Cate Denial

It’s common for students to come into my history classes believing that arguments are things you come up with before you do the research for a paper.  For full-time historians, this is often baffling. Students come by this honestly—it’s usually something they were taught in high school. And high school teachers come by it honestly, too—it’s often something they have to teach for students to do well on AP exams and in other forms of testing done under tight time…

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I, like most everyone else teaching in higher ed, have had to grapple with the shifting engagement patterns of our students over the last few years. To be clear – it’s not that I think students are disengaged; it’s simply that they’re often engaged in things other than schoolwork. They need money; they’re caregivers; they are worried about the environment; they are acutely aware of international and domestic politics, and all of these things are pressing and immediate, as opposed…

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