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Historical understanding Your History teachers will tell you that there is an emphasis on historical understanding in A Level syllabuses and their criteria for assessment. It is not uncommon for phrases which carry weight to have more than one meaning. What does historical understanding mean? The three meanings of History History can refer to the past and the evidences of the past - artefacts, ruins, bones, and so on, and especially documents. Second, History refers to a scholarly discipline and a methodology singular to the subject of study by which evidence of the past is found, assessed, interpreted and its meaning comprehended. A Level students develop their methodological skills with work on document extracts. Third, History can refer to an account of the past written by a person who has studied the past and employed the historical methodology. Writers of History seek to present an accurate account of the past but, because evidence is seldom complete and there are several perspectives from which to view an era of History, accounts of the past differ. Each account, however, contributes to the debate about what really happened and, bit by bit, a fuller understanding of the past is achieved. The diversity and development seen in accounts of the past creates, therefore, its own history (of History books) called historiography. Textbooks sometimes include brief surveys of the relevant historiography. The sense of understanding History that is the subject of these few words is the first sense; that is, understanding the past. Can an ALevel student understand the past and, if so, how far can it be understood? Even if students have a fair grasp of the methodology (sense 2) and historiography(sense 3), the quantity of information and limited access to all the documents, as well as restricted time, seemingly make understanding a forlorn task. There are, however, two interrelated ways by which significant progress is possible. The first is to adopt a mindset which attempts to see the past as it was and not as the prelude to what followed; that is, without the benefit of hindsight. The second way is to have an active, not a passive, approach. Passive students do little more than collect information, facts and assessments, reorder them and present them in essays. For them, the past is dead, it is a ‘book past’. Active students enter the world of the past as thinkers and seek to identify the main issues and influences for themselves, their relative importance, and the relationship of the influences upon each other, and on events as they later happened. Step by step, active students create their own analysis which, unless widely erroneous (and teachers advise on this), has the great merit of reflecting the students’ thought. Students who get ‘inside’ History make great strides in understanding. Students who are copiers and manipulators of information are as different to thinkers about History as a mule to a thoroughbred horse but, if techniques are followed, all students can become, in this sense, ‘thoroughbreds’. These techniques may be little more than doodles, after an outline of the topic has been gained, such as spray diagrams of influences and connections, mind games with counterfactuals, scribble sketch maps to bring out geographical proximity or schema for assessment of a politician’s influence or a state’s power, but all involve students’ thought, assessment and judgement. As study tasks they are not demanding and yet they deliver great benefits. (A fuller exploration of these techniques can be found in Chapters 5 and 6 of The Good History Students’ Handbook (1993) or Chapters 3 and 6 of Undergraduate History Study - The Guide to Success (1997)). About one thing you can be sure. If you take up the challenge to see the past as it was, to enter the past as a thinker, you will find your study hugely interesting, you will be a greatly more successful student and your teachers will applaud your achievement. Study skills: dealing with deadlines Many claim that the step from GCSE History to A Level History is the greatest step a student has to make in study. One major difference in A Level study is the greater autonomy given to students. It is usual for students to have at least a week to complete work assignments but this latitude in arrangements readily becomes a burden. Work not undertaken can hang like a black cloud and, if left to the last moment, work is often hurriedly and poorly completed. The trick is to develop the student equivalent of the filofax, a sheet of paper, on which the tasks for different A Levels are spread out by allocation to particular days and undertaken well before the deadline. After all, notes made late in the evening just before, or just after, the deadline take only marginally less time than when completed, without pressure, earlier in the week and most students feel much better when study tasks are completed in advance. Reading articles in new perspective History journals are not a substitute for course texts but a complement to them. Journal articles are contributions to debates. An effective student will extract the author’s argument speedily. First, note the exact title of the article and the concise abstract of the argument on the contents page and the headline at the beginning of the article. Second, read the summary at the start of the article and follow its development through the subheadings, which are in bold type. Third, read the timeline in order to gain a chronological perspective and ‘words and concepts to note’. Fourth, prime your mind for the key issues by reading ‘questions to consider’. Now, fifthly and last, skim-read the article to trace the themes and arguments more fully and then answer the ‘questions to consider’, preferably in writing, with a few ‘facts’ which support the arguments or themes. Do not forget - articles are contributions to debate, so be an alert and critical reader: note the author’s standpoint. Is there a particular slant? Are the arguments supported by the evidence? Is key evidence missed out? The procedure for reading articles, as described, may sound complicated but that is only because it is broken down into each little step. Once you have followed it a few times it will become ‘second nature’.
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