Balancing Act

Teaching Social Studies is a balancing act.  From a pedagogical standpoint, I understand that best practices dictate the importance of making history tangible and real for our students through story-telling.  We are told over and over that getting our students to relate personally to what they are learning is the best way to make our subjects relevant. In that vein, descriptions about notable individuals, stories of triumphs and failures, case studies on historic leaders or participants, are what stick.  But on the other hand, I’ve always felt that our discipline is important and vital because of the overarching patterns that we can see emerge. We can’t see these patterns without taking a step back from the individuals and learning about big picture themes throughout history. I typically don’t like the adage, “History Repeats Itself”, because it implies a helplessness that I don’t adhere to (maybe a topic for a different post) but the longer that I study and teach these subjects, the more in awe I am of how often history develops in predictable patterns. So this is the struggle - how do we find the balance between huge, sweeping historical concepts and personal narratives that make history come alive?

In all of my courses, I start off the year by showing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk titled “The Danger of a Single Story”.  In both history and government classes, I like to set the precedent that the things we learn are never an entire telling of what truly happened.  One of my favorite anecdotes from her talk is when she arrived in the United State for college and met her roommate for the first time, her roommate wanted her to play her ‘native’ music from Nigeria and was sorely disappointed when she turned on Mariah Carey.  As we study history (or political science, or geography, or economics) we run the risk of minimizing so many diverse stories into a single digestible narrative. We can try our best, but we will never be able to recreate every experience from the past. However, as good historians (or political scientists, or geographers, or economists) we must constantly improve our critical thinking skills in order to hold on to and validate multiple narratives and experiences.

Another example of where we see this balancing act is in conversations regarding globalization.  As we progress through the 21st century, the world is getting smaller in many ways. Technology has improved our methods of communication, the internet allows us to have more information at our fingertips than ever possible, and new jobs and industries are emerging at an incredible rate.  But at the same time, we are still seeing massive gaps in education, success, and wealth that would seem counterintuitive to how much progress we are making. I really enjoyed the narrative put forward in The Atlantic’s article, “The World is Spiky”.  Rather than validating one side of the round world v. flat world argument, it offers up the point of view that we are developing unevenly around the world.  This isn’t a new phenomenon because development is never uniform. Nothing puts this idea into perspective better than Han Rosling’s “200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 minutes” video on global change.  A point that is mentioned in both Rosling’s analysis and the Atlantic article is that people are living in concentrated urban areas at a higher rate than ever before, and that this is leading to bigger disparities within nations.  



So, what does this mean for our teaching?  I think that it is our responsibility to present our students with as many varied perspectives as possible, as well as the tools to analyze them.  Too often, I think that we expect students to be able to automatically connect the dots or think deeply about complex situations. If we are doing it correctly, the concepts presented in social studies classes should be overwhelming, we are tackling some of the world’s most enduring questions.  So why would we expect teenagers to know what to do with so many varied opinions, ideas, and contradicting information?  The best thing that we can do is to equip them with the ability to constantly question, and to do so in a way that is meaningful and not strictly for the purposes of ‘getting credit’ and moving on.  In Angel Kyodo Williams’ conversation in NPR’s “On Being” podcast, she expressed a concern about people’s growing inability to experience discomfort.  I see this being increasingly true in society and especially in my students. We become obsessed with who is right and who is wrong, we lose sight of the fact that multiple truths may be valid.  We are so used to having our questions answered immediately, we might be losing a sense of wonder and discovery. In her conversations, Williams says, “...without this particular place and location of a willingness to be flexible, open, soft-bellied enough to be moved by the truth of the other in whatever given situation, then it is not transformative.  It’s change, maybe; it can be moved backwards again, as we can see - the stroke of a pen.” This quote really resonated with me. If we can’t help our students transform as a result of their learning, we aren’t truly accomplishing anything.