“Avoid telling stories”. These are three words that we, as teachers of history, may well have written on student work in the past. But do these words do more harm than good in the teaching and learning of history? They represent a subtle and creeping erosion of the true skill of delivering history to students: that of storytelling.
We expect students to engage with evidence, using discretion, analysis, and evaluation in order to arrive at a personally curated and accurately organised review of a time in human history. In order to prepare our students for this undertaking, history teachers have been conditioned by a variety of pressures ranging from time restrictions, mark schemes, assessment objectives and, if teaching a UK-derived curriculum, into believing that the narrative of history must be separated from the facts of it.
In the teaching of history, narrative has been incorrectly interpreted as being too close to fiction - too subject to the whims of the storyteller - to be of value in the requisite methodical and rigorous investigations of the past. As a consequence, much of the history that we teach in the classroom or the lecture hall has become clinically factual, coldly skills-based, and inscrutable to those looking to the past for wisdom, inspiration, or even excitement.
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Perhaps what is even more problematic - particularly for teachers - is that a delivered history which is devoid of narrative or story can make the subject unmemorable.
A memorable history is one that inspires empathy for, or a relationship with, those people being discussed. Without the ability to generate empathy, history is merely a corpus of facts; a body without vital signs. When history is not vital, it is not, by definition, alive. One way to avoid this, and to breathe life back into the discipline, is to return the element of narrative, of storytelling.
Doing this is not easy, but, like any skill, it can be learned. I have increasingly come to realise that my most successful lessons are those that tell a “story”; they have a narrative beginning, middle, and end, although not always in that order. So how does it work?
Setting the stage
The first thing I do is set the stage. For example, when teaching students about Hitler’s consolidation of power 1933-34, I start by creating an atmosphere of intrigue within the classroom that begins with Hindenburg swearing Hitler in as chancellor of a Germany shrouded in economic, political, and social misery. Hitler and the national socialists, with only two other Nazis in the cabinet and a constitutional president who could remove the chancellor, were looking anything but secure. And yet, by August 1934, a mere year and a half later, Hitler was the Führer, with near-absolute authority over the German people.
The expectation
Next, I raise an expectation that we, as a class, will somehow reconcile these two wildly differing sets of circumstances by the end of the lesson. I rarely say “lesson”, however, I tend towards using language that invokes student involvement in the narrative, such as, “...by August 1934, we are going to put this man in absolute control of 68 million German people”.
The delivery
Once the collective expectation has been raised, it is time to deliver. This is where the real skill of the history teacher comes in. We have to see this particular part of history as a narrative whole, driving inexorably to a denouement. We must understand and review the complex links between events and actions while simultaneously weaving in the strands of context. We have to do all of this while being acutely conscious of the overall narrative direction; remember that we are heading towards a resolution of the “story” that was earlier promised to the class.
Some UK examination boards have tried to return a little to the narrative form to make history come alive for students by clumsily bolting a single question onto their exam which exhorts students to “Write a narrative account of…”.
This question stem is notable for two reasons: it is jarring in its total dissimilarity from all of the other question stems included in the papers, and it demands a skill that both students and teachers have been explicitly guided away from in the past: that of “storytelling”.
In response to a message thread that I wrote on Twitter about the need for good storytelling in history, English historian Sir Simon Schama, said: “This is so important. The assumption that narrative by definition can’t pose questions or offer analysis and argument while storytelling has done terrible damage. I tried to do both in Citizens and in most of my 20 books”.
For those who think that narrative can actually get in the way of truth in history, particularly because we know that narratives can be created for dishonest purposes, Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five - a triumph of historical storytelling - added: “Absolutely agree with everything said in this thread - putting the story back in the teaching of history by no means diminishes the facts, but encourages those learning it to understand how particular narratives surrounding events were created in the first place.”
In short, learning history with the assistance of storytelling can help embed that history in the minds of students. Moreover, it can also, and this is crucial, build the critical faculties required to identify dishonest narratives.
The most wonderful histories that I have read tend to engross, not because of their factual integrity, though that is obviously crucial, but because they are written by historians who see the reader as an audience or participant that needs to be transported as well as educated.
Unfortunately, teachers have been conditioned to think that the “story” element of history should be treated with disdain when, in actuality, it can be the most transformative in learning and understanding. Historians such as Cat Jarman, Mostafa Minawi, Hallie Rubenhold, Antony Beevor, and William Dalrymple embrace the narrative and the creativity to be found within the limits set by the evidence. It’s time that teachers of history didn’t feel so constrained and allowed ourselves (and our students) the pleasure, if we didn’t already, of doing the same.
Dr Elliott L. Watson is a senior History Teacher at St. Christopher’s School in Bahrain. Author of Blowing up the Nazis, An Infographic History of Germany, An Infographic History of the Cold War, and 33 Easy Ways to Improve Your History Essays. He is co-editor of @VersusHistory and owner of the history YouTube channel “Drawn in 60 Seconds”. You can follow Elliott on Twitter @DrElliottWatson.
