Renowned historian John Lewis Gaddis opens his book The Landscape of History with a description of the early nineteenth century painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (pictured at right). For Gaddis, the artwork serves as a visual metaphor for the paradox of historical understanding. The more we come to learn about the past, he writes, the more we grasp just “how much has preceded us, and how unimportant we are in relation to it.”1 In other words, the stronger one’s grasp of history, the more one is—or at least, the more one should be— humbled. Viewed from a slightly different metaphorical angle, I believe the painting could just as easily represent the work of teachers. The more experienced we are, the more we realize how much we still have to learn. As Gaddis points out, “We see no face, so it’s impossible to know whether the prospect facing the young man is exhilarating or terrifying.”2 (Don’t we all experience this feeling, especially on the first day of each new school year?)
Because we live in a culture that values the tangible, the practical, the remunerative, students sometimes ask (reasonably), “Why does history even matter?” To be sure, I wish it were easier to draw a direct line from the study of the past to lucrative employment, the way a teacher in a STEM field might, but like Gaddis, I believe that history still serves a timeless purpose. It has become a cliché to note that educators are preparing students for careers that do not yet exist, but the study of history has never been about career preparation. Nor is it simply about “covering” content. Rather, the study of history involves a progressive uncovering—of new questions, new perspectives, new insights. Like the Wanderer in the painting, the historically-minded person comes to understand that the higher one climbs, the less clarity one finds. There are no easy answers, only more questions. In humbling us, then, history prepares us to confront the unknown. In this sense, I believe history lies at the heart of a twenty-first century liberal arts education.
Frequently misunderstood as partisan, “liberal” in this case actually comes from the Latin liberalis— the same root as “liberty.” Although some have called for abandoning the term “liberal” because of the confusion, the liberal arts do not promote any particular ideology but in fact free students by cultivating their curiosity and their capacity for learning. In short, a liberal arts education enables one to adapt as circumstances change. Unlike the recipients of a more narrow training, the liberally educated are not shackled to one mode of thinking, which explains the endurance of the liberal arts across millennia.
In 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote of America, “The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.” Two centuries later, Jefferson’s wave can at times feel like a tsunami, and I believe we commit educational malpractice when we fail to prepare our students for the demands of citizenship in a tumultuous democratic society. For me, this means developing students’ ability to think critically and communicate clearly, but it also means inculcating an awareness that the world is rarely as black and white as many accounts suggest—or as we might like it to be.
To this end, I believe the teacher’s role is not to serve as the font of all knowledge, but instead to nurture a healthy classroom culture in which all students feel empowered to speak, to set the agenda for learning by presenting students with thought-provoking materials, and to keep the conversation from going off the rails, gently nudging students toward greater depth and clarity of thought. Rather than rely on a textbook, I confront my students with a variety of primary and secondary sources, often with contradictory perspectives, and I employ the “Harkness method,” a student-centered approach to classroom discussion. At times, my classroom can feel like a “boisterous sea of liberty,” wherein students have the freedom to speak their minds and to disagree with each other and with me. Thus, the Harkness approach simultaneously serves both academic and societal ends. It aids in the development of students’ communication skills by requiring them to marshal evidence in discussion (just as they do in writing), while at the same time forcing them to reckon with the fact that not everyone views the world as they do. They must take seriously the ideas of the assigned texts and their classmates, but they learn that to take something seriously means to approach it with an open mind and treat it with respect—not simply to accept it at face value.
In a nutshell, I attempt to model democracy for my students, in the hopes that when they leave my classroom, they will be better equipped not only for a changing workplace, but for engaged citizenship. The promotion of civil discourse is central to my sense of professional purpose, and more than any particular historical facts I impart along the way, this is what I hope my students will take from their time with me.
1. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 6.
2. Gaddis 1.
Matt Edmonds 