I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am —Paulo Freire
Setting the scene
It was not the first time I was entering a history class, but it was indeed the first time I was entering a history class where almost all the people in the classroom would be perceiving me not as their fellow, but as their 'teacher'. This was to be the first class of their 8th grade academic year. The structure of their school curriculum was such that before this point in time, they had only been exposed to 'history' under the ambit of 'social studies'. So, this was also their first time entering, as one of them called it, 'a proper history class'.
For me, the teacher in this scene, it was the start of a continuous journey of asking myself difficult and complex questions; be it about the syllabus; or about the kind of relationship one was to maintain and cultivate with both the student as well as the subject at hand; or about the very discipline of history, its meaning, relation and significance with regard to the worldview that I and my students currently hold or could hold in time.
When my brother asked me why does one need to be a student first in order to teach, this is the somewhat dramatic response I gave him: "One needs to do this because one is deeply interested in seeing that the classroom is not a dead space, but rather, an active and alive one. A class that has lively minds who would never chew and gulp down the pages of a book just because authority demands this; instead, a class that would enthusiastically jostle with, examine, carefully observe and, if need be, challenge not only each phrase written in these books, but each phrase written on the blank canvas of this universe that we inhabit together…Hence, one needs to be a student first because one, along with one's fellows, tries to have a curious mind that is making sense of oneself, one's society, one's world and one's existence."
A peek into our classroom interactions
Very early in our classes we had established that history has something to do with the past. When asked to articulate their thoughts on what they think history is, one of the students said that through history we get to know about, "what could have never happened, but still happened"; another said that it has to do with, "how we got to today"; another argued on similar lines when she said she finds it, "funny how things were done in the past".
The common consensus of the class was to see history in relation to the past. But this is where a discussion-based class makes things interesting. In our first class I had told them to record everyone's arguments, and I promised them that a time would come where you'd get to challenge your fellow 'social scientists' on the statements they have made today. The promised time did arrive, that too very soon, when some of the students argued how history is not just about the past but also the present. One of them picked up on the idea of "history telling us how we got to today" and asked a very pertinent theoretical question, "if we know how we got to today, then by learning about today could we not predict where will we be tomorrow? So, is the future predetermined?" Another student added, "This makes history about the past as well as the present." Then one student remarked, "but we actually can't put a finger on the present, can we? The moment I'm finished completing this sentence is the moment this has become the past."
The respected social scientists seemed, for a moment, to move towards an agreement that 'history, at the end of the day, is definitely about the past, but the past could mean anything—the last moment, yesterday, twenty years back, 200 years back and so on.' However, one of them interrupted and said, "but our understanding of the past could be false, right?" Another jumped in and said, "so history would be about the past as well as the truth". Following this was the infamous line, "whatever is true to you could be untrue to me", said by another student. 'The true 'interpretation' of the historical evidence' took over the discussion, and then came another idea of 'what is evidence for you might not be evidence for me'. Gradually we did move towards agreeing that history is a 'continuous process of moulding facts to interpretation and of interpretation to the facts'. As Carr said, "the historian without facts is rootless and futile; the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless." (1961, pp. 29–30).
My fellow students were upset and very rightly so, for they couldn't solve this problem. We did, however, establish that history is indeed related to, firstly, events from the past i.e., 'facts', secondly, the process of gathering and organizing information from the past i.e. historical research, thirdly, explanations about the relationships between specific historical events, and lastly, broader explanations or 'theories' about how and why change takes place. One student said, "we have no way of knowing that all the people involved in this are trustworthy, or that these processes even work". Well, there it was, the first of many lessons that history gave us: 'don't trust anyone' or 'trust everyone' or 'check it for yourself' or better 'be aware that you are trusting or distrusting someone while you build your tentative, or momentary, working understanding about them or what they are saying'. There were definitely cynics in the class who said, "what's the point of it all, we'll never know exactly what the truth is", but then there were optimists who said, "but won't you want to know all the possible truths that existed in the past, they are all a part of us today". Interestingly enough, most of the cynics appeared to be males and most of the optimists, female.
Learning with tentativeness "Pari, do you have political opinions?" or "Tell me then—BJP or Congress?" I said, "Let me study this year's manifestos first, only then could I respond". "Let me study it first", became a very common phrase in class. Understanding that whatever people say or write is but a 'claim', not the truth, became an instinctive reaction of the class. Analyzing, juxtaposing these claims with others, or challenging them, became one's 'right' as well as one's 'responsibility'. Even controversial questions about politics, gender, power, sex, and correctness were being dealt with intelligently, like social scientists. 'Hunters and gatherers' also became 'gatherers and hunters' because 'why should we say the male occupation first?', I asked. We understood that just like our world, history is a complex construct. Hence not taking things as they are said to be but to observe them and to examine them was seen as the logical thing to do.
Later in the year, we revisited our idea of history being evidence-based, as we asked what makes a piece of the past, 'evidence'. While studying the Atlantic slave trade, we read a lot of records of the white European slave-traders. However, a realization seeped in, that whatever we know of the horrors of slavery we know from the records (evidence) of these 'white men'. We don't know how the slaves viewed their times, as they were not allowed to read or write. Slaves couldn't write but they could tell stories. So, could we, the lovers of 'solid-empirical-material evidence' consider slave folktales as evidence? Virginia Hamilton's People Could Fly (1985) that narrates black American folktales, to our surprise, did hold an ample measure of truth. As we juxtaposed these with whatever material evidence we had, we questioned our obsession with only 'written' evidence and tentatively held space for even folktales as evidence in our history classroom.
My professor had once advised me that I cannot give them all the required information about the past, and I should instead attempt to develop a thinking that will be historical in nature. While we went through our syllabus and learnt about European exploration, slavery, colonialism and freedom movements, we learnt not to forget that the seemingly elusive solution to the problem of history is messy and calls for our creative participation.
Post-script
Now, in 2023, this group is in ninth grade and things have changed. We have new challenges this year; a creature called the 'ICSE examination' has entered our classroom. Nonetheless, on behalf of the group I claim that if we maintain a spirit of dialogue and solidarity with each other, we could come out of these challenges upholding active and curious minds. As one girl said in my first class, "history gives me courage. Courage to know that things do change…." and might I add to this, "… people working together change them…."
Bibliography
Carr, E. H. (1990). What is History? Penguin. Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. Singer, A. J. (2003). Social Studies for Secondary Schools: Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach. Lawrence Erlbaum.