History and Revolution

I'm a historian by profession. It sounds straightforward, but I find many people do not really know what a historian actually does.

I work at a small liberal arts college. This implies teaching, but I'm not a teacher. I have no training in that difficult and worthy profession. I'm a professor, I profess my knowledge to students. I do encourage them not just to repeat memorized facts but to think about broader patterns and concepts. Because thinking about the whys and hows is the main skill we want to teach.

The other significant part of my job is outside the classroom. It is the research, analysis, and writing which are the nuts and bolts of historical practice. For history is not just about knowing names, dates, and events. Those are merely the basic elements, the foundations, of being a historian. The professional historian is trained to read historical texts, put them in the context of place and time, and analyze their meaning and significance. That is the core definition of what a historian does. We think about the whys and hows.

I'm working on some sixteenth century urban records at present. These were written by the merchant elites in charge of the city, and by people reporting to those elites. I'm deciphering how they controlled the commons, enacted and enforced laws, and navigated the Protestant Reformation. These, and other sources, can give me insights into power, class, politics, and religion.

Of course, other studies in the humanities provide the same benefits. I would never shortchange literature, philosophy, or the arts for example. Hopefully, among us we are transferring these analytical, questioning, thinking skills to our students.

Then why do so many people graduate from college without the requisite thinking skills?

The data tell us about 20% of students graduate with business degrees, 18% with health and biomedical degrees, 16% from social studies, and 8% from education. While humanities degrees provide about 6% of graduates. This means at least two thirds of college graduates have professional degrees. They specifically attend college for professional training in order to get a professional job.

It is true most colleges have liberal arts requirements. Thankfully, business and nursing and other departments frequently support and encourage the liberal arts education. The problem isn't them. It's the students. From experience I have seen far too many just see the non-major classes as jumping through hoops, and so they take little interest in thinking. They just want their degree and then go get that middle class job.

Therefore, the modern university is no longer a hot bed of ideas. Too many universities are now glorified vocational training schools. In fact, administrations of too many universities are eliminating whole departments within the humanities as “unproductive.” At the same time they massively increase investment into professional programs.

My radical, and unlikely to ever be implemented, solution is that professional training should be at the community college level. The universities should focus on the humanities and sciences. It is not as crazy as it sounds. The reality is many employers prefer the thinking skills of humanities graduates over those with strict professional training. Humanities students are the people hired as managers and creators. For the vocationally minded student a two-year community college degree is quicker, less expensive, and would leave the student with much less debt. Most importantly universities become ideas factories once again. It's what they are supposed to be.

Then perhaps, just perhaps, the bright young people at universities will be once again taking an interest in and thinking about the world around them, and they'll protest, or even riot, or, if we are really lucky, they'll lead the next revolution.