We Need to Re-imagine How We Think About History

Do you ever get the distinct feeling that no one around you actually quite understands your job? That’s often how it feels being a history teacher. Students, parents, and even other teachers in the building often conflate the discipline of history with the skill of storytelling.

“I used to hate history, but now I love it.”
— At least one parent during conferences every year.

Let’s be fair about this. Historical storytelling is amazing. The History Channel pioneered historical storytelling for the masses, but as a cord-cutting millennial, I really feel it’s necessary to give online creators a huge hat tip here. From short-form content on YouTube Shorts, Instagram, or TikTok to long-form content on YouTube, indie creators and channels have furthered the work that cable channels started decades ago in bringing historical stories to everyone.

Still, we need to delineate between listening to history and doing history. They aren’t the same.

I suspect that the vast majority of parents that tell me each year that they hated their high school history classes but love history today would still despise a history class. Those folks, although intending to pay a compliment to the discipline, are inadvertently talking about storytelling. In a classroom setting, we’re attempting to teach students how to develop complex ideas through the analysis of difficult texts and other sources. As it turns out, building the story that others love to hear isn’t always glamorous work. Often it’s intense, laborious, and even occasionally boring.

In truth, those parents may be onto something. Often the love of historical storytelling develops after high school, after the academic study of history has already been completed. Maybe we have this backwards. Maybe we should be focused more on the storytelling at younger ages to allow the love of the historical past to grow and resonate before we tackle it from an academic angle.