College History Texts and Adult Education
Developing Texts That Address the Needs of Evening Degree Programs
Jul 6, 2009
Both Community Colleges and major universities have developed or are in the process of developing programs specifically designed for working adults. Most of these professionals hold down full time jobs and support families while spending two to three nights each week pursuing either Associates or Bachelors degree programs, frequently in fields of business, administration, and health care.
Each program, however, requires anywhere from two to three basic college-level history courses. In most cases, these will be Western Civilization or American History surveys broken down by two-semester course units. The greatest single problem with these courses, given their status in adult education programs, is with the assigned texts.
Why Current Texts are Inadequate
Many institutions select excellent survey texts, like The Western Heritage by Donald Kagan and others, or Mark Kishlansky’s Civilization in the West. In American History survey courses, a popular text is Robert Divine’s America Past and Present, which celebrated its Eight Edition with the announcement that, “Over one million students have used this book!”
Department heads and instructors gravitate toward such texts for several reasons:
- They used the same texts in their own university preparation.
- The texts are concise and include on-line companion web-site support.
- They incorporate excellent graphs, maps, and pictures.
- They are chronological and narrative.
All of this helps students that may be in a four-year Humanities program requiring several units of history. But for the adult student in an evening program that requires only two general history courses, these texts become cumbersome and simply give too many facts and details.
Finally, if most instructors are truly honest, they will acknowledge that most of their students do not read the assigned chapters. Those that initially do attempt reading chapters, rapidly give up. There is just too much detail and information for this type of student.
This is not to demean adult students taking evening classes. Rather, it should be a realistic call to arms: what, exactly, do instructors want students to take from the nightly lecture and discussion? How important is it for students to memorize the key battles of Napoleon? Is Jena as important as Austerlitz? Does Borodino compare with Waterloo?
Developing New Texts to Meet a Different Clientèle
The monolithic publishers of academic text books need to address the concerns posed by an ever increasing number of adult students enrolled in evening university and college programs. Most of these students have been out of high school for several years – in some cases, twenty or more. These are the students that may have heard of Napoleon Bonaparte at some point long ago, but do not have the benefit of recent knowledge such as a high school senior might have entering college.
The adult student is no-less intelligent, and has the advantage of work experience (so-called “street smarts”), but must struggle to understand and comprehend everything from historical chronology to the many little facts. Even basic concepts like “nationalism” and “socialism” are difficult.
Publishers need to develop texts for this class of student that highlight basic concepts that every person should know. Naturally, this would include the great movements – the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Such efforts should not be viewed as an attempt to “water down” history or “lower the standard,” but to fit necessary facts into the wider scope of intellectual understanding.
Addressing Student Needs
In many cases, well-meaning instructors only use the text as a guide, providing outlines, notes, power-points, and original source documents to build a case. But the bottom line must be addressing the needs of students. In the case of adult students involved in an evening program leading to a degree or certification outside of the humanities, the need for revised texts is urgent.
 |
