Last Sunday, I wrote about how most of us are fairly ignorant beyond our own specialized fields, about three myths of self-education (hemispheric fatalism, universal polymathy, and defeatism). I also hoped that I got the point across that ignorance is dangerous. We are all equal in our ignorance: an academic enchanted in by a lie which understanding could easily dispel, such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is just as ignorant as (and perhaps more dangerous than) his non-academic neighbor.
I make a point to bring up academia, because schooling intends to educate us, and thus rectify ignorance. For the moment, I will leave aside the problems of the public school system, not because they are not serious, but because I do not know of any structural way to fix them.[*]
If you read this blog, you probably have some sort of connection to Cornell University. Cornell seems to make an effort to require its students to graduate having studied a variety of subjects. Engineers must take a course on “historical analysis,” and Religious Studies majors must take two to three courses on the “physical or biological sciences.” In theory, no student will graduate without having studied several subjects outside of his or her own specialty, and not leave ignorant of, say, the natural world, or of US history, or of cultures outside of our own.
I have another anecdote about a graduate of Cornell’s College of Engineering, who inspired me to write this post in the first place. He began by explaining that the only reason he knew how to identify Paris on a world map was because he had played Civilizations III on his PC (I have since heard another engineer admit exactly the same thing). He went on to ask me for any books that explained why the countries of the world are shaped the way they are, and how that has changed in the past 150 to 200 years. In historian-babble, contemporary geopolitics.[†] Why did he never learn this during his time at Cornell? He was not a college scholar, and did not play any other administrative games in order to discharge his distribution requirements? The answer is that he and other Engineers simply took courses like Philosophy 101, because they provided broad overviews of a general topic. However, there was no general history course: the closest he could have come would have been such classes as “Introduction to Western Civilization” parts I and II, “Introduction to East Asian History,” etc. It is this lack of any appealing classes that
This is ridiculous. English majors can take math and science courses tailored to their needs and abilities, such as “Calculus for the Life and Social Sciences” from the Math Department, or “Earthquake!” from EAS. So why isn’t there a “History for Engineers?” And whereas classes like “Evolution” teach simplified versions of the curricula of courses designed for majors (in this case, “Evolutionary Biology”), such a course would be equally rigorous to any other non-seminar course in the History Department. Would you take the following course?
HIST 1985: Contemporary World History for Engineers @ # (HA-AS)
Spring. 4 Credits.
Instructor TBD.
Survey of World History since 1789, with an emphasis on political history and large-scale historical trends. Weekly topics include imperialism and colonialism; revolutionary and independence movements; nations and empires; scientific breakthroughs from Darwin to Einstein; the First World War in Europe and elsewhere; the postwar collapse of empires; Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism; the Cold War; globalization and global capitalism; and democracies, dictators, and juntas. Every student will be responsible for attending two weekly lectures and one weekly discussion section, and for writing two 5-8 page research papers on topics of their own choosing.
This history may seem somewhat Eurocentric, but I would argue that the topics I have chosen have as much to do with the rest of the world as with central and western Europe (although I admit that the British Empire, the United States, and Germany will get more face-time than Morocco, Thailand, and Bolivia). And this would be one of the purposes of the course: World War I had consequences in the Middle East, Central Asia, and East Asia of which many are unaware. There would not be discussion of minutiae, such as individual battles of the World Wars. Students would read primary source documents whenever possible, in order to achieve the proper mixture of anecdote and generalization that I discussed in an earlier blog post. Maps would feature prominently in the curriculum: in 2006, National Geographic discovered that only 37% of young Americans could locate Iraq on a map, and this is just one example of the kind of ignorance that schooling should correct (some of the other students on my Birthright Israel trip weren’t aware that Iran did not share a border with Israel).
That’s for the Engineers. Now let’s talk about the history majors. We have our own problem, namely, that many of us don’t understand the natural sciences. We should, and not just those of us who hope to go on to become historians of science or historians of ideas. The natural sciences, especially biology, are crucial for the understanding of many historical events and patterns. It is difficult to discuss plagues and epidemics without knowledge of disease; it is difficult to explain famine and starvation without knowledge of nutrition and agriculture; it is difficult to understand patterns in global trade without knowledge of earth and atmospheric sciences.[‡] Just as in the mid 20th century, historians began to seriously incorporate the contributions of anthropologists, economists, and other social scientists into their work, so it seems that in the 21st century, historians have been paying ever more attention to the natural sciences. I have never seen the word “biota,” for instance, appear in any work of history written published before my birth. Now, it seems ubiquitous.[§] There are already a range of science classes available for non-science majors, but in my own experience, these courses teach very little. In my own experience, these courses are distinguished not by their utility to non-majors, but by their ease and absence of technicality. Cornell should offer a “Science for Historians,” in order to introduce history majors to a few of the most important scientific phenomena necessary for making sense of history. Would you take the following course?
HIST 2012 Science for Historians @ # (PBS)
Spring. 4 Credits.
Instructor TBD (but, possibly, P. Dear, E. Tagliacozzo, or I. Hull).
This course introduces history majors to a variety of scientific phenomena, with famous historical events as case studies. Weekly topics will include Human evolution, the Columbian Exchange, the black death (bacteria), the Spanish flu (virus), the Irish potato famine, the Little Ice Age, overexploitation of natural resources, and the Copernican Revolution. Every student will be responsible for attending two weekly lectures and one weekly discussion section, and for writing a 15-20 page research paper.
Currently, it’s only the embryo of the idea. The paradox here, of course, is that I’m trying to define the very things which I would take such a course in order to learn. I am just as much in need of this course as anyone else who reads this blog.
This is the first blog post I’ve published since the Purim spiel. I appreciate whoever wrote the gag that my blog posts are 10-page philosophical analyses of mundane subjects.
Enjoy Spring Break, everyone! Sam, I dedicate this blog post to you!
~JD
“This doubt of people concerning themselves and the reality of their own experience only reveals what the Nazis have always known: that men determined to commit crimes will find it expedient to organize them on the vastest, most improbable scale. Not only because this renders all punishments provided by the legal system inadequate and absurd, but because the very immensity of the crimes guarantees that the murderers proclaim their innocence with all manner of lies will be more readily believed than the victims who tell the truth” (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 439).
[*] Although I find it somewhat unlikely to happen, I would support President’ Obama’s suggestion, in his State of the Union address, that all states allow students to leave High School only after having either graduated or turned eighteen.
[†] The French designate history into the following periods: Ancient (from earliest times until the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century), Medieval (from the fall of the Roman Empire until the 15th century), Renaissance (around 1400 until around 1550, just before the massive wars of religion in France), Modern (from around 1550 until the 1789 French Revolution), and Contemporary (everything since 1789).
[‡] I’m serious about this last one: please see Anthony’s seminal Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680 for an example of what I mean.
[§] If, as a history major, you wish to feel embarrassed at your ignorance of biology, I strongly recommend Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s Civilizations, a 500-page essay on world history, categorized by environment. He comes to some very interesting conclusions, especially as concerns highland empires, wasteland civilizations, and human conquest of the oceans.
No comments:
Post a Comment