History
- Missy Alexander
- Oct 20
- 5 min read
It will strike my former colleagues as funny that I am making an argument for the inclusion of history in general education curriculum. We had a hard fought battle over history when our university decided to revise the gen-ed program. All such revisions involve difficult decisions and resistance is rarely, if ever, grounded in measurable outcomes. As a new Dean at the time, I was excited that the university's Committee for General Education invited me to participate in the planning of a new curriculum. Some faculty were ready for change. I dove in.
Two years later we secured full approval (though not full buy-in) for a new, outcomes-based program. I thought it was an interesting approach, a kind of learning-outcomes-across-the-curriculum model. The list of gen-ed categories included some familiar themes: Competency in both oral and written communication, quantitative reasoning, scientific inquiry, critical thinking, information literacy, intercultural competency, creative process, and health and wellness. Faculty and departments could submit courses for inclusion in any category as long as they could demonstrate the ways in which the general education learning outcomes could be met. I can say in retrospect that there should have been more rigor in the approval process, but I still think the approach has some merit.
In any case, you can see that there is no "history" category. Really, there are no discipline-specific categories. The point was that courses in several areas could credibly support our goals for, let's say written communication. Although we still included composition I as a requirement, though students might place out of it where appropriate, writing intensive (level II) is something that could be and had been taught in several different disciplines, not just in the writing department. Business had managerial writing, literature, sociology, anthropology, and communication classes had writing instruction in designated courses. In the new gen-ed we saw this expand a little (biology in particular), but not a lot.
In the approach we adopted, departments were encouraged to look at what they taught and identify courses that naturally aligned with the gen-ed category for potential inclusion. I think you might be able to see that most science courses will meet the outcomes of scientific inquiry, but so might some of the psychology or nursing courses. Similarly, courses in the math department should meet quantitative reasoning standards, but so might economics, pharmacology, and any number of discipline specific statistics classes. With a strong assessment plan, this approach can be effective. Without it, it can be choas.
So what of history? Where did they fit? Well, as we developed the program, members of that department were not able to clearly articulate learning outcomes for their discipline that were not already covered in the adopted categories. After several attempts, they ended up submitting courses history for critical thinking, intercultural competency, and a few for writing intensives. It was an uncomfortable compromise. The politics of the situation made it impossible for me to move them to a successful argument for history; administration was not to write curriculum in any way (though, of course, many of us in administration have a strong grounding in that very skill). I tried to offer a few tips, a few approaches to communicating with peers, but alas, I failed at this coaching task.
But here I am now, arguing for history in the general education curriculum, specifically US focused history. And because I think we need to have clear learning outcomes for gen-ed, I will endeavor to explain what is unique to this category and what we should know at the end of these courses.
To begin, all general education curricula should include a history course that addresses the origins of the United States. Those origins should reflect the social, political, and economic context in which the nation was born. The course should seriously interrogate the ideas that were debated by the people [white men of means] who wrote the founding documents. Students should engage with the texts of those early documents, not summaries of them. They should also engage with the examples of governmental structures that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were building on and arguing against.
You may think this is a political science course, not a US History course. Maybe. But, histories are of things, and in this case, I am advocating for students to understand the history of our founding documents and documents are generally the historian's domain. I anticipate that there would be readings that addressed how decisions were made about whose views were included and excluded from the conversations about government structures, voting rights, and notions of citizenship. I anticipate that students will conduct independent research about one of the arguments or decisions of interest to them. I would call this course: A History of the American Democracy.
The second course should be called A History of Economic Thought in America. This course will, of course, include readings of the important theories of economics through these 250 years of the American experiment. Like the first course, it should include original texts and rich discussion of the arguments being made for how economies should function. This course would necessarily include arguments for capitalist, socialist, communist, and blended economic strategies and the philosophical underpinnings of each. It should also include a deep dive into how different segments of our society have participated in and contributed to the US economy. Finally, it should address how this history has shaped our current socio-economic environment. This, you might say, is an economics course, but I disagree. Most economics courses and programs are steeped in mathematical functions necessary for planning and projections. This course is the domain of a person trained in the history of economic thought.
So what of the learning outcomes? Before I list them, remember that this general education starts with a grouding in informal logic and writing, and quantitative reasoning. Students need those foundations prior to enrolling in these courses, which I would design for sophmore year. These courses demand an understanding of argument and basic statistics before students will be competent to read the material to be examined. With those foundations, I suggest the following outcomes for the history category of the general education curriculum.
At the conclusion of the history sequence students will be able to:
Accurately describe the central arguments in the foundational texts/theories examined.
Identify contradictions within and between the foundational texts/theories.
Present a clear and well supported example of how one such contradiction continues to reverberate in our social/political/economic structures.
Of course, these learning outcomes could apply to any history and I think they are a good framework for any such course. Whether discussing movements in the arts & humanities, the trajectory of science & technology, or evolving theories of ethical behavior, these questions would surely apply. The reasoning skills are reflective of a strong critical thinker, reader, and writer.
But there are two distinctions from a general critical thinking definition that we should note here. The first is the emphasis on foundational texts. Historians are tasked with looking at original writings and building understanding of (from) those words in the contexts in which they were written. This is time intensive and not something we do in most classes, especially those focused on overviews of disciplines or the details of particular processes (math, science, dance, or literature). The second is the focus on impact over time. Looking backward for reasons why we are in current situations is the heart of historical thinking, and given the state of the world, we should really want to know.
One more thing - this is an argument for American political and economic history. While I still like the focus on outcomes, I am suggesting that our students need this very specific grounding to be informed decision-makers. We have to be able to check things for ourselves, at least to some degree. There are important constitutional scholars and economic theorists to consult for deep understanding of issues, to be sure. But, there are a whole lot of buzz words, slogans, memes, and strategies of persuasion that rely on people not knowing the basics of our founding texts and theories. We simply can't have that. So, yes to this old fashioned distribution requirement; This is stuff we need to know.
