Stuffed up academics

[Incongruous]

I recently finished re-reading both of Tom Hollands books. I find them to be masterclasses in narrative history. However, my lecturure recently derided Holland for being over dramatic and too emotive. In effect he was deriding the genre of narrative history.

What is it with academics? They write loads of books, but in such a way that the general reading public will never read them, so terribly dry is their style. It is left to narrative historians to do the job academics are here for, spreading knowledge, rather than circulating it among the crusty circles of universities!

You're thoughts on both narrative history, and the society of academia.

[Martok]

My thoughts are not very kind when it comes to the academic world and the people who inhabit it. Of all the college classes I took, only a handful of them were taught by professors who came across as genuinely passionate about the subject(s) they were teaching, *and* interested in spreading that passion & knowledge to their students. (Fortunately for me, my history prof was among those dynamic few.)

The majority of academics seem so detached that they can't help but be dry and dull about their chosen field, regardless of how they're presenting it (book, lecture, etc.). Not to mention that so many of them seem to have lost all touch with reality....

[Knight of the Rose]

I find the general problem is that you both have to teach and research, which actually is two different professions. Imagine you need to work both as a mechanic and dog drainer. Sometimes you will find an individual that excells in both. Usually you will not. And to get a job at a college or university you are most frequently asked about your research, research is what holds prestige, and research results will get you the job.
Teaching is kind of done "on the side", and even if you're a bad teacher you can keep your job, whereas if your research fails, then you get sacked.
Things are improving at the moment, as more and more universities put an emphasis on teaching. But in the past, and in many institutions today, you needed to be lucky to get a good teacher.

AND

As goes to "popular" litterature. "History" is ambivalent as it both means "the past" and "a tale". In academia, we tend to consider "the past", what happened there, and why. "A tale" meets quite different criterias of succes, such as drama, suspence and climax. The general reluctance I have towards pop-history is that I do not learn from it. It's fun, but it doesn't contribute to my understanding of the past. This is not to say it's bad. It's just serving another purpose. As a job-related injury I can't enjoy a historic novel, so I read sci-fi instead...

/KotR

[Incongruous]

Narrative History can often be very informative, I see it as apart from pop-history as you call it. Adrian Goldsworthy I would consider to be one of the best narrative historians. Indeed, Herodotus could be seen as the first narrative Historian, when it came to a grasp of Historical forces and movements he was far better than Thucydides, a man so engrossed with his beloved Poloponnesian war that he seems to have forgotten everything else, history under the microscope is bad history. This is what I see when I read some of the books assigned in class, microscopic discussion about a single aspect of a culture which takes up an entire book and about which historians spend their entire careers on. Squandering their talent.

The very admission by lecturers that they are their primarily to research illustrates to me just how far gone (of just how far up) academics have become, as Martok said many seem to have lost touch with society, and seem to offer very little back, in effect they are failures.
The accumlatiuon of knowlege for its own sake is idiotic and short sighted.

[Knight of the Rose]

I think we both agree and disagree at the same time, if such a ting is possible.

The accumlatiuon of knowlege for its own sake is fruitless. Yes. Both there are two kinds of knowledge - one is positivistic factual: How many, where, what year. This is what many mistake the discipline of History to be. The other is more holistic: Why did it happen, what does this tell us about the society, what does this tell us about human existance at the time.

The two go hand in hand, but it is clearly the latter (which cannot exist without the former) that holds meaning for mankind. This is really what "History" can contribute to the greater society. This is where we learn.

So you need someone to engage in the Polip. war in detail to extract the motives and hopes and fears of the contemporary people. This is hard work, and can easily take a lifetime of research. But you are lost "in your subject" if you do not put it into a greater perspective and shows your audience the impact of the events you uncover from the mists of time.

So I think you are right, the grudge I hold angainst popular history is that it mostly builds on some facts combined with guesswork, and does not show routes into understanding the topic. I would be the first, however, to admit that there are some who can do quite an outstanding job in portraying the past.

Oh, I ramble...

/KotR

[Geoffrey S]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm all for narrative history. Problem with people like Holland is that his is all crap narrative, and precious little research - little more than taking translations of his sources, spicing it up a little, and presenting it as his masterpiece. Didn't like his style, and he says nothing new for anyone who is remotely knowledgeable of the period.

As for academics, a bit harsh perhaps? Just as there are precious few great writers who can create a link with the reader, just so it's not a particularly prevalent gift to ignite that spark of interest in students who often have other things on their mind. The vast majority of academic writing isn't intended to be accessible for the public, but it's precisely for that niche that you have writers such as Goldsworthy, and at a stretch Holland.

[Marshal Murat]

I have 4 favorite writers of the classical period.

1. Steven Pressfield - He combines a first person narrative with what seems extensive research. He could be BS-ing half of it, but I couldn't tell. The fact that his books are good only add to it.

2. Michael Curtis Ford - His writing is a little less effective, and it seems he only spices up the regular history annals. I just read his Ten Thousand, and it was good at conveying a sense of the period, but all he really did was re-write Anabasis and skipped over alot by simply saying (in character) 'I'm no poet' or 'I don't want to bore you'.

3. Simon Scarrow - Scarrow uses a blank spot in history, then adds in his own characters. His writing style is effective and enjoyable, with some very good historical additives, but it could be any soldiers in history.

4. Robert Harris - He lays on the good history and background with motivating characters and plot. He paints with a broad brush that leaves desires, but it's adequate and enjoyable.

As such, the academics vary from subject to subject, topic to topic. Some (Pressfield) combine thorough understanding with effective story-writing.

[Mount Suribachi]

I recently finished re-reading both of Tom Hollands books. I find them to be masterclasses in narrative history. However, my lecturure recently derided Holland for being over dramatic and too emotive. In effect he was deriding the genre of narrative history.

What is it with academics? They write loads of books, but in such a way that the general reading public will never read them, so terribly dry is their style. It is left to narrative historians to do the job academics are here for, spreading knowledge, rather than circulating it among the crusty circles of universities!

You're thoughts on both narrative history, and the society of academia.

Sounds like jealousy. Or snobbery. Or both.

And yes, most Academics are incapable of tying their own shoelaces.

As for Holland, I really enjoyed Rubicon, but Persian Fire was totally spoiled by his constant need to phrase everything in post 9-11 terminology

[Adrian II]

You're thoughts on both narrative history, and the society of academia.

Annales, the perfect synthesis: Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Philippe Ariès, Régine Pernoud, Georges Duby, Jacques Le Goff.

[Geoffrey S]

Unfortunately, no longer what is aspired to; narrative seems to be back with a vengeance.

[Incongruous]

I was perhaps too liberal with my praise of narrative history. There are alot pf really crap narrative histories out there at the moment.
However I still hold up Goldsworthy as fantastice, Holland I still admire for his ability to tell a story.
But my favourite I must confess is John Julius Norwich.

[The Wizard]

Be careful around good narrative history. David Landes is an excellent writer with a lot of wit and verve, but his Wealth and Poverty of Nations is ripe for the bonfire. I think I've never read a worse piece of history in my life, except perhaps Barbarians by Terry Jones.

Besides that, lay off the academics. You cannot write a broad history without summarizing and tossing details out. A holistic approach to history is not a sweeping, well-written and epic account of the Crusades (with the concomitant million mistakes, lies and/or generalizations included), it's a triangulated approach from multiple sides by multiple scientists hailing from multiple disciplines, all lending their expertise and eye for detail in their particular field to the understanding of such a huge subject. You cannot truly know the whole history of anything.

Respect the audience. They deserve more than massively simplified, generalized and sometimes just plain wrong works of history (like with Landes) to help them understand how our past looked, felt, and worked.

[Incongruous]

I still dislike academics in general for their giant heads.
I just thought it was rather elitists to deride narrative history, when it is usually the only way someone who actually lives in the real world can actually connect with the past.
Bad manners all round I think.

[PBI]

Academics, or at least, the universities which hold them, are a good thing.

They perform a valuable public service by keeping the sort of people who become academics safely locked up and occupied producing research, rather than wandering the streets in mobs hassling strangers with bizarre esoteric rants and attempting to do real jobs. Of course nobody really likes academics; the wonderful thing about academia is that you can succeed in spite of having personality flaws which would otherwise render you unemployable.

One of the most important skills you learn in university is the ability to learn from a lecture course in spite of the incompetence/disinterest of the lecturer. If you happen to get a good lecturer it's a bonus, not a necessity. The payoff is that you get to learn from the people who are the world experts in their field. What is more useful, a tedious lecture given by someone who is an expert on the subject, or a really interesting lecture given by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about?

Oh, and don't be too dismissive of pure research for research's sake; if we only ever researched subjects with an obvious short term application most of modern physics, from quantum mechanics to basic electromagnetism and all the good stuff that comes from it, would not exist. I bet the same is true of other disciplines.

[Geoffrey S]

I just thought it was rather elitists to deride narrative history, when it is usually the only way someone who actually lives in the real world can actually connect with the past.

Perhaps you should ask yourself if that is necessarily the goal. Good narrative history can be stunning - the poor products such as those by Holland are merely a sensationalist rehash rather than a fresh look.

Bad manners all round I think.

Indeed.

[Adrian II]

Oh, and don't be too dismissive of pure research for research's sake; if we only ever researched subjects with an obvious short term application most of modern physics, from quantum mechanics to basic electromagnetism and all the good stuff that comes from it, would not exist. I bet the same is true of other disciplines.

It is certainly true of History. My best professor at Leyden University was the late H.P.H. Jansen, a devout Roman Catholic and an even more devout researcher whose lectures were totally incomprehensible to anyone who didn't read Latin and Gothic. His many, many books were great (and still are), but the man himself would today be dismissed as a total didactic disaster. He lisped, he was extremely shortsighted and always adressed students by the wrong names. He never discussed the medieval texts we had to prepare for his lectures, but always went off on some otherwordly tangent. He also had a tremendous sense of homour, very subtle, highly absurdistic, and totally incomprehensible to most.

I came away from his lectures with the sense that the medieval world was ten times more fascinating, richer in unexpected and absurd detail and therefore infinitely more interesting than my own.

Many students hated him.

He died in 1985, well before the Internet age struck. This is the only pic I could find of him; he is the second from the left. I don't know why I want to post a picture of him. To honour him, I guess.

[Geoffrey S]

Thus far I've found that the best professors are indeed those who give the worst presentation due to knowing too much, but that they shine in tutorials and when assisting in writing papers. They're often too broadly knowledgeable to give good lectures, which are often fascinating but irrelevant to exams, but if as a student you can get them to focus on a specific subject they're incredible.

[PanzerJaeger]

Most professors, especially of history, archeology, and that sort of thing, would much rather be doing other things related to their field of study. Most only teach because they have to... sort of like a struggling artist working at McDonald's to pay for supplies.

[Adrian II]

Most professors, especially of history, archeology, and that sort of thing, would much rather be doing other things related to their field of study. Most only teach because they have to... sort of like a struggling artist working at McDonald's to pay for supplies.

Bingo. They won't tell this to everyone because it would earn them the opprobrium of boards of directors, managers, student boards and bad colleagues. But it is very true. And I can't blame them. I blame students who are more and more adopting passive consumer attitudes.

[Incongruous]

Bingo. They won't tell this to everyone because it would earn them the opprobrium of boards of directors, managers, student boards and bad colleagues. But it is very true. And I can't blame them. I blame students who are more and more adopting passive consumer attitudes.

I'm sorry but blaming students is bollocks, everything at uni starts from the top including the Wallmart packaging of modern university courses.
The old tim profs at my uni could do something about this as their expertise is very much needed, but I have yet to hear a peep from them so long as they can continue to research and take my money.

[Geoffrey S]

I'm sorry but blaming students is bollocks, ...

...I blame Tribesman...

... everything at uni starts from the top including the Wallmart packaging of modern university courses.
The old tim profs at my uni could do something about this as their expertise is very much needed, but I have yet to hear a peep from them so long as they can continue to research and take my money.

Every single professor I have met up until now has always, always been more than willing to provide information to help me further my interests. However, almost equally without exception, I have had to approach them. And why not? If I can't be bothered to do that little, why would they expect me to be bothered enough to actively research under my own steam in the future? As Panzer and Adrian point out, this is frequently primarily a financial necessity.

Let's face it: the quantity of students is so massive that quality is very difficult to safeguard. Universities do their best by providing some tutorials, with smaller groups per lecturer, but given their timeconstraints that's limited in what it can achieve. What it can do is stimulate students to show some initiative. And with such large numbers of people involved, it isn't possible to give everyone a lot of attention - only those who show that they are interested, and seek out the expertise of their professors. Let the student themselves show whether they are a hobbyist willing to memorize a lot of secondary facts, or someone who wants to actively seek new questions and answers.

So many students accept that pre-packaged nature of courses as a given, whereas that's only the beginning. They go to some lectures, skip others, pass/fail their exams, and in the end might get a nice degree of it all. Or they might not. But I say, they do not know what it is to be a student. That's a high school mentality. Those for whom universities holds the most promise don't stick to just one course, they seek out new angles, converse with their professors frequently, and see it as more than a means to a slip of paper granting entrance to certain jobs.

[Incongruous]

That may be so, but blaming it on students is bollocks.

The Students have almost no power to change anything, the student exec is powerless, any change or debate on higher education always occurs at the top and has nothing to do with students.
If the proffessors gave a crap about students I would be reading more angry articles in the uni mag and seeing more bloody action by them. I read and see almost nothing, apathetic is the attitude.

Its all about making money at institutions which do not make the top percentile of universities, and what you are saying is crap and shows a rather elitist didain for most students, get off your bloody horse.

[Geoffrey S]

That may be so, but blaming it on students is bollocks.

There you go again. So passionate. Got something you need to get off your chest?

The Students have almost no power to change anything, the student exec is powerless, any change or debate on higher education always occurs at the top and has nothing to do with students.
If the proffessors gave a crap about students I would be reading more angry articles in the uni mag and seeing more bloody action by them. I read and see almost nothing, apathetic is the attitude.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing needs changing. Believe me, I've heard your arguments from others time and time again. It tends to originate from precisely those apathetic students who fail to take the initiative and simply aim to pass, what was recently called 'zesjescultuur' over here. No, professors don't give a crap about all students. Considering the standard of the average student, why should they? What I have seen is that those who do make the extra effort, who don't let prescribed courses limit them and actively seek out the expertise of the professors, find the university experience to be far more rewarding.

Its all about making money at institutions which do not make the top percentile of universities, and what you are saying is crap and shows a rather elitist didain for most students, get off your bloody horse.

Puh-lease. I'd rather think it's you who should give up your sanguine equestrian hobbies. Calm down before you next click reply.