Deborah Hernandez

February 14, 2017

HIstory 401
Professor Gail Hamilton

World History and The Challenges of Teaching

As I prepare for a career as a social science educator, one of the challenges I face is teaching

history to secondary school students as more than a series of dates and factoids. Namely with World

history, the challenge to teach a broad survey of historical analysis can appear to be daunting to secondary

school history teachers as well as for students for several reasons. According to Deborah Smith Johnston,

forty nine percent of secondary school teachers in the US assigned to teach a World history course do not

have a degree in the subject (267). As a result, many teachers are left without the historical skills

necessary to teach history in a way that demonstrates a cognitive approach, resulting in deep

understanding of World history as described by Robert B. Bain (332).

One of the best methods for secondary -school history educators is to employ students to do

historical analysis just as professional historians do their work. Introducing history students to primary

and secondary source documents is one way to breach the gap between history as a discipline and

history as a subject. When students are taught to approach history in the same ways as professional

historians do such as by, corroboration, sourcing, and contextualizing (333) historical material,

students begin to uncover multiple historical narratives not typically offered in history textbooks to make

sense of the world in a particular time and place. For example, students can compare documents from an

elite individual and a peasant writing home about the conditions in nineteenth century Europe. Similarly,

a case studies as tool of comparison is just as effective. The end result for students is best described by

Johnston, History is not a subject that confines itself easily to disciplinary boundaries, since it draws

upon fields as diverse as social and gender history, economics, politics geography, anthropology and

literature (265).

Often, World history courses can result as a series of dates and facts without connecting world

history to broader historical themes, therefore, leaving students to feel disengaged from history and
uninterested in its potential. For many secondary school teachers the challenges to teach a World history

course come from teachers trained in national history (268). Perhaps the most familiar of challenges, as

outlined by Johnston, are outdated textbooks. As a teacher's assistant in an eighth grade classroom, it has

come to my attention the worn down condition history books are in. The content inside is mostly given

from a eurocentric perspective, placing Europe at the center of world civilization and modernity and

placing historical analysis on individual national histories or regional studies rather than comparing

interactions and similarities between two or more nation states, for example.

There are three main approaches to organize historical narratives as described by Ross E. Dunn.

The first model is known as the Western Heritage Model, appearing post World War I and World War II.

Its strengths are measured by highlighting democracy, freedom and a shared system of cultural

communication in the west. (124), nevertheless the model favors a eurocentric perspective and falls short

in providing a true global narrative. The second model as discussed by Dunn is the Different Cultures

Model. This model emerged during the 1960s and 1970s in response to the calls for social justice, and

the fight for civil rights. The Different Cultures Model presents a socially inclusive approach by looking

beyond the west and exploring histories of working people, women and previously excluded regions of

the world like Asia and Africa. The Different Cultures Model incorporates social theology by Karl Marx,

Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim in a conscious effort made by historians to fill in the gaps of knowledge

created in part by the Western Heritage Model.

Without the proper resources, it becomes difficult, in any career, to completely fulfil the job. Secondary

World history teachers are not fully to blame for the inconsistency of context and execution. Since World

history became a professional discipline in the nineteenth century, the debates over how to teach history

have evidently become products of their time, and many textbooks do not keep up with the changing

historical narratives. Take for example, during the 1950s and 1960s, Western Civ courses increased

enrollment as the United States looked towards a more unified world, post World War I and World War II.

Western Civ courses best outlined the Western Heritage Mode. The course delivered an account of

European -led progress and the rise of the US as an international political and economic force.,
according to Johnston. Although Western Civ courses incorporated an analysis of the United States, it

did so second to Europe, emphasising Europe's prestige above all. A more inclusive model of the world

and global community was needed and would come in the mid-twentieth century. As a result of the

changing definition of the term world history and re-construction of three historical models, much of the

context in textbooks are a combination of the Western Heritage Model and the Different patterns model.

The rise of world history as a professional discipline is a product of its time. According to Jerry

Bentley, during the nineteenth century as Europe undergoes rapid industrialization and individual

societies rearrange themselves into nation-states, the phenomena challenges Europe's stability.

Nevertheless Europe prevailed through global imperialism and scholars used the dynamic-state building

displayed by European societies as the framework for world history scholarship. As the events displayed

in Europe would later demonstrate, nation states and individual societies did not determine their own

fates in isolation. Mid-twentieth century scholars began to analyze Asia, Africa, pre Columbian,

Americas and oceania in an effort to bring cultural distinctiveness, exclusive identities, local

knowledge, and the experiences of individual societies to the discipline.

Mid-twentieth century historical scholarship was an attempt to employ a large-scale analysis of

the world, through the Different Cultures Model, however, the model continued to historically analysis

these new agents of history through European imperialism. Professional historians like William H.

McNeill challenged the national, political, geographical and cultural boundaries narrative of the

nineteenth century to develop a truly new global perspective of the past that analysis encounters,

interactions, and global exchanges, among societies. McNeils philosophy of world history is in his

book, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. The title alone implies a holistic

approach to new world history. McNiel along with prominent historians such as Marshall G. S. Hodgson,

L. S. Stavrianos, and Philip D. Curtin challenged the nation-state framework used throughout the

nineteenth century forward, and in essence rejecting the Different Cultures Model of the 1960s and

1970s which did very little to challenge the Western Heritage Model. What emerged is the third model

known the Patterns of Change Model. As described by Dunn the model is, ...firmly based in the
discipline of history, through drawing extensively on the social sciences, especially economics, sociology

and anthropology for analytical constructs (128). According to Dunn the model is also the result of

globalization, and the desire to connect with the world in a way that demonstrates a cause and effect

pattern. For example, through the Different Cultures Model, a lesson plan on Alexander the Great, should

conclude with secondary school students being able to identify the causes behind military conquest and

the effects of cross-cultural interaction between ancient civilizations such as in Egypt and Asia in their

own right to culturally distinguish among their similarities rather than differences to create a global

community and relevance for students. Dunn promotes the Different Cultures Model as the best hope for

enhancing students ability to connect detailed knowledge of particular topics, events, and facts to

larger frameworks of development and causation, a cognitive feat they must perform if the texts they read

and materials they learn are to have any enduring intellectual or experiential significance (130). In

collaboration with Bains methods, this approach to World history will result in a new World history

perspective.

To conclude, as a future social science educator, and a world history undergraduate, I believe the

best approach to teach world history is through the Different Cultures Model. To draw upon an earlier

example, a lesson plan on Alexander the Great, and his conquest would be titled the Hellenistic Age,

setting a temporal framework, of a specific period in time. Secondly, using spatial framework, I can

organize my lesson according to empires, regions and humanity by demonstrating the regions affected as

well as the impact on humanity taken by primary source documents such as official written records,

letters, and art. Using a thematic framework to view the Age, through multiple lenses, students can use

pictures of artifacts across the regions to discover how one civilization influenced another's culture, art,

literature, and textiles, similarly to how today, genres of music draw inspiration from each other to create

a distinctive new sound. Journal writing will help my students to uncover questions, make

connections and make history interactive, unrestrained, and open to interpretation.