Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-hbs24 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-11T09:10:58.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

History, Theory, and Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

John L. Rury
John L. Rury*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The distinguished Africanist Robert Harms once observed that “we historians are a practical people who pride ourselves on our attention to facts and our painstaking attention to detail.” If this is the case in other parts of the world, it is certainly true of American historians, who have been periodically admonished for their disinterest in questions of theory and purpose related to their craft. In this issue we have an opportunity to discuss the question of theory as it may pertain to the history of education, with particular attention to the United States. Regardless of whether one believes that historians should be ardent students of social theory, after all, there is little question about whether they should be cognizant of it. Indeed, there is danger in ignoring it. Quoting John Maynard Keynes, Harms suggested that practical people who feel “exempt from any intellectual influences” run the risk of “becoming slaves to some defunct economist.”

Type
Response
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 218 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Harms, Robert, “African History Research: Trends and Perspectives on the Future,” African Studies Review 30, no. 2 “June 1987“: 25–33.Google Scholar

2 For an example of the former, see Hollinger, David, “Banality and Enigma,” Journal of American History 81, no. 3 “December 1994“: 1152–56; on the latter see Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession “New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988” passim; also see Novick's responses to his critics in “My Correct Views on Everything,” American Historical Review 96, no. 3 “June 1991”: 699–703.Google Scholar

3 The quote is from Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money “New York: Hartcourt Brace, 1936”, 383; Harms, “African History Research,” 25.Google Scholar

4 For a thoughtful recent discussion of this question, see Howell, Martha and Prevenier, Walter, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods “Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001“, chap. 4.Google Scholar

5 For classic discussions of historical reasoning, see Fischer, David Hackett, Historians’ Fallacies: Towards a Logic of Historical Thought “New York: Harper & Row, 1970“, passim; Carr, E. H., What is History “New York: Vintage, 1967”, chap. 4.Google Scholar

6 A survey of debates over theory in history and the narrative form can be found in Clark, Elizabeth A., History, Theory and Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn “Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004“, passim.Google Scholar

7 A recent demonstration of this can be found in Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology “Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008”, passim.Google Scholar

8 On social capital, for example, see Rury, John L., “Social Capital and Secondary Schooling: Inter-Urban Differences in American Teenage Enrollment Rates in 1950,” American Journal of Education 110, no. 4 “August 2004“: 293–320; Beadie, Nancy, “Education and the Creation of Capital, or What I have Learned from Following the Money,” History of Education Quarterly 48, no. 1 “February 2008”: 1–29. On politics, see Mirel, Jeffrey E., “After the Fall: Continuity and Change in Detroit,” History of Education Quarterly 38, no. 3 “Autumn 1998”: 237–67; or Mirel's article on school reform, “School Reform Unplugged: The Bensonville New American School Project, 1991–93,” American Educational Research Journal 31, no. 3 “Autumn 1994”: 481–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 One need only peruse past issues of such interdisciplinary journals as Social Science History “starting 1976”, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History “1970” or Historical Methods “1967” to see evidence of this. The founding of the Social Science History Association “SSHA” in 1976 provided an organizational platform for this sort of work across conventional disciplinary lines. Today the SSHA annual meeting brings researchers from a range of academic traditions together to discuss problems in history and historical social science—including education—from different methodological perspectives.Google Scholar

10 Stone, Lawrence, “The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History,” Past and Present 85 “November 1979“: 11–12. For an early critique of social science approaches to history, also see Jacque Barzun, “History: The Muse and Her Doctors,” The American Historical Review 77, no. 1 “February 1972”: 36–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 This, for instance, was the topic of a lengthy discussion during the 2006 meeting of the Social Science History Association, at the University of Minnesota Population Center.Google Scholar

12 Evans, Richard J., In Defense of History “New York: Norton, 1997“, passim; Gaddis, John Lewis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past “New York: Oxford University Press, 2002”, passim.Google Scholar

13 In the past decade or so I have received reviews from historical journals indicating that quantitative papers I have submitted are not sufficiently historical in method or exposition. On the other hand, I have also received reviews from social science journals suggesting that such papers are too historical to be of interest.Google Scholar

14 For an overview of this theoretical framework, see McCall, Leslie, “The Complexity of Intersectionality,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30, no. 3 “2005“: 1771–1800.Google Scholar

15 For an interesting historical discussion of relations between the two fields, see Andrew Abbott, “History and Sociology: The Lost Synthesis,” Social Science History 15, no. 2 “Summer 1991”: 201–38.Google Scholar

16 Duggan, in fact, was referring to the place of Foucault in debates over the history of sexuality in the 1980s, as indicated from this passage from the pages Coloma cites: “It was not until the early 1980s, when the English translation of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality, volume 1, appeared in Philadelphia bookstores and on university reading lists, that I figured out what the fuss was about. The theory wars as they appeared to me then pitted various strains of British-influenced Marxism, proceeding from the work of Raymond Williams or Thompson, E. P., against French-inflected theories, from the Marxist structuralism of Louis Althusser to the post-May 1968 post-Marxist poststructuralism represented in history departments in the United States primarily by Foucault.” Duggan goes on to suggest that Foucault eventually proved much less influential among women's historians than others working in the area of sexuality. See Duggan, Lisa, “The Theory Wars, or, Who's Afraid of Judith Butler,” Journal of Women's History 10, no. 1 “1998“: 9–19. It is possible to view a copy of Poster's book, Foucault, Marxism and History, on his website: http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/books/Google Scholar

17 It is important to note that others have made a similar assessment, however. See the brief discussion of Foucault and his influence in Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, 107–8, although they are European and not American historians.Google Scholar

18 Using JSTOR through my university library website, I surveyed the Journal of American History for articles mentioning Foucault between 1993 and 2003. These years were selected because 2003 was the last full year of the journal that could be surveyed in this manner, and I wanted to replicate Coloma's approach in examining a ten-year period. Foucault was mentioned in twenty-one articles, out of a total of two hundred fifty-three, or 8.3 percent. While this is somewhat higher than the rate he found in history of education journals, it is important to note that just one article utilized Foucault for a conceptual orientation; Stoler, Laura Ann, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and “Post” Colonial Studies,” Journal of American History 88, no. 3 “December 2001“: 829–65. Several others included him in lists of social theorists that historians do not generally consult, another mentioned him as a historical figure in social thought, and the rest cited his work in connection with research on sexuality, prisons, or power. All of the latter featured just one or two references to his work without utilizing his theoretical perspective for purposes of analysis or exposition.Google Scholar

19 Coloma is correct in asserting that Foucault and “poststructuralism” are not mentioned in the introduction to the book that I edited with William Reese on the historiography of American education. He fails to point out, however, that we do not discuss any theoretical orientation or methodological preferences among educational historians apart from the “radical” or “new left” proclivities of the revisionists. Indeed, given his findings about the neglect of Foucault in the field, it would have been quite odd if we had considered him in that light. We do mention “an emerging body of work that employs the perspective of postmodernism” in introducing Barry Franklin's essay, which as Coloma notes, addresses some of these issues but also does not invoke Foucault's name. See Reese, William J. and Rury, John L., eds., Rethinking the History of American Education “New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008”, “Introduction: An Evolving and Expanding Field of Study.”Google Scholar

20 Hogan, David, “The Market Revolution and Disciplinary Power: Joseph Lancaster and the Psychology of the Early Classroom System,” History of Education Quarterly 29, no. 3 “Autumn 1989“: 381–417.Google Scholar

21 For a revealing discussion of Foucault's method, see Garland, David, “Review: Foucault's ‘Discipline and Punish'—An Exposition and Critique,” American Bar Foundation Research Journal 11, no. 4 “Autumn, 1986“: 847–80.Google Scholar

22 As a final point, Coloma also seems to contradict himself in asserting that Foucault and poststructuralism are major influences in debates over historical method and discourse, and also suggesting that these issues are not a focal point in courses dealing with methodological matters in history departments.Google Scholar

23 For an alternate approach to this question, see Lange, Matthew, Mahoney, James and Hau, Matthias vom, “Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies,” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 5 “March 2006“: 1412–62.Google Scholar

24 On history as science, see Gaddis, Landscape of Histoiy, chaps. 2–4.Google Scholar