History, ISD and the Texas Textbook Massacre

I'm a historian. Servant of Clio. Got a Master's in it. Did Doctoral work in it (ABD all the way man!). I have actually read Washington's diaries, The Federalist Papers, Cato's Letter's, Royster, Wood, Bailyn, Maier, et al ad infinitum and I keep rewinding that scene from Good Will Hunting like a million times! I've actually also been paid to teach history to college students and even to conduct paid historical research. So yeah, I'm a historian.

I actually regard that title with respect. Did you know that PhD in history is one of the toughest and longest PhDs to get? Try coming up with "an original contribution to the body of knowledge" when that body of knowledge has been around for a couple of thousand years. History as a discipline is also one tough taskmaster? Wanna talk reading loads? Writing loads? Please. Maybe, just maybe something like first-year law school may hold a candle but it'd be close (I'll probably hear from you Lit majors and that's cool too). Did you know we have a whole sub-field dedicated to attacking our own methods and conclusions? (its historiography but more on that in another post). What other field is crazy enough to do that?

So I actually threw up a little bit in my mouth when I read all the articles about what the Texas School Board just did. (1,2,3,4) Actually I think I screamed and cursed a bunch too. Seriously. I swear sometimes I think that everyone who's had a history class or seen National Treasure thinks they are a historian. Drives me freakin crazy. You know what? Don't tell me what you know about 'the Founders' until you've spent time with them. I mean original sources. Because that's what historians do. We go to original sources and from there we build up. So when I see a bunch of partisan, amateur hacks tearing up the tracks of history for their own bullshit, political purposes it drives me mad. Have you dumbasses actually read Locke, Hume, Rousseau? I'm gonna bet not but yet you somehow feel qualified to make curriculum changes with regard to the Enlightenment. I've read 'em you Texas punks...you wanna go a couple of rounds? Why don't you show up and try to pass a doctoral comprehensive exam?

The problem is that this disease will not stay in Texas by sheer dint of the size of the state, this will affect what textbooks will be offered all over the country. I shudder for the future of our children.

Now as I'm writing this rant - I'm also wondering if people who actually have degrees in Instructional Design, or Curriculum Design, or Education feel the same way about some of us in the learning/training field? Now, I've taken grad classes in ISD (shout out to Boise State!) but I also never hold myself out to be an ISD. So now I wonder, history has a fairly well-developed sense of itself - our methodologies, our philosophies on how to "do" history (not to say that there isn't ongoing, heated debate but that is actually a good thing)...does the field of instructional design have a sufficiently coherent sense of 'self' to conjur up such a pure rage as I feel toward the TSBOE? If not, then what's the difference? Is it just a matter of time? Hmmm...I do sense another post coming....

Comments

[Don Taylor]

Mark, I just love this post. I have read Hume, Locke et al and I share your concern about both shortcuts to knowledge and about the Learning Profession as a whole (not just ID) having a sense of self that isn't attached to particular set of tools or cluster of buildings or collection of institutions.

However I do think that slowly things are changing, and that within a few years we'll see more coherent views of what what we mean when we say "I'm in learning".

[Kevin Thorn]

Do we have a sense of self? Do I have a sense of what I do in this field? I've been in this field (Instructional Design) now coming up on 10 years. Retired Army with a degree in Informaiton Technology Management...all 'before' coming to this field. That means for the last 10 years I've muddled my way through and forged my own path. That being said, I've had more 'job titles' than all the ranks in the Army I held! What does that say? To me it says that no two people in this industry do the same thing and I'll bet my next paycheck that any two job titles are the same from one company to the next.

Macria Conner wrote a piece not long ago about Andragogy - the science of adult education. I knew Pedagogy, but hadn't heard about Andragogy until then. So I wrote a follow-up piece >> http://www.learnnuggets.com/2009/05/andragogy-instructionalist/

Today, my sense of self is an "Andragogy Instructionalist"

[Cindy Edwards]

I have been "doing" instructional design for over 20 years, and I hold a MS ID and Technology. Having been a practitioner and a researcher of instructional design process and practices and many other tangential topics, it is fairly clear that we IDs do not have a coherent sense of self -- as a group. One reason is that as a named field of practice, ID is relatively new compared with other fields (such as history). And, to complicate matters, pervasive and rapidly changing social technology is keeping the field in a constant state of change. Too many variables are at play for members of the instructional design community to say "this is what we do" with a consistent and clear conception of what "this" is.