Student Identities and World History Teaching.

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    WHAT ASSUMPTIONS do students bring into a world history course--what cultural memories and identity components? And what should instructors know about the assumptions, and what should they do with their knowledge? This article is an invitation to further research and comment on this topic, spiced by some personal impressions. There are three premises. First, world history courses are proliferating at the college and secondary levels. This means that advancing our understanding of student learning capacities in the world history context has growing importance and potential payoff. Second, we are beginning to understand a great deal about historical memories and alternative histories that students bring into national history surveys, where identity formation is typically a fundamental goal. We know that students often, at least privately, contest school versions on the basis of different historical scaffolds, learned from other media or subgroups. We know that the result may dissipate school history efforts, as students turn a deaf ear, or may lead to a bifurcation between official history and believed history, with the latter alone internalized and really used for understanding. We are persuasively urged, on the strength of this research, to pay more attention to the whole process of memory in relation to history, as part of effective teaching and the inculcation of valid historical and critical skills. But finally--the third premise--we've applied almost none of this thinking to world history, despite its growing importance. Hence the plea for a new direction for learning research and pedagogical attention.
    Premise one needs little elaboration. World history (variously defined) is gaining ground in high school programs quite generally; some states (Texas is a key example) mandate the course. While elite universities and many liberal arts schools still hold back, world history increasingly takes over as entry survey fare in state colleges and other institutions. A world history Advanced Placement course is being installed, both reflecting and encouraging this evolution. While involving fewer students than American history surveys, world history nevertheless unquestionably has the heft to warrant educational research as well as the more common emphasis on curriculum development. Literally hundreds of thousands of students are involved, and we know very little about their prior assumptions.
    Premise two warrants further comment. Still not as widely recognized as they should be, studies of student importations into national history courses are both common and intriguing. They all emphasize the extent to which students have vivid historical narratives and orientations derived from family and group background and from media signals--well before they launch into school history programs. Sam Wineburg has examined the way student versions of Vietnam differ from those of their parents, based on alternative sources of "memory"--and how both differ from historical reality. Students, for example, believe that returning American soldiers were widely abused and mistreated after a war without purpose, a war which no sector of American society had really supported. This is often their dominant image. Wineburg and Linda Levstik have studied the gaps between the versions of African American history minority students insist upon, as part of their memory and identity, and most school histories however symptic. The same applies to women students on relevant issues such as suffrage history. Ratings of significance also vary accordingly, with school history differing vastly in its rank from what students pick on their own. James Wertsch, studying identity formation in Eastern Europe, notes the gulf between official histories learned in the Soviet era, which could be accurately if superficially repeated, and the private histories people really believed, which alone were internalized and used as guides for social and political evaluation. Finally, British research points to the substantial involvement of personal and group identity issues in motivating students to commit to history programs, where choice is involved. (Not surprisingly, personal variations add to the complexity of this mix of relevant memories.) The researchers conclude that we need to know much more about these issues if we are really to penetrate student understandings beyond hollow memorization. We need to not just confront but to use studatheent memories as part of active classroom debate and the formation of durable analytical skills. We must acknowledge this domain as a vital component of why so many students dismiss even subtly taught school history as lists of largely extraneous facts that must be briefly assimilated and then either forgotten or redefined toward more personal meanings.(FN2)
    Finally, premise three notes simply that we know almost nothing systematic about the way these issues apply in world history. Ross Dunn has mused about assumptions and blindspots he encounters, and has adjusted his teaching accordingly. Peter Seixas offers one very interesting account of the different significance ratings various Canadian secondary school students attach to a list of historical developments (from the fall of the Guptas to the invention of rock 'n' roll)--demonstrating great variety but also the impact of personal and ethnic experiences. But this is about it--which is why this paper is addressed in terms of an invitation.(FN3)
    It may be true, of course, that the world history course engages less active prior memory than courses in national history do. This could be bad--less reason for students to seek active meaning in the materials. Or it could be good--fewer erroneous versions to becloud, more opportunities for rational analysis of data. Many students will not find their particular ethnicity directly discussed in world history, given the need to emphasize large civilization areas rather smaller states. The sweep of time and space may evoke fewer established scaffolds. In my second week I can ask my world history class, for example, whether classical Chinese or classical Indian civilization was better--and they readily and correctly respond that it's a stupid question; preferences do not involve them (including students of Chinese or Indian background), at least to the extent of public commitments or arguments. Current fascination with nomadic societies as a test of a "real" world history course probably stirs student memories very little, even at the level of atavism. Presenting students with document exercises on the Black Death similarly rouses interest with no discernable memory involvement--too different and too long ago.(FN4) Topics of this sort can spur engaged debate and experience in historical analysis, but identity is not usually involved.
    But identities surface vividly in other respects. Most obviously, students do import versions of the past vital to their own group memory. I've had Asian Indian students passionately present explanations of sati, which they have no desire to defend, in terms of prudent reactions against Muslim invaders-rapists of unprotected widows. Korean students, in a more minor example, protest claims of Chinese primacy in printing. African American students frequently repeat an intense version of black history, from Egypt through the Sudanic kingdoms, irate at the less engaged and detailed tone of textbook treatments. These are precisely the kinds of group memories encountered in national survey courses, and we need to know more about them. We need to know what patterns are most common, how much students feel they endure in silence, how much an unacknowledged debate affects commitment to the materials being taught.
    Even more interesting, because more pervasive, are commitments concerning "Western" values. Let me offer three diverse examples. Most obvious is the importation of beliefs about Western superiority as a framework for dealing with certain other cultures--beliefs that are usually carefully phrased because students quickly learn that the course evokes caution about prejudice, but beliefs maintained nevertheless. Quick conclusions about Muslim intolerance and militance, in relation to Western virtues, are a case in point. Of course the prudent instructor immediately adduces comparative instances of intolerance and militancy from Christian doctrine and experience--but what do engaged students really do with the comparison?
    The second example involves scales of significance. I recently asked students, in an exam essay question, to compare the significance of Christianity and Buddhism, in world history, between 500 and about 1200 C.E. To my surprise, to a person the students highlighted Christianity and virtually dismissed Buddhism--and this included thirty-seven students who were themselves Buddhist. The commitment to identifying what was Western as more powerful and important was intense. In some cases, it was compounded by an aversion to what were seen as passive and other wordly qualities in Buddhism. Often, it led students to invoke examples of Christian success well beyond the time period assigned (and to that point, studied) as somehow inherent in the topic--hence a rush to mention missionary activity in the Americas. Some set of frameworks was being tapped here that confounded calmer assessment of what should have been a nuanced response.
    The same significance scale emerges, though less surprisingly, in an introductory exercise. Asked (just for fun; it's not a serious endeavor) to name the ten most important world history developments of the past millennium, students routinely skew toward Western data: thus the Reformation, Renaissance and Magna Carta appear disproportionately, while strictly "non-Western" developments virtually never gain entry (though the Mongols enjoy a current exceptional status). The skewing may not reflect deep beliefs, but rather the fact that the high school world history courses from which the students emerge are still about seventy percent Western. But the priority scale does require attention.
    Finally, there are attachments to Western identities (again, often by people of many origins, not Western alone) that create what in my view are some powerful blinders. Sometimes this simply involves a sense of inevitable Western triumph. Thus, on an hour exam, an Asian-American student writes of "all the major religions moving westward" and so contributing to Western Europe's strength or how the West is "more centrally located" than Africa. More interesting still, however, are extrapolations from Western values as a basis for historical judgments. Individualism is a case in point: it is Western and it is good. Several diverse examples are: 1) A tendency to find individualism in every available nook and cranny of Western history, well before measurable, modern individualism arose at all. 2) A frequent early tendency, in an effort to be nice, to see individualism in other societies as well, to help legitimate them. Hence a common effort to define Confucianism as individualistic (I think because it is relatively secular and hence misleadingly identifiable). 3) A difficulty, even after overcoming the first tendencies, in discussing how less individualistic societies such as Japan have achieved distance from complete Westernization (and a firm assumption that individualism will win out). 4) A great difficulty, even with a careful comparative approach, in understanding why other societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen individualism as characteristic of the West, but highly undesirable.
    Obviously, if the world history course goes on to deal at all seriously with United States history, as is currently and correctly recommended, other memories crowd in. What's distinctive about the United States, as one tries to put it in world history? Democracy springs to student lips (just as it did when we talked about the Magna Carta). How much earlier did the United States install wide suffrage systems than parts of Western Europe like France? They don't know (a factual gap), but when told only about twenty years they nod but clearly resolutely do not internalize the complexity. America as a democratic haven rides on. Only slightly less commonly, beliefs about a national technology genius or an exceptional pattern of social mobility surface as well, again manifesting ignorance of comparative issues (which is all right--this is one reason they still need to learn) but also an emotional commitment that is harder to tackle. American exceptionalism burns brightly, at a visceral level in many cases.
    Mental scaffolds based on ethnic or even civilization identity are the most obvious memory issues in world history, but I think that more systematic research will reveal others. Let me offer two additional candidates. Gender is one. Identities attached here have two kinds of impact on world history receptivities. The first involves subject area. College Board experience (in various history courses) clearly reveals that women, on average, glaze over when the historical topic is war, while men perk up and do better than usual, while the reverse is true concerning social history. It would be intriguing to know more about the origins and impact of these proclivities. The second identity affects the range of criteria students are comfortable with in dealing with women's history itself. Women students readily seize on work issues as defining determinants of status, and they have difficulty understanding non-work periods or facets. Thus they find it hard to recognize the withdrawal of women from the labor force in key eras such as early Western industrialization, and in the past few years they seem to come from school programs that no longer deal even factually with this stage. They resonate far less to birth control histories (I think because they view this is as a done deal) than to work patterns. And of course they resist any attempt to explain polygamy as a pattern resulting from anything other than patriarchal domination. There is a scaffold, in other words, about what matters, that is attached to gender identity more than particular regional frameworks.
    And this relates to the other framework, which I can only describe as "modern". Students have a sense of identity as moderns, which colors their reactions to world history issues. First, it involves inordinate attachment to technology as sign and cause of change. This does not apply to discussions of earlier periods in world history, when discussions of technological causation can proceed without heat, though often with considerable interest. But it very much intrudes on the modern periods. Ask students to identify the ten most important developments in world history in the past millennium--again the significance exercise used as a warmup in the first session of the course--and often as many as six or seven suggestions will involve inventions of the past hundred years. The commitment is strong, and may well survive subsequent attempts to portray contemporary issues and causes in more complex terms. Second, and relatedly, the modern identity involves strong attachment to the idea of progress. Not, again, for world history throughout. Students listen politely to the list of minuses attached to the formation of agricultural economies. But once into modern times, virtually regardless of the society involved, progress reigns or comes to reign (perhaps after an unfortunate disruption such as imperialism or the slave trade). There is a commitment to the modern that may at once be intellectual and generational.
    These are, to be sure, impressions, but they suggest a few conclusions. First, at least at the college level, world history invokes school memories along with other apparatus. Confronted with large issues and ranges, students quite understandably marshall frameworks that they've learned in other contexts, including national history courses. They've done reasonably well in these courses, whether they liked them or not, and key fragments have become part of a memory bank. Studying memory at this level involves a range of sources partly different from the emphases in the research on national history at the school level. Hence for example the commitments even of Asian students to some surprisingly Western staples, in assessing significances.
    Second, we know far too little about the kinds of settings in the world history course when student memories will prompt a curtailment of belief and interest, even when surface willingness to memorize some of the assigned materials persists.
    Third, world history depends heavily on confrontations with various kinds of parochial memories. What's the purpose of the course? Obviously, many would urge key facts that must be known--such as the importance of nomads or of Islam. Fine. Beyond this, many would urge the appropriateness of world history for the inculcation or furtherance of key historical skills, such as dealing with documents or diverse interpretations or experience in assessing change. But many of these skills could be developed in other settings. Ultimately, aside from the partisans of a new set of canonical facts, the real addition of world history to student mental arsenals involves a more international or global orientation, which I would argue falls in between memorization and rigorous analysis. It involves a willingness to think about the need to compare (and to know how to do this, with cases in hand) and to understand impacts of global processes and contacts based on some experience with how migration or disease or cultural exchange have operated in the past. And orientation, in turn, involves a need to develop a new mental scaffold, that may often clash with or at least challenge more parochial scaffolds based on regional or gender or modern identities.
    And if this ambitious statement of purpose is correct, it behooves us even more to study what identities and memories students bring with them. We need at least as much attention to the use and interaction with these identities and memories in world history as a nuanced national history course requires. The task is fundamental to more successful world history teaching, teaching that moves beyond alternative factual arsenals. Happily, the assignment should be interesting as well.
ADDED MATERIAL
    Peter N. Stearns
    George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

FOOTNOTES
1. An earlier version of this paper was given at the Association for Research on Education in America, Montreal, April 19, 1999. My thanks to comments from panel and audience.
2. C.M. Seifert, R.B. Abelson, and G. McKoon, "The Role of Thematic Knowledge Structures," in J.A. Galambox, R.B. Abelson and J.B. Black, eds., Knowledge Structures (Hillsdale, NJ, 1986); Sam Wineburg, "Making Historical Sense," in Peter Stearns, Peter Seixas and Sam Wineburg, Teaching, Learning and Knowing History (New York, 2000, forthcoming); Linda S. Levstik, "Articulating the Silences: Teachers' and Adolescents' Conceptions of Historical Significance," in Stearns, Seixas, and Wineburg; J. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York, 1995); T.L. Epstein, "Sociocultural approaches to young people's historical understanding," Social Education 61 (1997): 28-31; J.R. Gillis, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, 1994); P. Tulviste and J.V. Wertsch, "Official and unofficial Histories: The Case of Estonia," Journal of Narrative and Life History 4 (1994): 311-29; J.V. Wertsch "Is It Possible to Teach Beliefs, as well as Knowledge about History?" Stearns, Seixas and Wineburg.
3. Ross Dunn, "A Reform Agenda for World History Teaching in the 21st Century," in Stearns, Seixas and Wineburg; Peter Seixas, "Mapping the Terrain of Historical Significance," Social Education 61 (1997): 22-27.
4. Robert Bain, "Into the Breach: Using Research and Theory to Shape History Instruction," in Stearns, Seixas and Wineburg.