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The Idea of History Teaching: Using
Collingwood's Idea of History to Promote Critical Thinking in the High
School History Classroom
Anthony E. Pattiz
Sandy Creek High School, Tyrone, Georgia
A man who taught history badly, when he was at school, and has never worked at it since, may think there is nothing in it except events and dates and places: so that wherever he can find events and dates and places, he will fancy himself in the presence of history. But anyone who has ever worked intelligently at history knows that it is never about mere events, but about actions that express the thoughts of their agents; and that the framework of dates and places is of value to the historian only because, helping to place each action in its context, it helps him to realize what the thoughts of an agent operating in that context must have been like.
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—R.G. Collingwood,
The Principles of History and other writings in philosophy of history |
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I. Historical Education at a Crossroads | |
| HISTORICAL EDUCATION finds itself at a crossroads as we enter the twenty-first century. One road leads to greater accountability through more testing. The other road suggests that learners learn best in interactive environments, which give students various opportunities to "experience" the past. For the high school history teacher, the challenge is especially daunting since he finds himself struggling to reinvigorate an old discipline while simultaneously satisfying the demands of politicians and parents alike. These influential constituent groups demand objective measures of student achievement. Students, however, tend to seek greater engagement with the subject matter under study. With the teacher caught in the crossfire, it is an opportune moment to revisit the idea of history teaching. |
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R.G. Collingwood, in his landmark work entitled The Idea of History, outlined an innovative approach to the study of history. While this approach was written with the professional historian in mind, it provides high school history teachers with a new roadmap for teaching an old discipline. Collingwood (1946) describes this process as follows:
He [the historian] must think that problem out for himself, see what possible solutions of it might be offered, and see why this particular philosopher chose that solution instead of another. This means re-thinking for himself the thought of his author, and nothing short of that will make him the historian of that author's philosophy. (p. 283)
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Within the field of social studies education in general and historical education in particular, a growing body of scholarly research suggests that students are not being taught how to think critically in assessing the validity of various statements that pertain to a variety of issues, events, individuals, and/or ideas. The dominant mode of instruction within this field emphasizes the replication of isolated bits of information (e.g., names, dates) that students reproduce on static assessment instruments (e.g., multiple choice, matching, true and false). Wiggins (1993) concludes that a didactic curriculum culminating in objective evaluations (multiple choice, true and false, and matching) not only lacks relevance, but is actually harmful to students because such an approach suggests the application of knowledge and information in a manner inconsistent with its actual applications in real world contexts. "The simple answer is that all performance is highly contextual, involves constant judgment in adapting knowledge, and places an emphasis on habits of mind, not learnedness" (p. 202). |
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Darling-Hammond (1997) also criticizes the heavy reliance schools place on objective assessments as opposed to instructional practices that encourage learning for deep understanding. She writes:
Policies do not support teaching for understanding when they require passive learning of reams of facts and bits of skills, require standardized teaching for students who differ in how they learn and how much they have already learned, prescribe time blocks for teaching irrespective of subject matter or teaching method, prevent teachers from learning about students as individuals, assess students with multiple-choice norm-referenced tests and teachers by how well their students do on these tests, set school practices from the top down, allow glaring inequities in resources for education, and fail to invest in teacher learning. (p. 147)
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Paul (1992) assesses the magnitude of this problem:
Students read the finished products of professional historians rather than problems and data which enable them to think historically. Students have little sense of how to engage in historical thinking and so do not recognize the historical dimension of the problems they face in everyday life. (p. 53)
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Newmann (1988, 1990) concludes that the dominant approach to historical instruction encourages student passivity and the uncritical acceptance of information that may be of a highly questionable nature. By contrast, he suggests that students should be taught how to critically examine and evaluate complex information within this ever-changing field. Students should learn how to analyze multiple perspectives and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments embodied within these differing points of view based on the evidence presented. Ultimately, students should be able to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the information they are required to examine. |
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Paul and Binker (1992) identify the scope of this problem:
The major problem to overcome in remodeling social studies units and lessons is that of transforming didactic instruction within one point of view into dialogical instruction within multiple points of view. As teachers, we should see ourselves not as dispensers of absolute truth nor as proponents of relativity, but as careful reflective seekers after truth, a search in which we invite our students to participate. (pp. 587–598)
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The challenge for historical instruction at the secondary level is how to craft an idea of history teaching from an idea of history that will energize learners while simultaneously providing them with the skills and dispositions necessary to succeed in an educational world increasingly characterized by objective measures of student accountability. In July of 2002, however, the College Board set the world of standardized testing on its head when it announced a major overhaul of its scholastic aptitude test (SAT). In an article assessing the changes set to commence in 2005, U.S. News & World Report concludes that the new test will necessitate a counter-revolution in our nation's public schools:
Now the era of intelligence testing is about to end. Thanks to an unprecedented assault from the head of the University of California system, the College Board has begun its biggest overhaul of the test.
Rather than assess raw intelligence, the new SAT is intended to measure academic preparedness. "In its original form it was an IQ test," says Gaston Caperton, the College Board president. "What we have done is take the SAT and make it into something that tests reasoning and developed skill."
What they have done is taken hold of the diseased American education system at its root. For with these new changes, the SAT will effectively set education standards for the nation's high schools. (U.S. News & World Report, November 11, 2002, p. 52)
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Given that America's college-bound population is increasing due to the specialized requirements of our information age society, changes to the SAT will necessitate a new educational approach in our nation's secondary schools. R.G. Collingwood's idea of history provides history teachers with a logical foundation for historical instruction at the high school level and beyond at a time when just such an approach is needed. The good news is that it is possible for students to acquire the skills and dispositions associated with higher order thinking at a time when such skills and dispositions are reemerging as important for purposes of standardized assessments. |
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II. The Case for History as a Re-enactment of Past Experience | |
Collingwood's idea of history as re-enactment of past experience offers high school teachers a new way to teach an old discipline. Collingwood concludes:
To know someone else's activity of thinking is possible only on the assumption that this same activity can be re-enacted in one's own mind. In that sense, to know what someone is thinking [or has thought] involves thinking it for oneself. To reject this conclusion means denying that we have any right to speak of acts of thought at all, except such as take place in our own minds, and embracing the doctrine that my mind is the only one that exists.
I am considering how history, as the knowledge of past thoughts [acts of thought] is possible; and I am only concerned to show that it is impossible except on the view that to know another's act of thought involves repeating for oneself. (Collingwood, 1946 p. 288)
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Collingwood delineates three important processes necessary to truly comprehend any historical event, issue, or idea under examination. At its first or most basic stage, he refers to the process by which historians attempt to construct meaning out of past events as "scissors and paste" history, noting:
History constructed by excerpting and combining the testimonies of different authorities I call scissors-and-paste history. I repeat that it is not really history at all, because it does not satisfy the necessary conditions of science, and a great deal of the history people are still reading today, and even a good deal of what people are still writing, belongs to this type. (Dray and van der Dussen, 1999, p. 13)
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The second process, according to Collingwood, requires the historian to examine the credentials of his sources. He [the historian] must determine whether a given document's inclusion is justified based on the credibility of its author:
As soon as it became understood that a given statement made by a given author, must never be accepted for historical truth until the credibility of the author in general and of this statement in particular had been systematically inquired into, the word `authority' disappeared from the vocabulary of historical method, except as an archaistic survival; for the man who makes the statement came henceforth to be regarded not as someone whose word must be taken for the truth for what he says, which is what was meant by calling him an authority, but as someone who has voluntarily placed himself in the witness-box for cross examination. (Dray and van der Dussen, 1999, p. 14)
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The first two processes are, however, incomplete without inclusion of a third process, which Collingwood describes as involving the history of thought itself. He suggests that all history is the history of thought and it is only through the process of reenacting past events, in one's own consciousness, that a historian can truly comprehend what happened and why. It is this process which forms his idea of history as the re-enactment of past experience:
It occurs in every case of historical thinking. In itself, it is simply an aesthetic activity, which is why a science of aesthetic is an indispensable precondition to any science of historical method; but in relation to history it can be defined as apprehending or discerning the evidence.
The point which has now been reached may be conveniently indicated by the formula that all history is the history of thought. To know about events and names and dates, which for the scissors-and-paste historian is the end of historical inquiry, is for the scientific historian merely its means; merely the collection of what he hopes will prove capable of being read as language, and thus lead to the only thing that truly is historical knowledge: insight into the mind of the person or persons who at a certain time and in certain circumstances did the action which, merely as something that has happened, is called an event. (Dray, and van der Dussen, 1999, pp. 52 & 67)
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Furthermore, Collingwood illustrates how a historian would reenact a historical event through his example of how one would grasp the concept of fortification:
The historian may find that in the course of a certain campaign a certain officer caused a fort of a certain kind to be built in a certain place. The historian's business is to find out what he did this for.
There is no need to exhaust all the possible alternatives. Whichever alternative the historian adopts, he is claiming insight into the mind of the man responsible for building the fort: insight which depends on his understanding the nature of fortification in general, and of fortification at the time of that campaign in particular. (Dray and van der Dussen, 1999, pp. 67–68)
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Scholars and theorists, who have examined the numerous shortcomings typically associated with the traditional teacher-directed, textbook-based high school history curriculum, conclude that Collingwood's idea of history has relevance both for those who teach and those who learn. It is not only professional historians, it is the students of history, too, who would benefit from an idea that transforms historical instruction into the search for historical knowledge. |
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Bain and Mirel (1982) report, "the main problem with predominant curriculum reforms is that they have focused on the teaching of history, not the idea of history" (p. 332). Demandt (1984) theorizes that by reflecting on historical possibilities which existed in the minds of decision-makers, students of history gain a better understanding not only of what actually happened, but why it happened. Dray (1995) proposes that Collingwood's basic doctrine enables historians to make a critical distinction between the "outside" (everything belonging to it) and the "inside" (that which can only be described in terms of thought) of an event. |
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Turner (1985) examines the process of student immersion associated with historical re-enactment and the educational benefits that accrue as a consequence of this approach:
Such intellectual involvement promotes better attention, interest, concern, reaction, and evaluation. From these can evolve a sense of purposefulness, which is prerequisite to the vitality of any teaching-learning experience. As defined for the classroom, a re-enactment attempts to re-create and relive the sequence of events of a significant historical happening. (p. 221)
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The types of instructional activities examined by Turner include "explorations and discoveries, moments of invention, decision-making events, historic meetings and confrontations, debates and trials, signing of treaties and surrenders, cultural reflecting ceremonies, rituals and rites, and construction tasks" (p. 222). He suggests that these activities ideally lend themselves to encouraging critical thought. By immersing oneself in a re-enactment of the event itself, Turner concludes that the student is able to understand and appreciate the frame of mind of the person or persons being portrayed. This supports Paul's (1992) subsequent claim that, "Instruction that does not further the development of human rationality, though it may properly be called training, is not education" (p. 272). |
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Paul (1992) frames the challenge confronting high school history instructors, whose goal is to develop higher order knowledge and critical thinking skills in their respective subject-area disciplines:
Teaching critical thinking in the strong sense means teaching so that students explicate, understand, and critique their own deepest prejudices, biases, and misconceptions, thereby encouraging students to discover and contest their own egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. Only if we experientially contest our inevitable egocentric and socio-centric habits of thought can we hope to genuinely think rationally. (pp. 280–281)
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In his essay entitled, History As The Self-Knowledge Of Mind, Collingwood (1939) identifies the three requirements necessary for students of history to analyze the history of a thought or idea:
First, the thought must be expressed: either in what we call language, or in one of the many other forms of expressive activity.
Secondly, the historian must be able to think over again for himself the thought whose expression he is trying to interpret.... The important point here is that the historian of a thought must think for himself that very same thought, not another like it.
So I have reached my third proposition: Historical knowledge is the re-enactment of a past thought incapsulated in a context of present thoughts which, by contradicting it, confine it to a plane different from theirs. (pp. 111–114)
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While the task outlined by Collingwood appears quite daunting from the vantage point of the typical teacher of high school history, in actuality instructional strategies already exist which provide a sound basis for transforming Collingwood's idea of history into an idea of history teaching. One such strategy involves using dialogical instruction. |
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Paul (1992) defines dialogical instruction as, "Instruction that fosters dialogical or dialectic thinking. Thus, when considering a question, the class brings all relevant subjects to bear and considers the perspectives of groups whose views are not canvassed in their texts" (p. 645). He defines dialogical thinking as, "Thinking that involves a dialogue or extended exchange between different points of view or frames of reference" (p. 645). Paul's definition is consistent with Collingwood's earlier proposition stating that, "He [the historian] must think that problem out for himself, see what possible solutions of it might be offered, and see why this particular philosopher chose that solution instead of another" (p. 283). |
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Collingwood concludes that this approach has its origins in the Socratic Tradition. He writes, "This is the Socratic idea which Plato was to express by defining thought as the dialogue of the soul with itself" (Dray and van der Dussen, 1999, p. 29). Dialogue therefore becomes the primary means of giving expression to historical thought in a classroom setting, thus making it possible for high school history teachers to provide their students with the training and practice necessary to examine basic issues of historical significance. |
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Turner (1985) establishes an important connection between the process of re-enactment and the process of dialogue:
The heart and mind of re-enactment is dialogue, more than actions. The re-enactment does not repeat what historical persons did. Rather, a re-enactment is an attempt to discover the forces that made those individuals think, behave, or strive as they did. In trying to speak as these figures of the past spoke, to observe life from their point of view, to think with their minds helps students bridge the gap to the past. (p. 223)
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Freire (1970) goes further, suggesting that dialogue and dialogue alone is capable of fostering the skills associated with higher order thinking. "Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is not communication, and without communication there can be no true education" (pp. 73–74). |
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Supporting Collingwood's contention that dialogical instruction has its origins in the Socratic Tradition, Temes (2002) reports that the use of dialogue as a means to promote students' higher order thinking processes can be traced to Plato's conception of learning:
Plato's habit of dialogue is of course more than habit and more than a form of exposition. It is in itself a useful way of understanding the world: you must talk, and then listen and think, in the company of others in order to see the world for what it is. You cannot be a philosopher as a solitary individual. You must be in the world to know the world. You must be among men and women, and share meals, walks, and ideas, with them, in order to know the nature of humanity. Understanding is a social activity in Plato's world.
Teaching through dialogue looks easy but is not. Teachers new to dialogue often think that the trick lies in asking smart questions, and they spend a fair amount of time preparing questions for their students, in the way they might prepare a conventional lesson plan. But the great value of teaching through dialogue comes from the unexpected—from a teacher listening so well to a student that the teacher's questions help to refine and develop the original ideas that students bring to the table, rather than making structured progress toward an idea that the teacher had in mind from the start. (pp. 54, 61–62)
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The scholars who recognize this important connection between dialogue and learning understand that students typically fail to grasp the multi-logical character of traditional historical instruction, which fails to emphasize one's ability to understand competing points of view. Paul (1992) offers two compelling reasons for using dialogical instruction to develop the essential skills and abilities associated with critical thinking:
(1) such practice is essential for all of the intrinsically multi-logical issues that the child must face, and (2) such practice is essential for the child to come to discover, reconstruct, and ultimately transcend those ideas and beliefs uncritically and unconsciously internalized. (p. 275)
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Historical education stands at a crossroads. As Amrein and Berliner (2003) report in the most comprehensive study to date, however, the road leading to curriculum development and instructional practices that are driven by high-stakes tests has proven to be a dead end:
Unfortunately, the evidence shows that such tests actually decrease student motivation and increase the proportion of students who leave school early. Further, student achievement in the 18 high-stakes testing states has not improved on a range of measures, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, despite higher scores on the states' own assessments.
In sum, the assumption that high-stakes tests motivate students appears to be seriously flawed. In fact, such tests often decrease student motivation and lead to higher student retention and dropout rates. (pp. 32–33)
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The question that needs to be asked is: What is to be the mission of secondary historical instruction in our nation's public schools? Ultimately, our task, as teachers within the social sciences, is to hold our students accountable as citizens of a democracy to make rational decisions that will positively impact the future of our society. As Bloom (1987) warns, "The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside. It is not feelings or commitments that will render a man free, but thoughts, reasoned thoughts" (p. 249). |
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Perhaps the greatest impetus for implementing an idea of history teaching based on the idea of history as the re-enactment of past experience can be found in the conclusions of the Bradley Commission on History in the Schools:
The questions we may reasonably ask about history instruction in the schools is whether students are learning what schools are trying to teach them; whether the history that schools are teaching is significant, current, and presented in ways that encourage student involvement; whether enough time is provided to study issues and events in depth and in context; whether students learn to see today's issues and events in relationship to the past; whether students understand that the history they study is not "the truth," but a version of the past written by historians on the basis of analysis and evidence; and whether students realize that historians disagree about how to define the past (Gagnon, 1989, p. 55).
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The idea of history teaching proposed in this essay is fundamentally different from the dominant approach in use in today's high school history classrooms. The difference involves "experiencing" as opposed to simply being taught. It is this difference, however, which empowers the learner to acquire the skills of application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. This idea of history teaching empowers learners to acquire a set of skills that educational reformers contend are necessary if our students are to compete in the world of the twenty-first century. It is an idea whose time has come. |
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References
Amrein, A.L. & Berliner, D.C. (2003). The effects of high-stakes testing on student motivation and learning. Educational Leadership, 60, (5), 32–38.
Bain, R. & Mirel, J. (1982). Re-Enacting the past: using R.G. Collingwood at the secondary level. The History Teacher, 15, (3), 329–343.
Bloom, A. (1987). The closing of the American mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Collingwood, R.G. (1939). R.G. Collingwood: An autobiography. London, England: Oxford University Press.
Collingwood, R.G. (1946) The idea of history. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). The right to learn: A blueprint for creating schools that work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Demandt, A. (1984). History that never happened: A treatise on the question, what would have happened if.... Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Dray, W.H. and van der Dussen, W.J. (1999). Collingwood, R.G.: The principles of history and other writings in philosophy of history. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Dray, W. H. (1995). History as reenactment: R.G. Collingwood's idea of history. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Gagnon, P. (1989). Historical literacy: The case for history in American education. The Bradley Commission On History In The Schools. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind: How children think & how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books.
Newmann, F. M. (1991). Higher order thinking in teaching social studies: a rationale for the assessment of classroom thougtfulness. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22, (1), 41–56.
Newmann, F. M. (1990). Qualities of thoughtful social studies classes: an empirical profile. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22, (3), 253–275.
Paul, R. (1992). Critical thinking: What every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. Santa Rosa, CA.: Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Paul, R. (1984). Critical thinking: Fundamental to education for a free society. Educational Leadership, September, 4–14.
Paul, R. & Binker, A.J.A. (1992). Critical thinking and social studies. In R. Paul (Ed.), Critical thinking: What every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. (pp. 587–598) Santa Rosa, CA.: Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Temes, P.S. (2002). Against school reform (and in praise of great teaching). Chicago, Illinois: Ivan R. Dee.
Turner, T. N. (1985, September/October). Historical reenactment—Can it work as a standard tool of the social studies? The Social Studies, 220–223.
U.S. News & World Report. (2002). The SAT revolution: The new test spells the end of IQ—and big changes for American education. 51–60.
Wiggins, G. (1993, November). Assessment: Authenticity, context, and validity. Phi Delta Kappan, 200–214.
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