Crazy for History

Abstract

In 1917, the year the United States went to war, history erupted onto the pages of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Educational Psychology. J. Carleton Bell, the journal's managing editor and professor at the Brooklyn Training School for Teachers, began his tenure with an editorial entitled The Historic Sense. (A companion editorial examined the relation of psychology to military problems.) Bell claimed that the study of history provided an opportunity for thinking and reflection, qualities lacking many classrooms.1 Bell invited his readers to ponder two questions: is the sense? and can it be developed? Such questions, he asserted, did not concern only the history teacher; they were ones in which the educational psychologist is interested, and which it is incumbent upon him to attempt to answer. To readers who wondered where to locate the elusive historic sense, Bell offered clues. Presented with set of primary documents, one student produces coherent account while another assembles a hodgepodge of miscellaneous facts. Similarly, some college freshmen show great skill the orderly arrangement of their historical data while others take all statements with equal emphasis ... and become hopelessly confused the multiplicity of details. Did such findings reflect native differences or were they the effects of specific courses of training? Such questions opened a fascinating field for investigation for the educational psychologist.2 Bell's questions still nag us today. What is the essence of historical understanding? How can historical interpretation and analysis be taught? What is the role of instruction improving students' ability to think? In light of his foresight, it is instructive to examine how Bell carried out his research agenda. In companion article to his editorial, Bell and his colleague David E McCollum presented study that began by laying out five aspects of the sense: