Annotations for Speakers: Steven Mintz

Thank you very much, Jeremi, for inviting me.

It reminds me very much of one of the great poems of all time, Matthew Arnolds, Dover Beach.

Dover Beach is nominally about the relationship between a man and his lover, but it is really about secularization. It’s about the transformations that are challenging 19th century beliefs. Beliefs in God, beliefs in social stability, modernization, industrialization, massive migration, mobility. All these were upending society. And where do we find meaning?

And this is not a challenge of just the mid 19th century. Of course. It’s a challenge for our own time.

And I think we often don’t think about civics education as really an effort to confront the changes that we’re going through and try to make sense of them collectively.

The answer I think is quite simple. This society is engaged in a culture war, and classrooms have become proxy battlegrounds in that war. People aren’t just arguing about civics or about history. They’re really arguing about values, patriotism, and democracy itself. And what makes this particularly difficult is there’s two opposing visions. Of civics one, which I favor, is to, instill a deep understanding of foundational facts, content, to learn that American history has been a constant debate, struggle, conflict over fundamental values and purpose and direction. And then there is another form of civics education, which is much more applied, that looks at contemporary events. And these are so divisive. I think that’s not the way we should really go. I think, a backward glance will be more helpful in this fraught context. Then focusing on issues that often students don’t have any deep knowledge about. Anyway,

My own personal view is that students do need to know about the American system of government and how it’s evolved, and about how Americans have debated over time issues of liberty, equality, and justice. These are fundamental disputes, and the battles have often been waged in good faith, with fundamental disagreements that we need to bring out into the open and seriously discuss. I don’t think we do that enough. Jeremi, I hate to say this, but often there’s a tendency in history classes to treat it as if it’s simply about the past.

To give students a richer sense of what the world was like in the past, but if we teach history that way, we lose out on a huge opportunity. What lessons does the past have for the present? Not simple-minded lessons, but complex lessons, intricate lessons that help us to better cope with the issues of our own time. I.

In my own research, I am what’s called a social historian. I am especially interested how ordinary people, diverse people, the inarticulate led their lives. But I also believe that when I teach the US History Survey course, or when I advocate for civics education, I’m talking about political history. And one thing that makes me a bit sad about our own department, UT Austin, one of the largest history departments in the United States. Is we don’t really teach enough political history because politics isn’t simply about checks and balances. It is ultimately where we as a democratic society debate the serious issues before us and reach collective conclusions and. A history department that doesn’t really focus on politics is missing a huge opportunity. And again, I wanna stress, I am a social historian. I’ve written about slavery, I’ve written about social movements for reform. I’ve written about private life. But if we don’t teach. The history of politics. We are not doing our students a service.

Presidential decision making is we are power. Ultimately resides. And if we don’t focus on that and how those decisions are made in what interest they’re being made, we are doing everyone a disservice.

American history, in my view, is an ongoing debate. The terms of that debate were set surprisingly early, right? They were set during the revolution and in its immediate aftermath, but those questions remain vibrant even today, who is an American? This question of citizenship. Citizens’ Rights. This was an issue in 17 87, 17 91, 18 65, and continues on to today. We need students to engage in those debates, but not as opinion, not as theorizing, but grounded in the actual debates that took place. And those debates do not just involve major political figures, cast in marble or bronze. They involve ordinary Americans who took part in those debates, who contested issues in the courts, who fought for their rights collectively. That’s the story I think about how America really works. Now we often focus on powerful individuals, and I’m not opposed to that, but in a democracy, most power is expressed Collectively, we are members of groups that advocate for our interests and that can teach our students an awful lot about how power works in a democracy.

Both sides believe rightly or wrongly, that the other side is acting in bad faith. When I read on Twitter from the Texas Public Policy Institute that the National Council of Social Sciences in the American Historical Association are fighting to advance a radical secular Marxist agenda. I wanna throw up my hands. As I’ve tried to explain to the State Board of Education, what concerns me is that students are coming into my class having never heard of the Enlightenment, the very philosophical foundation of this nation. How can that be? And part of the answer is that in our emphasis on mathematical literacy. And language arts. We’ve downplayed civics and social studies. We need to devote more time to this. I want students who are well prepared to take part in serious discussions, and I worry that’s not happening. But when I hear criticisms that. Seem to imply I have an ideological agenda or that the American Historical Association has an ideological agenda, my spine stiffens.

There is deep distrust. And there’s distrust on both sides. It’s not all on one party or the other. There is an unwillingness to accept a basic premise, which is that both sides want students to have a rigorous, substantive foundational education. No side here is talking about. Relevance for relevance sake or teaching current events. Both sides want a serious, historically grounded education for our students, but there is grave doubt on both sides that the other side really believes that.

Jeremi, that’s the, $64,000 question has often been said. That is, in so many ways this society is better off than it ever has been. We’re not engaged in a major war right now. We have new technologies like. Artificial intelligence, or should I say green power, that are really remarkable. Austin is filled with self-driving cars that do not get into accidents like real people do,

This should be a moment of one would think consensus when we could all agree that our students need post COVID. I. A stronger education. we can’t have a society where half of the students are below proficient in literacy or mathematics, and yet that’s not the society that we live in. And so it is up to each of us, I think, to be. Completely transparent about work, what our values and priorities are. My priority is educational. I want my students to get a good foundational understanding of history, geography, economics, and the other elements of the social sciences. I have no larger agenda than that. And I would hope that I could convince my adversaries. I am acting in good faith. I do not have a radical secular Marxist agenda. I want my students to be well prepared for my history class.

Under state law, the state board of education is empowered to establish. Essential skills and knowledge that students are to acquire.

Yes. This is Texas State law. The state Board of Education is not empowered to adopt a curriculum. Pedagogy, and lesson planning is specifically decentralized. That is, it is the responsibility of school districts. And of individual teachers, and I believe that’s exactly how it should be. Further under state law, the working groups that develop the techs as they’re known, the Texas Essentials knowledge and Skills, these are to be created by experienced educators. That is by teachers. By curriculum designers, by professors who have actual expertise teaching these subjects. And when we don’t do that, when we bring politically motivated nonprofits into this discussion, it’s a different discussion.

Teachers care about students. Teachers care about learning. They have practical experience in what works and what doesn’t, and we need to be willing to rely on them because they have professional judgment and experience.

Now, what is a learning objective? A learning objective is not too broad. That is know about the Civil War. It is not too narrow. What happened at the Battle of Bull Run. It’s something in between that, and it is measurable, and the job of the Board of Education is to spell out those essential learning objectives and not to dictate a curriculum. And certainly not to tell people how to learn. And further, the state says through law that the standards are to prepare students for college. 70% of high school students will go on to college in Texas. They need to be prepared for our classes, and that requires them to have certain foundational knowledge. And I want to ensure that. and so if you design a curriculum that downplays world history and world cultures, we are not preparing our students for the kind of education that they will receive, either a community college at a regional comprehensive university at a private university, or a flagship university. We need to do better and the way to do better is simply to follow the law.

That’s my view and that’s my reading of the state statutes. And also I think it will get us away from these culture war issues. They don’t need to be fought at the state level. If Houston wants to do something and El Paso wants to do something else, as long as they cover the learning objectives, that should be fine. Texas believes in decentralization, and I think that’s a pretty good idea.

When I teach US history. Religion occupies a very large chunk of what I communicate. You can’t teach American history without incorporating religion, but that is not religion as dima, that is not religion as, one position among many. Instead, what we’re teaching about is the role of religious groups, of religious ideas in shaping this nation. we can debate on specific cases. who was right, who was wrong, what were the limits? What should be the limits? But religion needs to occupy a place in the curriculum. But that is an academic place, not a doctrinal place. one thing that makes the United States unique among advanced developed countries is we have a much higher level of religious belief. That is an element in American exceptionalism, but it’s also an academic question. Why is it that the United States is a much more religious churchgoing society than any of the countries in Western Europe? this is a subject that we can discuss academically and should, I do believe that earlier versions of US history that downplayed religion were mistakes. Religion is a key element in shaping this society’s values. It has been the driving force behind almost every reform movement in America, whether we’re talking about the civil rights movement or the labor movement, or the social gospel that inspired progressivism. Religion has a place in the curriculum, but it is not. We are not to teach religion as dogma or doctrine.

Absolutely.

American debates were never exclusively among elite white males. One impact of the American Revolution. One impact that I’m afraid Ken Burns’ documentary does not discuss in sufficient depth is that the revolutionary period created a whole group of black intellectuals who were engaged in the debates of the time the American Revolution created. The first outspoken, what we would call feminist statements about the position of women in society. We shouldn't have a narrow conception of what debates count and what debates don't count. We should include all of the speakers who are part of these debates, which you'll discover. It's no challenge to include diversity in this kind of discussion. The diversities, they're the primary sources are there. it's only a matter of including them inside the courses that we teach.

Steven Mintz: Absolutely. One thing that I know that the American Historical Association would be happy to do that I believe our own department would be happy to do, is to create a packet of primary sources that would bring in a diversity of voices who were engaged in the fundamental civics debates in this society. It’s not a challenge. We do it all in our courses anyway.

Let’s help teachers to do this.

These debates will show our students that we’re not the first generation to ever debate justice or equity or the limits of rights. These are ongoing conversations. And I think it would be really helpful to our students who are often blind to previous debates to understand that they’re coming in pretty late to the dinner party and that the dinner party’s already been going on, and you’re joining in a conversation that is more than two centuries old.

Technology is a tool. It is not a substitute for teaching and certainly not a substitute for learning. Imagine being able to bring in infinite number of primary sources into every classroom in this society. And not just written texts, but music, film, clips, artworks, and the like. We can do that, and we can do that because of technology. You know what a wonderful opportunity. Also, we can create environments where students can make presentations using technological tools. They can create mini movies, they can create infographics and the like. This is not hard to do anymore. This is easy to do. So let’s do it. Let me just give. A couple of examples from my own class, things that I have students do. I give every student in my class a small cemetery on Cape Cod, and in that cemetery, they look at every gravestone. There’s usually only about 20 gravestones still existing in those cemeteries. And they look at the names, they look at the. Birth dates and the date of death, and then they have to draw conclusions. They look at the iconography on the top of the gravestone and they describe it. I can do that because of technology. And what an opportunity for the students they discover. To their surprise, children die more than anyone else. They discover. That if you lived over the age of 20, you lived not quite as long as we do today, but as long as our parents lived right, they lived into their seventies and eighties, they discovered that women died earlier than men. Unlike today when men died later than women, there is a lot to discuss in class and another. Technological tool I give my students is a sort of version, a flight simulator. You are Columbus and you have to sail from the new world, I mean from the old world to the new world and back using current wind and ocean currents and you discover it is not easy to do. You have to sail south along the coast of Africa from Spain, then cross over. You’re approaching Brazil, and then you sell northward before you can reach the Caribbean. It is not easy, and to get back, you have to sell northward towards Canada. Cross over towards Ireland and Britain before you can sail south. To Spain. People appreciate Columbus’ navigation skills when they do this, that this is not easy. Now there’s other conversations they can have about Columbus, but this one I think they find interesting and it’s hands-on learning using technology tools and that turns. History, education into active learning, not just passive listening.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. I totally agree with that. I would add something else. Our own department, which is very typical of history departments nationwide, does not offer specific classes to teachers or future teachers about how to teach history in their classrooms. And that’s a big loss. What we’re good at, above all, are anecdotes and stories. We know how to bring history to life, right?

Cause we’ve spent a lifetime reading and most teachers have other pressures on them. Apart from that. And working together, I think we could really improve the quality of K-12 history and social studies education, not because we’re gonna be the nce of authority, not because we’re gonna be condescending, but simply sharing what we know. The teachers are the real experts in pedagogy, but we’re experts in facts and stories. And together we could do a great job.

I think they need to make the following argument that the challenge today is not to teach the right story about America, which I don’t know what it is. It’s to teach students how to think historically and reason responsibly and learn how to live in a pluralistic democracy. We need great teachers who can do that. We need great curricula that seek to do that. We need forms of pedagogy that actually engage our students. So I think what the public needs to insist upon is not social studies as some kind of ideological endeavor, but rather education as it ought to be. Yes, education as inquiry, education as problem solving. Education is building on evidence and primary sources. That’s the education our students need.

Thank you very much