Chieftain, Volume 17, Number 4, June 1969 Page: 1
6 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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McMURRY COLLEGE
JUNE, 1969
am
ABILENE, TEXAS
HISTORY FOR TODAY'S "ERA OF RELEVANCY
//
The Spanish poet and philos-
opher, Santayana, observed that
"he who does not know history is
fated to repeat it." Today's college
student—a product of his own "era
of relevancy" — would surely
agree. The student is indeed fated
to repeat "history" again and again:
in elementary school, in junior
high school, in senior high school
and finally, in college. Having
been forced to sail the ocean blue
with Columbus on at least four
separate occasions, the composite
reaction of practically all col-
legians is easily expressed: history,
they say, is deadly dull.
The problem is hardly unique; it
is one more example of the genera-
tion gap. In this instance, Santa-
yana referred to the knowledge of
past events, while students too
often think of "history" as a
printed collection — literally, a
book — with an endless array of
names, dates, and places, all of
which must be memorized before
the next scheduled examination
Dr. Spence
Vernon G. Spence
t,
(usually objective). The history
textbook, therefore, is about as ex-
citing as the local telephone direc-
tory, excluding, to be sure, the yel-
low pages.
The college history professor,
consequently, if he has any human
emotion or feeling at all, ap-
proaches each new captive audi-
ence apologetically, even timidly,
and somewhat in the manner of an
inexperienced door-to-door sales-
man who interrupts the evening
meal. He knows all too well that
behind the sea of glassy-eyed
strangers is a common attitude:
"We are bored already," their ex-
pressions say. "We are interested
in the living present and you are
going to talk about the dead past.
And for a whole year, yet."
This initial confrontation of two
generations who share the same
classroom forces the instructor to
come to terms with his total and
unresolved problem: his need to
close the "history" gap.
How, he asks himself, can he
make these young people see that
their use of the phrase, "the dead
past", is almost positive proof that
they have only a superficial inter-
est in the present? Is there, indeed,
any way that he can convince these
young men and women who insist
that they want to live only in the
"busy, progressing world of the
twentieth century," that they
would not, in this sense, be living
in the present age, but only in the
present moment?
Should he try to break down the
names — dates — places hang-up
with some attempt to demonstrate
how knowledge of history can be a
useful tool in the twentieth cen-
tury? Can the instructor, instead,
quote a simple, but powerfully
potent, historical generalization
such as, perhaps, Vernon Louis
Parrington's "Hope breeds radi-
calism, fear breeds conservatism"?
Are his students mentally pre-
pared to recognize the transfer
value (i.e. the relevancy) of Par-
rington's statement and apply it
constructively to today's campus
demonstrations? Can they under-
stand the fact that historians have
observed a common pattern in all
major revolutions; that revolutions
occur, not when the masses are
most severely exploited and de-
pressed, but rather when social and
economic conditions are beginning
to improve: that there is a tend-
ency for more radical and extreme
leaders to overthrow the initial
moderate ones; and that, all too
often, many hopeful gains have
been lost by a fearful back-lash?
We faculty members in Mc-
Murry's department of history are
aware of these problems. We be-
lieve that our students are bored,
not by the knowledge of history
but by the old, traditional methods
of presentation. We know that we
must somehow find the time and
the money and the desire necessary
to discover a teaching method as
vibrant and as colorful and as alive
as the subject we teach.
We do not propose to "enter-
tain" today's students, though
many of them seem to expect noth-
ing less. We firmly believe that a
real student, one who grasps the
Continued on page 6
DR. VERNON G. SPENCE '46 was
appointed chairman of the Division
of Social Sciences June 1. He holds the
MA from. SMU and the Ph.D. from the
U of Colorado. His dissertation on "Col-
onel Morgan Jones, 1839-1926, Grand
Old Man of Texas Railroading" is an
authentic source of information on this
Texas pioneer. Dr. Spence served on
the McM faculty from 1948-50 and re-
turned in 1961. He is married to the
former Wanda Smith '46. They have
three children.
VOLUME 17 — NUMBER 4
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McMurry College. Chieftain, Volume 17, Number 4, June 1969, periodical, June 1969; Abilene, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth238655/m1/1/: accessed March 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting McMurry University Library.