Return to Oral History in the Classroom

TEACHING STUDENTS HOW TO BE HISTORIANS:
AN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT FOR THE SECONDARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM

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Teaching students how to be and think like historians is my fundamental goal for each of my secondary school history classes.  But when I begin each course by asking, “What does a historian do?” I am often amazed by the difficulty students have in answering the question.  Considering how history continues to be taught in high schools, their reaction is not surprising; my students have to learn that the job of a historian does not center on the memorization of dates and names from textbook readings. High school history classes should be balanced between providing historical context for understanding contemporary issues, while at the same time serving as “ground zero” for the training of future historians and history teachers.  The textbook-centered, lecture-oriented class dominates secondary school but stifles the budding historian who wants to become a producer of historical knowledge, rather than a passive absorber of historical information.

Over the course of a year, students in my Advanced Placement United States history classes are assessed on their ability to function as historians.  Each class is exposed to a wide range of primary and secondary source documents from which students develop individual interpretations of the past.  The source that they enjoy examining most is the one that requires them to go into the “field” and, as oral historian Studs Terkel once said, “uncover the living repositories of our past.” [i] What often occurs as a result of this project is that students feel empowered by the opportunity to “do history” to directly engage with those individuals who were makers, or part of history, rather than spend the year reading about voiceless men and women in textbooks.  In the end, students make a human connection with the past that may be more enduring to them than the writings of Jefferson or Lincoln.

Even before the course officially begins, oral history is introduced through a summer reading of Studs Terkel’s My American Century.  When we return to class in the fall and begin our study of the Twentieth Century, students often use Terkel’s interviewees to support their interpretations of events such as the Great Depression, World War II or Civil Rights in America.  Such application of Terkel’s work to a broader understanding of the American Century reaffirms what one graduate school professor once said to me:  “Good history requires a good story.”  Two facets of this project, which make it accessible to courses across all disciplines, are the flexibility of when it can be introduced into the curriculum and the wide range of skills and multiple intelligences that must be deployed to effectively complete it.  In discussion with colleagues, their reluctance to implement this project is due to a concern that coverage of the core curriculum for the AP exam will be compromised.  However, this project allows students to probe deeper into a content area of their choosing while at the same time utilizing many of the skills that are evaluated on the AP exam.  Students see this project as an extension of our preparation for the AP exam and not as a separate entity of the course.  I usually introduce the project following our reading of slave narratives collected by the Federal Writer’s Project during the 1930s which was recently organized into a book and tape collection entitled Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation.  Other opportunities for integration of this project emerge after reading excerpted portions of Terkel’s Hard Times, Brett Harvey’s The Fifties: A Women’s Oral History or Mark Baker’s NAM.  Moreover, the continual integration of technology into the classroom through the World Wide Web offers students access to a rich set of interviews previously accessible only through library research. [ii]   In either case, professional oral histories are used as models for a student driven oral history project.

Not only is the project flexible enough to integrate into a curriculum, it requires students to use many skills of a historian: extensive primary and secondary source research and evaluation; interviewing; writing and rewriting; historical interpretation and analysis.  Few projects I have encountered at the secondary school level require such a wide range of skills because of a perception that a multi-skill project is an unrealistic expectation for amateur student-historians.  This, however, is an underestimation of the valuable history that can be produced when even unseasoned student-historians are schooled in the methodology of oral history. 

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It was not too long ago when most historians would not use oral history; they did not trust it.  In fact, when we begin our project, I have students read a 1992 Wall Street Journal article entitled “Little Big Horn From the Indian Point of View” that highlights the controversy surrounding the oral tradition.  Students examine the debate caused by the book Soldiers Falling into Camp, which was written by Native Americans and relies heavily on the Native American oral tradition to revise the events of General Custer’s defeat in 1876.  Because this book relies heavily on oral history, it was prohibited from being sold at the Little Bighorn National Monument because of its “fictionalized” treatment. [iii]  

The students quickly learn that oral history must be evaluated in light of its strengths and weaknesses.  As a means of recreating a sense of the past, oral history cannot stand alone.  Historians William Wheeler and Susan Becker point out in Discovering the American Past: A Look at the Evidence that “oral history, when used carefully and judiciously, along with other sources, is an invaluable tool that helps us to recreate a sense of the past.” [iv] From their first introduction to oral history, students immediately realize problems associated with it and, like all historical sources, oral history needs to be validated by other forms of historical reporting.  At various points in the project students are forced to examine the conflict between memory and history and are reminded that all historical sources should be treated with equal skepticism.  In the end, students determine that their oral history projects are what Edward Hallet Carr once referred to as “a dialogue between the [student] historian and his facts.” [v]   Students quickly seem to understand the contributions their work can make to their overall understanding of American history. What some students conclude is that their projects become a means to balance what oral historian Clifford Kuhn describes as the “master narrative” [vi] of history.

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While most of the preparation for the project centers around reading and critiquing the wide range of oral histories pertinent to each phase of our study of American history, two sources are particularly useful: Don Ritchie’s Doing Oral History and “The One-Minute Guide to Oral Histories.” [viii]    Students are also provided with “The Statement in Interviewing for Historical Documentation” established by the American Historical Association, which can be found in The Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct (1988), or the “Principle and Standards of the Oral History Association.” These guidelines provide models of excellence for the students and also emphasize the “professional” nature of this project.

The following outline highlights each phase of the project and how each part contributes to a historically accurate and “usable sense of the past.” [ix]

·       INTERVIEWEE SELECTION -- Students are responsible for selecting an individual of no relation to interview about a particular period or event in American history.  The objective here is to take students out of their comfort zone by requiring them to interview a non-family member.  I continually marvel at some of the interviewees students have independently secured over the years--Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili, Civil Rights activists Amiri Baraka and Roger Wilkins, New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman.  However, more often than not students conduct interviews with “non-elite” members of society whose stories would otherwise have been lost to historians.  I am particularly impressed by Blanch Shafer’s perspective on women working in factories during World War II, Joey Thompson’s experiences with President FDR while both sought therapy for polio in Warm Spring, Georgia, and Bob Rast, a Vietnam veteran who for the first time spoke about his experiences in South East Asia. A failure to conduct these interviews would be a loss to our collective memory.  Interviewees must be willing to sign a release form to allow access to tapes, transcripts, electronic publications and additional materials, though restrictions can be attached.  The release form is essential since it allows interviews to be archived and shared with the community.  Without a release, interviews would be inaccessible.

·       BIOGRAPHY -- Students develop a one-page biography that provides a sense of the interviewee’s background and a context for understanding the place of the interview in each person’s life.

·       HISTORICAL CONTEXTUALIZATION -- After securing an interviewee, students are responsible for a substantial (minimum 5 pages) research paper that examines primary and secondary source documents that help create a context for a better understanding of the interview.  Students are expected to include in their source selection “newspapers of the day.” Requiring students to research the historiography surrounding their subject allows them to become “experts” of a particular period or event and provides them a context for developing interview questions.  As I often remind my students, they can never research the history enough in preparation for their interviews.

·       INTERVIEW AND TRANSCRIPTION -- Each interview is expected to last approximately one hour, which usually equals three hours of transcription--often the most dreaded part of the project for students.  Prior to the interview, students use their research to formulate a logically ordered set of questions.  The challenge here is how well students can think on their feet during the interview by developing follow-up questions for clarification or further exploration. The most important skill developed in this phase is listening, which allows for what Don Ritchie identifies as the most important follow-up question: “I didn’t know that, can you tell me more?”

·       HISTORICAL ANALYSIS--The most important aspect of this project is the student’s ability to evaluate the historical value of their interview: where it fits in the existing historiography and how it might add or detract from an overall understanding of the American past.  Students examine questions as to whether their interview was biased or glorified, if it shed new light on a particular period or event, and whether or not it fits into the historiography they researched in their historical contextualization.

·       MUSEUM EXHIBITION--At the end of the project students must communicate their interview to a general audience in the form of a museum exhibition.  Over the years, students have transformed their interviews into poster exhibits, one-act plays, and power point presentations, which are then shared with the community during an annual oral history coffeehouse.

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Beyond creating the chance for students to be and think like historians, this project represents what David Drake and Lawrence McBride describe in The History Teacher (February 1997) as an opportunity to “reinvigorate the teaching of history through alternative assessment.” [x]   Students now have the opportunity to work outside of the traditional classroom setting, where writing papers and reading textbook chapters dominate, while also meeting the description of the Bradley Commission’s thirteen “Habits of Minds” and the National Standards for History’s five Standards in Historical Thinking. [xi]   The challenge remains in how to properly assess the multiple skills and intelligence that this project requires.  Over the years I have established and refined a rubric (Appendix) in order to provide students with effective feedback that they can apply to other assignments that demand similar skills. The rubric is distributed when the project is first introduced. At various points, students are also provided with four “visions of excellence” in order to have a clear understanding of what they are working toward: (1) Students read and interpret professional oral histories such as Terkel’s in order to understand what is excellence in the field of oral history; (2) Students review oral histories from previous years which are archived in the library in order to identify exemplary aspects of each; (3) Students receive informal and formal feedback from both teacher and peers throughout each phase of the project in order to insure they are meeting the expectations and standards for the project; (4) Students evaluate their projects against a rubric that is distributed before the commencement of the project.  Providing quality feedback and assessment throughout each phase of the project allows students to refine the variety of skills that this project demands.

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Pre-collegiate oral history projects are not limited to AP students who, in this case, live in an area overflowing with elite interview subjects.  As an example, those students who choose not to enroll in AP United States History at Saint Andrew’s conduct an oral history project that focuses on immigration for their course “The United States in the Twentieth Century World.”  As outlined by course instructor Charles Malcolm, these interviews allow students to compare a variety of immigration experiences that broadens their collective understanding of the diverse histories, cultures and values immigrants bring to the United States.  Each year students interview immigrants from Vietnam, China, Eastern Europe, Central America and a host of other countries that highlight America’s complex role in the Twentieth century world and provide a source of comparison to earlier periods of immigration to America. While these two projects focus on a particular period (the American Century) or theme (immigration), life, event, and family oral histories can be integrated across all disciplines and grade levels.  Moreover, the final product can be presented through a transcript, theatrical performance, music, electronic medium or poetry.  The most important thing to teach students in any type of oral history project is to never lose sight of the interviewer’s ethical and moral responsibility to the interviewee.  These responsibilities are carefully outlined in “The Principle and Standards of the Oral History Association.” [xii]

Three excellent pre-collegiate oral history projects that can serve as effective models of the valuable history student interviews are preserving are available for examination through the World Wide Web.  What is especially interesting about these three projects is the cooperative link made between a high school and local university.  These projects also represent the interdisciplinarity of oral history.  English students in Kingstown, Rhode Island conducted two oral history projects entitled “The Whole World Was Watching: An Oral History of 1968” and “What Did You Do In The War Grandma?  An Oral History of Rhode Island Women During World War II.”  With the assistance of Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group, student transcripts and audio are now accessible to a worldwide audience at http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968 .  Collaboration between the Williams Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University and a summer program conducted at McKinley High School resulted in two local oral histories: “Visions: The Soul & Spirit of South Baton Rouge Churches” and “Pictures in My Mind: An Oral History of South Baton Rouge Community Business and the Business Community.” [xiii]   Finally, as part of the Miami Valley Cultural Heritage Project at Miami University of Ohio, English and Economic students from Middletown Senior High School conducted an oral history entitled “Women at Work” available at http://www.muohio.edu/oralhistory.  These three projects also highlight the increased application of new technologies to oral history projects by, as David Dunaway defines in Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, the “fourth generation” of oral historians who are much more media savvy.  Ethical concerns with electronic publication of oral histories has also led to a revision of the Oral History Associations Standards, Principles, and Guidelines and was a focal point of a recent article, “Reflections on Oral History in the New Millennium” in the Oral History Review (Summer/Fall, 1999).

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The challenge for pre-collegiate teachers is to not only find the time to implement an oral history project but to justify how such a project meets content and skill standards established by local, state and national organizations. With increased use and acceptance of oral history as a valid historical source, there has also emerged an increasing amount of literature to educate teachers on how an oral history project can compliment, or even replace, traditional and, often “boring” history lessons.  In his article, “Oral History for the Students,” James Hoopes outlines that “every good history course includes work meant to give [students] the experience of doing history.  This is often a research paper, and it should be the most interesting, stimulating aspect of the course.  Too often, though, it is tedious, not because it is hard work, but because the challenge to human sympathy and imagination is neglected.” [xiv]   In the case of an oral history project, a traditional research paper is no longer the final product but rather a necessary stepping stone, from which students go into the field and interact with people who were part of, or possibly even made, history.  The time commitment for implementing an oral history project is greatly reduced due to the continued emergence of professional literature and “how to” guides to support teacher integration of oral history into the curriculum.

While much of the recent literature tends to deal with post-secondary school oral history research and teaching, many of the same problems—such as the reliability, validity and objectivity associated with oral history as well as technological integration—are relevant to pre-collegiate projects as well.  No oral history project should occur in isolation from the theoretical and methodological questions all historical sources generate.  Many of these issues are examined in a special issue of the Oral History Review devoted to “Practice and Pedagogy: Oral History in the Classroom” (Summer/Fall 1998). Too much theory and methodology, however, can be as mundane to pre-collegiate students as memorizing names and dates in a lecture oriented class.  The focus of any oral history project must continue to engender an intellectual enthusiasm for learning about the past.  Of far more appropriate use to pre-collegiate teachers is the Magazine of History, which in the spring of 1997 ran a special issue on oral history.  This issue includes articles from Linda Woods, who directed the Kingstown, Rhode Island projects, and Don Ritchie.  Another outstanding resource for integrating oral history into the classroom was recently put out by the Williams Center and is entitled “Talking Gumbo: An Oral History Manual for Secondary School Teachers,” a companion to “You’ve Got To Hear This Story,” a 30-minute “how-to” video for conducting oral history interviews. [xv] Teachers are provided with information related to ethical and legal considerations including a release form, equipment, interviewing do’s and don’ts, and transcription.  The increased integration of oral history into the pre-collegiate classroom has also spawned The Association of Oral History Educators (AOHE), which publishes The Oral History Educator.  In cooperation with the regional oral history association, Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region, AOHE is planning the largest oral history educators’ conference in the fall of 2000. [xvi]

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A few years ago I viewed a C-SPAN production of historians commenting on the question “Why study history?” Arthur Schlesinger Jr. commented, “Because it is fun.” But fun for whom?   Despite the rigors of this oral history project, my students have often declared it was fun because they were charged with the same responsibility as professional historians, making, as Carl Becker once said, “Everyman his own historian.”  Moreover, students present their work in a form that is accessible to a large audience.  As David Kennedy commented in The History Teacher (May 1998), “there is something innate in the human mind that makes the narrative form an especially attractive medium in which to contain, transmit, and remember important information.” [xvii]   Student oral history interviews broaden the scope of our understanding of particular events or periods that, if left solely to professional historians, might go undiscovered.  In fact, student oral historians often have the unique ability to generate original responses from both elite and non-elite interviewees because of the teacher-student relationship that emerges between project participants.  Everyone who is interviewed serves as a teacher for the course. In many ways, students are also fulfilling a civic responsibility by making people feel that their history is worth something.  One interviewee even commented that she was intensely tired after she returned home from being interviewed about her role in the 1960’s student movement because “No one had ever been so interested in my life story before.”

Unlike most secondary school projects that are often developed for an audience of one--the teacher--and are complete after receiving a grade, the rich archives of oral histories that have been generated over the last seven years are shared with the larger community through two very different public presentations.  First, at an annual oral history coffeehouse, members of the community listen to student readings of excerpted portions of interviews and view museum-like exhibitions of student projects.  Second, technology has transformed this nationally recognized secondary school oral history project into a research and educational tool for students, teachers and historians.  Our web site, www.doingoralhistory.org, allows these important contributions to America’s collective memory to now be accessed by a worldwide audience. Students also take more ownership of their work, usually resulting in better final products, because they are preserving history for a larger audience.

How important this work can be was highlighted in a letter to Vietnam veteran Col. Paul Skoglund (interviewed in 1997) from his son after he received a copy of the final project: 

I got the packet today . . . I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed reading it, and how much it touched me.  These are questions I’ve always wanted to ask you, and about you, and the war that I always wanted to know about, and hear you talk about.  I guess it’s like Carol [son’s wife] said, “it’s easier to talk to a stranger than to talk to someone who is close to you.”  I know you’ve talked to me a little about it, but never this in depth or that much about your feelings.  I want you to know that after reading this, even more so now, that I thank God that my father is alive and that my children have a real grandfather instead of just a memory to hear about from me.

At the end of each interview students are required to analyze the historical value of their project.  “The unique perspective of an interviewee,” one student commented, “is a wealth of knowledge which can help to recreate a sense of the past.”  Moreover, another student concluded at the end of her interview that “oral history is one of the most interesting ways to learn about the past.  It is historically valuable because, in a sense, it is a window into the past.”  A window that, when uncovered, empowers students to participate in the preservation of history.

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“A”   Biography (10%): Provides a strong sense of the interviewee’s background with extended use of dates, details and anecdotes to provide context.  Interviewee’s past is clearly established in the context of the interview period.

“B”   Biography (10%): Provides a sense of the interviewee’s background with limited use of dates, details and anecdotes to provide context.  Interviewee’s past is partially established in the context of the interview period.

“C”  Biography (10%): Provides an unclear sense of the interviewee’s background and does not include dates, details and anecdotes to provide context.  Interviewee’s past is not established in the context of the interview period.

“D”  Biography (10%): Provides no sense of the interviewee’s background using dates, details and anecdotes for context.  Interviewee’s past is not established in the context of the interview period.

“A”   Historical Contextualization (25%): Establishes a strong historical background for understanding the interview drawing evidence from a minimum of five primary and secondary sources (including “newspapers of the day”) in approximately 5 pages.  Dates are used to insure historical context, and analysis considers both sides of the historical event or period that the interview covers.  Historical contextualization uses limited information intelligently and provides a clear context for understanding the interview. 

“B”   Historical Contextualization (25%): Historical background for understanding the interview uses some evidence from a minimum of five primary and secondary sources (including “newspapers of the day”) in approximately 5 pages.  Limited use of dates to insure historical context and analysis. Considers only one side of the historical event or period that the interview covers. Areas of the contextualization might lack detail for clarity.  Contextualization establishes a fairly clear context for understanding the interview.

“C”    Historical Contextualization (25%): Establishes a weak background for understanding the interview drawing little evidence from a minimum of five sources in approximately 5 pages.  Dates are used ineffectively or inaccurately for historical context and analysis considers one aspect of the period or event in a general way or both aspects in a superficial way. History provides an ineffective context for understanding the interview.

“D”    Historical Contextualization (25%): No historical background for understanding the interview is established.  Contextualization does not use any evidence from a minimum of five sources in approximately 5 pages.  Exhibits inadequate or inaccurate understanding of the period or event.

“A”   Interview (20%): Minimum of fifteen, open-ended questions that reflect thoroughness of research and an ordered plan for conducting the interview.  Follow-up questions are utilized to clarify points put forth by the interviewee’s responses.  Transcription reflects the tone of response and includes informational footnotes that clarify ambiguous statements or references.

“B”     Interview (20%): Approximately fifteen open-ended questions that might not reflect thoroughness of research and an ordered plan for conducting the interview.  Limited use of follow-up questions to clarify points put forth by the interviewee’s response.  Transcription might reflect the tone of response and contains some informational footnotes that clarify ambiguous statements or references.

“C”  Interview (20%): Less than fifteen questions that lack open-endedness and use of research.  Questions are unorganized and at times do not remain focused on the period or event in question.  Follow-up questions to clarify points put forth by the interviewee’s responses are missing. Few informational footnotes that clarify ambiguous statements or references are provided.

“D”  Interview (20%): Less than fifteen questions are extended to the interviewee.  Questions are not open-ended and not developed to clarify interviewee’s response.  Questions are posed in an unorganized manner and do not relate to the period or event being examined.  Transcription does not reflect the tone of response and contains no informational footnotes that clarify ambiguous statements or references.

“A”   Analysis (30%): Sophisticated thesis that clearly establishes historical value. Application of historical contextualization in order to assess where the interview fits into the historiography of the particular period of event.  Use of the interview, through quotations, to support interviewer’s interpretations.   

“B”   Analysis (30%): Contains a thesis that establishes historical value. To varied degrees historical contextualization is used in order to assess where the interview fits into the historiography of the particular period of event.  Limited use of the interview, through quotations, to support interviewer’s interpretations.

“C”    Analysis (30%): Presents a limited, confused and/or poorly developed thesis assessing historical value. Ineffective application of historical contextualization in order to assess where the interview fits into the historiography of the particular period of event.  Interview, through quotations, is not effectively used to support interviewer’s interpretations.

“D”  Analysis (30%): Contains no thesis or a thesis that does not address historical value.  No or ineffective use of historical contextualization in order to assess where the interview fits into the historiography of the particular period of event.  No or ineffective use of the interview, through quotations, to support interviewer’s interpretations.

“A”   Mechanics (10%): Keeping in mind that persuasive historical writing requires clarity of prose, the entire project contains minor mechanical errors often limited to typing errors.  The project is clearly organized and well written.

“B”   Mechanics (10%): Keeping in mind that persuasive historical writing requires clarity of prose, the entire project contains a few errors, such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization, pronoun usage, and word choice.

“C”  Mechanics (10%): Keeping in mind that persuasive historical writing requires clarity of prose; the entire project contains major mechanical errors.  In varied aspects of the paper, weak organizational and/or writing skills interfere with comprehension.

“D”  Mechanics (10%): The entire project is so poorly organized or written that it inhibits understanding.

“A”   Technical Requirements (5%): Project contains a title that reflects the subject of the interview and adherence to formatting requirements for project’s ordering, page numbers, quotations and bibliography as outlined by the MLA Handbook.

“B”   Technical Requirements (5%): Project contains a title that might reflect the subject of the interview.  Minor errors adhering to formatting requirements for page numbers, quotations and bibliography as outlined by the MLA Handbook.

“C”  Technical Requirements (5%): Project contains a title that does not reflect the subject of the interview.  Major errors adhering to formatting requirements for page numbers, quotations and bibliography as outlined by the MLA Handbook.

“D”  Technical Requirements (5%): Project contains a title that does not reflect the subject of the interview.  Major and minor errors adhering to formatting requirements for page numbers, quotations and bibliography as outlined by the MLA Handbook.