Public Apathy

[BrianTubbs]

Hey everyone,

This is a strategy discussion I'm proposing. How can we package history to make it interesting and appealing (and therefore more publishable) to a modern consumer market that cares more about Britney Spears shaving her head than honoring the birthday of George Washington (it's now "Presidents' Day").

I'm really upset about the pathetic, superficial, "fat, dumb, and happy" nature of the modern American public. But being mad about it doesn't do much good.

What can we do either to change it or to prosper (as history writers) in spite of it? Or am I alone in seeing this problem?

[pdr]

Phew! This is one of those things where you simply have to put your money where your mouth is and practise what you preach, Brian. There is so little one person can do except that.

I mean you really need to start in the Education Dept of every State and get them to spend more money seeing everyone got a good education. That means revamping the syllabus, new books and courses, getting teacher training institutes to start taking in enthusiastic people who want to teach, paying them good salaries and getting them to teach their students how to think for themselves. Employers, politicians and Govts don't like that thinking bit.

Teaching history so that we know and understand ourselves doesn't happen does it?

Teaching history because it's important that we all know the mistakes of the past and don't repeat them doesn't happen either. I was shocked when talking to some American university students to find they didn't know that the students killed at Kent State University were not 'commie sympathiser' activists and agitators who attacked first, (as they had been taught) but that the National guard opened fire on the students.

[Puma]

I'm not sure you'll ever get the "now" generation to appreciate the importance of history until they're more mature. But, in the area where I live we've gotten an elevation in interest in history by what I'd call grass roots work. The local historical society has done a lot of work on digging up information (and publishing it in the local paper or in booklets) about the early settlers, school, churches, etc. I was part of that effort - I wrote a 400 page history of my township (which sold well locally).

Genealogy is another back door approach - some kids are required to create family trees for classwork (high school and college). And some of the genealogy societies across the US are doing a lot of work to write up and preserve old church records, estate records, etc. I've been part of that too and have put together a 100 page history of one family, typed up a 30 page autobiography (written on scraps of paper in a microscopic handwriting) of a man who was born in 1857, the child of immigrants, and I've done other work as well.

For my efforts I've gotten no pay, but I have three "books" in the state library archives and state historical scoiety. Granted, it's not much when you're talking about credentials, but it is something. And, I've helped improve the interest in history in my community. I was out in the middle of a 100 acre field looking for arrowheads when a a man from the opposite side of the field walked out to talk to me - his opening line was "You wrote the township history, didn't you."

Going back to President's Day, Brian, one of the settlers in my township that I wrote about in the history was the drummer/piper for Washington in the Revolution. So now there's a tie between my little community and the Father of our Country. Granted, not everyone will find something like that, but when history can be in some way personalized, it makes it much more important to people. Puma

[Cav Guy]

The best way to get people interested in history is to break the word down and tell a good story. Period. If you can tell history in such a way that people get sucked into it, they'll go looking for more. But if you pack it with political crap and agendas, they'll go the other way. People are far more intelligent in many ways than they are given credit for by some interest groups.

If you give them something to connect to, something they can see themselves in, you'll hook them. If you can't do that, you won't.

[Shadow_Ferret]

As Cav Guy said, to get people interested in history you have to make history interesting.

As a child, to me, history was always the most boring subject, next to math. Mainly because in grade school history is broken down into rote memorization of dates, names and events.

[C.bronco]

A teacher can make history interesting or boring. I was lucky; I had good teachers.

[Carmy]

I was lucky, too. I had a great history teacher. (Mind you, it didn't hurt that he waws the youngest teacher at the school and was good looking.) History was my favourite subject at school and it still is. My bookshelves contain more history books, fact and fiction, than anything else.

How do you make history interesting? You concentrate on individuals. Not all were generals or kings and queens, some ordinary people contributed a great deal to the way we live today.

[Cav Guy]

A lot of making history interesting has to do with blending and telling stories well. Most of history is about relationships, either between individuals or groups. Good teachers bring this out. Bad ones fall back on dates. You do need the dates, but it's important to show what those dates mean and how they relate to other things.

[zornhau]

Hey everyone,

This is a strategy discussion I'm proposing. How can we package history to make it interesting and appealing (and therefore more publishable) to a modern consumer market that cares more about Britney Spears shaving her head than honoring the birthday of George Washington (it's now "Presidents' Day").

I'm really upset about the pathetic, superficial, "fat, dumb, and happy" nature of the modern American public. But being mad about it doesn't do much good.

What can we do either to change it or to prosper (as history writers) in spite of it? Or am I alone in seeing this problem?

Fiction: Write good stories!

Straight history: Present it as game with moves and countermoves. Focus on the people with agency. Relegate the rest to backdrop.

[EngineerTiger]

This is nothing new. History has never been something that thirlled the masses. The apathy with regard to the past has been the bane of civilization since the Babylonians. I can just imagine some poor teacher trying to discuss Gilgamesh and having a bright, copper-necklaced mink look at him and say, "Oh who cares. That was three rulers ago. Say, have you heard what the Egyptians are using now for their wigs?"

The teaching of history is a different matter. Part of it lies in the fact that historians rarely become elementary and secondary school teachers. Thus, the teaching falls on the shoulder of English teachers, coaches, or whoever gets stuck with it. The text books are appalling and, like many of the non-historian teachers, lean heavily on dates and less on the people who were making it.

There is also the tendency to make students due "serious" history which is focussed on political science rather than just history. Now, if I had the cute little girl from Babylon in my class, I would have said, "Okay, not much interested in Gilgamesh. How about telling me about his wife, her fashions and how they differ from ours, where do the textiles for those fashions come from, what did she use for lip rouge, etc. While not political, date to date history, such an effort from my little student would at least expose her to the idea of trying to link the past with her present. It might even spark her a bit because it would be a subject (wigs, dresses, cosmetics) for which she has already indicated interest.

[Ol' Fashioned Girl]

Y'know when I got interested in history?

In college. When my English history prof told me the TRUE stories - not the history the winner had written.

Those dates and names and battles meant zilch 'til I found out what the man and woman behind the lines was doing to survive it. How they lost their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands. Just how nuts some of the religious reformation leaders were. And why Henry VIII really split from the Catholic church.

I believe my job - as a historical writer - is to bring some of that truth out into the light, whether it's the history written by the winner or the loser or someone who just happened by, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That's how I get interested in history. And if I can just tell the story, there will be folks out there who'll be interested, too.

[EngineerTiger]

Be careful of that word "truth". There is no truth in history. Also, with all due respect to your history prof, it usually is far more complicated than "winners and losers". There is a tendency these days to try to simplify everything, take it down to the common demoninator. History is not science and you just can't do that.

Take your example of Henry VIII. Why did he split the Church? Just for the divorce? Just because the Pope would not give him an annulment from Katherine of Aragon? There is far more to it than that. There were a lot of other considerations and players. After all, Katherine was an infanta of Spain, daughter of Isabel and Ferdinand who had already remade Spain and given the Catholic Church, via the Inquisition, extraordinary power over the populace. Nor did Henry "invent" Protestantism to effect his divorce. It was already well on the way through Luther and Calvin. Henry had good reason for wanting the son Katherine could not give him. England was just recovering from the War of the Roses, a very bloody Civil War. See what I'm getting at? Like all mortals, even kings can't be reduced to "good man", "bad man".

History is subjective and colored through experience and other writers' opinions. Even the "solid documentation" of a given era is suspect. How do you know you have the original? How do you know if the diary was a factual account or some story a bored courtesan started to write in the middle of her journal? To me, historical fiction is a way to tell the story of ordinary people (such as ourselves) caught up in events and how they live through those events. As you research for your stories, try not to rely on any one or even any two sources. There are a lot of historians out there with their own axes to grind and it is easy to be caught up in the "truth" that is only through the eyes of a particular observer.

[pdr]

Thank you everyone for a good read. You've given me such a lot to think about.

One thing I have noticed when writing historicals is that people 'back then' are remarkably the same as us. When they have choices and have to decide, their decisions will be based on things we would also consider. And people in 800, or 1300, or 1700l made good or bad decisions depending on their personalities and beliefs.

One of the nice things about writing historicals is that you can show 'ordinary' people making those choices and show how what was happening at the time and their own personality affected the choice. It makes history 'real'.

[PastMidnight]

I always find it interesting to read a novel written from one side of a battle or faction and then to read a novel from the opposite side. I think this is a little of what Ol' Fashioned Girl was talking about. I start to understand what 'truth' it was that each side believed in, what it was that they thought they were fighting for.

To answer the original question, I agree that telling history through the eyes of an ordinary person, someone that the reader can relate to, is an appealing way to do it. But let's not forget, in a society that loves its celebrities and gossip mags, stories about historical 'celebrities' can hold appeal as well. I've always loved finding out about the queen behind the portrait, the inventor behind the discovery.

[Meerkat]

Like C.bronco put it, it all depends upon the teacher, which is to say it all depends upon the student ("When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." --some Zen master, or else it was dclary, not sure which). All of this is especially tragic when the subject history is considered boring, since it is the story of solutions already tried.