"Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye": E-Supplements and the Teaching of U.S. History

David Jaffee

A visit to the book exhibit at the 2002 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians left me thinking that I had stumbled upon a CompUSA store rather than a gathering of professional historians. Strolling through the aisles I found a multitude of high-tech equipment, including flat-panel monitors, digital projectors, and laptop computers. What was going on? Publishers had their rows of new monographs and their displays of colorfully covered U.S. history texts, of course—staples of exhibits for decades—but they also featured numerous CD-ROMs and online resources. Some of the exhibited items were historical databases for research purposes, such as The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade CD-ROM published by Cambridge University Press and Harvard University's W. E. B. Du Bois Center, but the bulk of digital resources on display were for teachers, especially teachers of the U.S. history survey course. Are we witnessing a transformative moment in the history of textbook publishing, as many champions of educational technology would have us believe? Or is something less far-reaching and more problematic perhaps at hand? What does the entry of digital history into the college classroom portend for how we teach and for how students learn?1	1
Long before the advent of personal computers, educators and others celebrated the potential of technology for improving the quality of instruction. "Is blackboard analysis of periods or subjects used?" was one of the categories listed in a table compiled by Carroll D. Wright for Herbert Baxter Adams's The Study of History in American Colleges and Universities, published in 1887. Over a decade later A. B. Hart devoted significant space to the use of maps in his "Methods of Teaching American History." He even offered graphic advice on how to make one:	2
A large outline map should be painted on a movable blackboard; it is significant to indicate the coasts. . . . A roll of strong manila paper, a few colored crayons, or, better still, water colors, a yard-stick, and a small map on which rectangles may be lightly ruled are all the materials necessary.
And, most memorably, Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, wrote in the New York Dramatic Mirror in 1913,
Books will soon be obsolete in the schools. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye. It is is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed in ten years.
Today's advocates of educational technology often echo Edison's proclamation of a new age of visuality, and they trumpet as well the supposed advantages of computer technology for institutional efficiency and student engagement.2
The all-too-familiar siren call of computer technology appeared at my very breakfast table as I wrote this essay. The New York Times "Circuits" section of August 15, 2002, featured the theme of students going back to school and highlighted the cool electronic gadgets that students can bring to class and the gigabit-speed networks and "smart" buildings at Case Western Reserve University. Yet amid all the celebratory remarks on hardware and other equipment, some cautionary flags popped up. A short box on "What Students Say" reviewed the Pew Internet and American Life Project report in which students stated that their teachers fail to grasp the real potential of the World Wide Web. One high school senior lambasted the "mundane use of the Internet" as a place to send students to "look up such and such lesson and I'll quiz you tomorrow"—rather than as a resource for developing innovative and intellectually challenging assignments.3	. . .