I don't think it's a question of looking down on people. As a person who teaches costume history to college students, I'm more frustrated than anything. Yes, I'm willing to teach anyone who's interested enough to sign up for my classes, regardless of the origin of their interest or what misconceptions they have when they walk in. I assume that there will need to be some debunking of common myths. The frustration has to do with two things: (1) how much class time gets soaked up with the debunking, limiting the time we can spend going beyond the basics, and (2) ways that students think about history that similarly limit our progress in the class.
I assume you do have the routine of giving the lecture and then allowing X fixed minutes at the end for questions, encouraging any really detailed ones to be postponed to conversation with you during one of your standard office hours?
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Of course, I won't try to lay this at the door of the movie industry, as the problem is altogether deeper. But when these empty-handed students go to the movies, they store that "information" away without questioning it, then bring it in to class. Then we have to spend class time unteaching and reteaching--sometimes it feels like two steps forward and three steps back. It's wonderful that they're interested, but I'd love to spend that class time moving forward instead, building on the correct knowledge that they might have gotten in high school. I don't mind trying to teach them to be more active learners, but again class and assignment time spent on that could be used to move into some really interesting areas of the topic and the methodology.
What level of course are you teaching--upper division seminar in the history department? Or a costume history class tacked onto a home ec/clothing design or theater program? If the latter, you're not likely to get much opportunity to teach a seminar course focusing on metholdology. It's like the professor of freshman remedial math wanting to teach the physics majors--that's just not how the college set that course up.
I share your frustration with unanlytical people, but just as high a proportion of them are reenactors as the general population. I admit, whenever I hear the exact same words parroted by umpteen people about how the general population is ignorant of something like when crocheting was invented, or how misleading films are, and then go on about how _they_ are the Guardians of History who have to set things right for the world, I think:
Well, how much do you know about physics--the building blocks of the universe? How much do you know about molecular biology, the building blocks of life on Earth? How much do you know about how your own body works? And many other things.
Not that I know much about most of them either. But in light of the fact of how little most people know about most things, and how many "misconceptions" they hold about them, getting self-righteous about being a Guardian of Knowledge because you know the difference between knitting and naalbinding, or something, and Hollywood and/or the general public doesn't, is pretty silly. History is no more important than any other subject, even if it is the most interesting one to you.
I assume it's the educational system that makes people unanlytical. My memory of formal education up to college is largely that of being expected to sit quietly, not ask qusetions, and spew information back for tests. I got most of my real education ad hoc from my parents (no, I was not home schooled) and from reading. College was the first so-called educational place where I was actually encouraged to think. Then again, I grew up in a rural area with lousy schools.
Fran Lavolta Press http://www.lavoltapress.com _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
