opened "a fascinating field for investigation" for the educational psychologist.²	2
Bell's questions still nag us today. What is the essence of historical understanding? How can historical interpretation and analysis be taught? What is the role of instruction in improving students' ability to think? In light of his foresight, it is instructive to examine how Bell carried out his research agenda. In a companion article to his editorial, Bell and his colleague David F. McCollum presented a study that began by laying out five aspects of the historic sense: "The ability to understand present events in light of the past." The ability to sift through the documentary record—newspaper articles, hearsay, partisan attacks, contemporary accounts—and construct "from this confused tangle a straightforward and probable account" of what happened. The ability to appreciate a historical narrative. "Reflective and discriminating replies to 'thought questions' on a given historical situation." The ability to answer factual questions about historical personalities and events.³	3
The authors conceded that the fifth aspect was "the narrowest, and in the estimation of some writers, the least important type of historical ability." Yet, they acknowledged, it was the "most readily tested." In a fateful move, Bell and McCollum elected the path of least resistance: of their five possibilities only one—the ability to answer factual questions—was chosen for study. While perhaps the first instance, this was not the last in which ease of measurement—not priority of subject matter understanding—determined the shape and contour of a research program.⁴	4
Bell and McCollum created the first large-scale test of factual knowledge in United States history and administered it to fifteen hundred Texas students in 1915–1916. They compiled a list of names (for example, Thomas Jefferson, John Burgoyne, Alexander Hamilton, Cyrus H. McCormick), dates (1492, 1776, 1861), and events (the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dred Scott decision) that history teachers said every student should know. They administered their test at the upper elementary level (fifth through seventh grades), in high schools (in five Texas districts: Houston, Huntsville, Brenham, San Marcos, and Austin), and in colleges (at the University of Texas, Austin, and at two teacher-training institutions, South-West Texas State Normal School and Sam Houston Normal Institute).	. . .

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