History by Today's Standards
It’s well known that history isn’t exactly the most interesting topic to people nowadays. Students groan about it on all levels of the education system – parents stress its importance while they haven’t touched it since high school – and while there are some who genuinely enjoy learning about the past, the overwhelming majority throws it aside for some sort of digitized or sparkly temptation of the ‘future’. It’s no secret that society has moved from one very much so in touch with tradition and the past to a new era of gadgets and gizmos to distract people of all ages for hours.
Of course, this isn’t explicitly a bad thing. People are becoming more in tune with technology earlier in their lifetimes than ever before. Our entire society is interconnected on a level unprecedented in history with the exchange of information happening at levels completely unimaginable just a few years back. The underlying factor, however, is at what this new era of thinking is being traded for. Children have frighteningly shorter and shorter attention spans, as the rapid-fire and multicolor images of television raise the bar higher and higher on what exactly warrants the meaningful attention of our youth (Neuman, 1985, p. 65). Books have transformed from a personally and intellectually engaging way of transmitting information to a chore, as the information age ushers in expectations of brief articles and flash-news.
The dynamic of this change encompasses much more than just books and computers, however – as the world’s history becomes bounded in a synthesized and easily-accessible web, the real information outside it begins to fade to obscurity. Museums, in particular, have found this change particularly jarring. For curators and archaeologists, the digital age has not meant that the knowledge of museums and physical artifacts has become obsolete in the face of online equivalents. In fact, it means just about the opposite – museums are faced with the overwhelming problem today, that as society develops and digitizes, that people have just stopped caring about museums and the first-hand experiences they have to offer.
To address this, you first have to take a few steps backwards. It’s undeniable that people simply aren’t into history anymore, but the reasoning why is a bit more complicated. What exactly has the digital age done to instigate this change away from museums?
Figure 1 - Notice how modern ads market using the words "high-speed" and "fast" to indicate that their product is 'better.' Is this a reflection of the society we live in, where fast means better?
The biggest issue can be traced back to the abundance of flash-news and brief snippets of information on the internet. Looking at the way internet is marketed today, no word goes better with the internet, and any other digital product than “speed”. (Figure 1) The digital age prides itself on things being done faster and more efficiently. People love the internet, because when at one time people actually had to go to the library to research and write their reports, the entire process can be circumvented and done in a fraction of the time. And that’s better… right?
The digital age has, more than anything else, taught the world that “fast is better”. And when you take a look at museums, you aren’t exactly hit with the idea that you’re going to receive a rapid-fire presentation of its information – you’re going to have to analyze its plaques, browse, and examine its displays. Some museums are certainly attempting to keep up with this pace – with the introduction of iPads with interactive apps and digital displays, museums are trying their hardest to move to a faster pace that, unfortunately, is simply counterintuitive to the way that they function. Textbooks and classes now present themselves in digital formats, distancing students further from the content they are expected to understand – and while these classes may be more convenient for some, they are proving to do little more, if make any noticeable difference at all, when compared to their traditional counterparts (Utts, Sommer, Acredolo, Maher, Matthews, 2003).
But perhaps the problem goes beyond the public simply ignoring local history in favor of our digital alternatives. One major concern is that the way we present history is simply ignoring the correct pathways human brains need to follow in order to relate to, and remember history. As put by Mark Leone, Anthropologist from the University of Maryland, “An archaeologist attached to a museum involving the use of [scattered artifacts] . . . to reach the public may consider going further by seeing that the interpretive process is ideological.” (Leone, 1980, p. 8) – Ideological, in the sense that people need to form concrete, steadily progressing ideas about what happened in history, or a logical sequence of ideas, to relate to the content and remember it. But there’s more to it than that – studies also show that, as social creatures, humans develop their thinking in a completely different, and possibly more in-depth way when involved with others – a dynamic not targeted by all museums, much less history books and lessons (as cited in Coffee, 2007). The question quickly evolves from not what’s going wrong with students and people in today’s society, to a completely different beast: what’s going wrong with the way the history presents itself intoday’s museums? Or more specifically, what can we do about it?
The answer is, that as history evolves, so too does a need arise for its presentation to evolve. Our society is in a constant forward push for the newest technologies, the best ways of doing simple tasks, and streamlining our daily lives. As a result, our brains are being completely hardwired in a way that doesn’t give merit to the ‘mindless ignorance’ theory, because in reality, it is wholeheartedly engrained, commonplace, and deliberately taught ignorance. We have designed the way we live to focus on the fastest, most efficient, and most streamlined ways of doing anything – in reality, we have streamlined ourselves, cutting out the curiosity needed in looking at a museum or examining our history to the faster, impersonal content online. Our society doesn’t teach people to explicitly turn away from our past, but it certainly tempts them at all facets into modern world. In order to make a difference, however, there must be a change in not necessarily the way we progress, but rather, the way to react to that progression. We need to find a way to rekindle this curiosity in our society.
Figure 2 - A Columbus Day counter-celebration exemplifies just how perspectives can change on history, when you really participate in local events and engage yourself with the content.
This change has to begin at a local level and push its way upward. Humans, after all, are social creatures. They require ideological ways of thinking; they need to see not a stream of words, or even a cluster of artifacts but a progression and evolution of ideas that they can see in their own head at a glance – ideas that are present in every museum, but only at a deeper level of analytical thought and understanding. (Leone, 1980, p. 8) What needs to happen is genuine interest from those at the local level. People need to relearn how to slow down, and do it together – and when everyday people are finally returning to their local museums, participating in local celebrations of historical events and taking the time to really experience history, it’ll be easy to see that the true definition of ‘history’ goes far beyond what society has built it up to be today. (Figure 2) (as cited in Coffee, 2007) The modern world teaches history as simply a part of the past. But actively participating and seeing the history that makes up our immediate surroundings is the only thing that can directly connect us, face-to-face, with the reality that our past is still much more than words on a page, or content to be tested on.
When you take the time to visit your local history museum and understand not just our modern, digitized definition of ‘history’, but also the stories and reality of what they are conveying to you as part of the human experience, you are ensuring that our society will not forget its roots. History, in the end, was lived by real people. It only makes sense that you go out and experience it yourself.
Coffee, K. (2007). Audience research and the museum experience as social practice. Museum Management and Curatorship, 22(4), 377-389. doi: 10.1080/09647770701757732.
[Columbus Day protest, photograph]. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://thecharnelhouse.org/2010/10/12/the-controversy-surrounding-columbus-day/
[Internet service advertisement, graphic]. Retrieved October, 14, 2014, from http://www.amylasagnadesign.com/portfolio/print-advertising/print-advertising/
Leone, M. (1981). The Relationship between artifacts and the public in outdoor history museums. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 376, 301-313. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1981.tb28174.x.
Neuman, S. (1985). Television and children’s reading behavior. Book Research Quarterly, 1. doi: 64-67. 10.1007/BF02683561.
Utts, J., Sommer, B., Acredolo, C., Maher, M., Matthews, H. (2003). A study comparing traditional and hybrid internet-based instruction in introductory statistics classes. Journal of statistics education, 11(3), Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v11n3/utts.html
