Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Academics, Everyman, and the powers that be. In yesterday's post about historian Carl Becker and educator Sam Wineburg, I quoted Wineburg. Today I'll go to his inspiration, Becker, who wrote in 1931 about a hypothetical "Mr. Everyman" -- an ordinary citizen not chained to the knowledge-ways of the academy. Becker said:
Berate him as we will for not reading our books, Mr. Everyman is stronger than we are, and sooner or later we must adapt our knowledge to his necessities. Otherwise he will leave us to our own devices, leave us it may be to cultivate a species of dry professional arrogance growing out of the thin soil of antiquarian research. Such research, valuable not in itself but for some ulterior purpose, will be of little import except in so far as it is transmuted into common knowledge. The history that lies inert in unread books does no work in the world. The history that does work in the world, the history that influences the course of history, is living history, that pattern of remembered events, whether true or false, that enlarges and enriches the collective specious present, the specious present of Mr. Everyman.
Academics should stir themselves to connect their work to the demands of the present day, then, and if they do not, citizens will rightly abandon them:
If we remain too long recalcitrant Mr. Everyman will ignore us, shelving our recondite works behind glass doors rarely opened. Our proper function is not to repeat the past but to make use of it, to correct and rationalize for common use Mr. Everyman's mythological adaptation of what actually happened. We are surely under bond to be as honest and as intelligent as human frailty permits; but the secret of our success in the long run is in conforming to the temper of Mr. Everyman, which we seem to guide only because we are so sure, eventually, to follow it.
Citizens live out their understanding; if academics don't engage them, then citizens carry on without them. I suspect Becker is right about that. Then we have the problem of a third group, also capable of ignoring academics as well as citizens: political and business leaders. If educators can't help citizens, what chance does either group have when facing those who hold the most power in the society? In this passage Becker doesn't speculate about the third group, but how can we ignore them now?
An Indiana legislator said on the radio the other day that he was disappointed in the placidity of citizens in his area -- sometimes only a few would show up for a public meeting, for example. Noting that the legislature is now in session, he said that people needed to be watching their elected officials carefully. We're liable to do anything down there when nobody is looking, he said. We're like wolves. So, there is the urgency that Becker doesn't get to in these passages.
("Everyman His Own Historian," Carl Becker, President of the American Historical Association, 1931. From the American Historical Review, Volume 37, Issue 2, p. 221-236.) [0 & P]
Berate him as we will for not reading our books, Mr. Everyman is stronger than we are, and sooner or later we must adapt our knowledge to his necessities. Otherwise he will leave us to our own devices, leave us it may be to cultivate a species of dry professional arrogance growing out of the thin soil of antiquarian research. Such research, valuable not in itself but for some ulterior purpose, will be of little import except in so far as it is transmuted into common knowledge. The history that lies inert in unread books does no work in the world. The history that does work in the world, the history that influences the course of history, is living history, that pattern of remembered events, whether true or false, that enlarges and enriches the collective specious present, the specious present of Mr. Everyman.
Academics should stir themselves to connect their work to the demands of the present day, then, and if they do not, citizens will rightly abandon them:
If we remain too long recalcitrant Mr. Everyman will ignore us, shelving our recondite works behind glass doors rarely opened. Our proper function is not to repeat the past but to make use of it, to correct and rationalize for common use Mr. Everyman's mythological adaptation of what actually happened. We are surely under bond to be as honest and as intelligent as human frailty permits; but the secret of our success in the long run is in conforming to the temper of Mr. Everyman, which we seem to guide only because we are so sure, eventually, to follow it.
Citizens live out their understanding; if academics don't engage them, then citizens carry on without them. I suspect Becker is right about that. Then we have the problem of a third group, also capable of ignoring academics as well as citizens: political and business leaders. If educators can't help citizens, what chance does either group have when facing those who hold the most power in the society? In this passage Becker doesn't speculate about the third group, but how can we ignore them now?
An Indiana legislator said on the radio the other day that he was disappointed in the placidity of citizens in his area -- sometimes only a few would show up for a public meeting, for example. Noting that the legislature is now in session, he said that people needed to be watching their elected officials carefully. We're liable to do anything down there when nobody is looking, he said. We're like wolves. So, there is the urgency that Becker doesn't get to in these passages.
("Everyman His Own Historian," Carl Becker, President of the American Historical Association, 1931. From the American Historical Review, Volume 37, Issue 2, p. 221-236.) [0 & P]