Why Do We Fall Down, Master Bruce?

We often tout that history, and indeed the liberal arts experience, teach critical thinking skills.  We are often less clear what that phrase actually means.  I’ve been trying to define critical thinking over the past few weeks and have decided that it has a few possible meanings. An ability to assemble and disassemble an argument…

The Ten Dollar Bill and Women’s History

Like Nora, I’ve been thinking about the meaning of putting a woman’s face on American currency. Last spring, the women on 20s campaign was an optional final paper topic in my Social Science in American History course. We had ended the semester on memory, and for the final exam students could choose between a few…

The Professor’s New Face

We’ve all had them—ancient professors who dress poorly, haven’t shaved in between three and four lifetimes, get covered in chalk and don’t seem to notice or mind, and go through lectures with a clarity and calmness only possible after the thousandth iteration. This, it seems, is the image of the “Ivory Tower,” the “absent-minded professor,”…

Teaching the Twenty

It has been several months since the news broke that despite a long-running public campaign to remove Andrew Jackson from the twenty dollar bill, the treasury department would instead combine Alexander Hamilton and a yet to be determined woman on the ten. The treasury cited counterfeiting risks as the reason for the choice. Just before…

Reports from Pedagogical Research, Part 1: Debunking Differentiation

Last month I complained about the anti-intellectualism exhibited when historians dismiss and even disparage research in teaching and learning. This semester I am trying to read through research in several pedagogy journals including, The Review of Higher Education, Review of Educational Research, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Learning and Instruction, and Educational Research Review. My first observation is that faculty can control…

“Writing for the Reader” and the Graduate Colloquium

Although it is hardly profound to suggest that graduate education should emphasize strong, clear, and concise writing, it sometimes appears that composition assumes a secondary position behind historiographical analysis and command of existing literature. The most difficult and most fruitful readings course that I took in graduate school had little topical relevance to my own…