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Topic:
Postholing vs. coverage
or breadth vs. depth (T1)

topic background
"Postholing" means an in-depth study of a particular historical event or period. The postholing approach is often contrasted with a more traditional teaching approach that attempts to offer students a broad overview of historical knowledge, or "coverage."

We share the opinion of many history educators that a balance between the two methods is best.

Unfortunately, overstuffed textbooks and extensive national standards make it difficult for teachers to achieve a balance and even more difficult to find time to include thinking strategies in the history curriculum.

The Student's Friend attempts to help with this dilemma by providing a broad historical and geographical overview in a concise format.

4/15/02 Cathy, pre-service teacher, Australia
I'm enrolled in a Graduate Diploma of Education course - that's teacher training in Australia). I was (and still am) having difficulty understanding this "new" way of teaching history - I thought it (postholing) was strictly an Australian method, but I gather from your writing that it is indeed a new teaching methodology. It is definitely not how I learned history growing up in the US. Nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder if this new snapshot method of teaching history is actually giving kids an understanding of the flow of time in history or a knowledge of the key events that have shaped our society.

Keep up the good work and hopefully when I am a qualified teacher I'll be able to contribute to your website.

4/15/02 studentsfriend.com reply
Cathy, thanks for your feedback.
I am still not teaching by the "snapshot" method. (Interesting choice of term; is that what they call it in Australia?) Here it is more often termed "postholing." I intend to incorporate aspects of historical analysis in my courses next year...but they will not be the main focus. Call me old-fashioned, but isn't history the story of humankind? How can one be educated in history without having an understanding of that story?

I'm not sure what you were reading on the web site about postholing, but this issue is addressed in two sections of the "what to teach" area:
-the discussion of why we need something like textbooks (a chronological narrative
rather) on the Chronological Narrative page , and
-the discussion of discipline-based analysis on the Thinking Strategies
page.

To me, the present vogue of discipline-based analysis represents an overreaction to the traditional chronological approach, perhaps borne of the frustration of trying to present a coherent overview of history using textbooks. It's a case of that old pendulum swinging far to the other side. When will we learn as did the ancient Greeks, the ancient Chinese, and Hegel that we need to recognize the strengths in competing ideas and adopt a useful balance? We seem always to be adolescents in our approach, careening from one extreme to the other. When will maturity arrive?

By the way, you have already contributed to the studentsfriend web site. May I use some of your comments? I am very interested in pre-service teacher training and, I am hoping that my web site might be useful to prospective teachers. Any insights you can provide from your experience would be very useful.

4/19/02 Cathy reply
First let me say thank you for your e-mails, especially the website information. It is all a great learning experience. I am only 6 weeks into the course (2 of those were spent on practicum!), so I am still not familiar with teaching concepts and methods in general (perhaps because they haven't taught us anything on the subject yet). I have to say that until you mentioned the term 'postholing' (are there any references to this either on
the web or in any journals?), I had no idea that this was an actual teaching method. "Snapshot" was my own term to describe what I was observing in the textbooks while on practicum. I had 2 textbooks and absolutely no idea how to use them! I mean how do you make the leap from Ancient Rome to the legend of King Arthur to the Bayeux Tapestry? I am interested in hearing about how you will incorporate this type of historical analysis into your classes and still maintain a sense of the flow of history.

In my methods class, our lecturers kept referring to 'units,' which I and many others assumed meant a chronological narrative. If you talk about a Medieval history unit, then you start with the fall of Rome, the barbarian invasions, Charlemagne, Norman Invasion, etc. and work your way up to the Renaissance. However, it was becoming increasingly clear that this is not what they had in mind when we were asked to create a unit of 10-12 lessons on a history topic.

When I did ask them to clarify a unit, I was told that if the Middle Ages is a unit, then you have a lesson on the feudal system, castle building, crime and punishment, religious life in the middle ages, etc. Huh? I think I understand it now. However, as you mentioned, there has to be a balance somewhere. How do we do this?

My initial response was disbelief and outrage: so just because kids find history boring, we'll just entertain them with stuff that interests them and ignore how it all fits into the context of time. Oh yeah, and as long as they understand the content we won't bother correcting their English grammar and spelling mistakes! This bit really blows me away. I found this out in my last lecture. Apparently the current thinking has been that correct
usage of the English language was the English departments domain and was therefore not relevant to other classes. Now the Education Department, realizing the error of its ways, is 'forcing' all disciplines to have a language and literacy component added to their syllabus. Of course, what do you expect from a department that a couple of decades ago didn't think
English grammar was important, and was therefore not taught in schools. How did education become reduced to this?

I'll stop my ranting, it's been a hard week...I'm glad you find my comments worthy enough to be included on your website. Thank you again for your help and encouragement.

4/20/02 studentsfriend.com reply
I enjoyed hearing from you again.
When I was undergoing my teacher training at a nearby college seven years ago, we were never given any conceptual framework for teaching history. In fact, there was no specific training in history teaching at all. We secondary teacher trainees were all taught the same stuff...Madeline Hunter Lesson Plans, creating "learning centers", etc.

But, as the "What to teach - Overview" section of my web site explains, this is typical in the U.S. We never ever get that conceptual framework for history teaching, which is, I suppose, one of the issues I am trying to address with my web site.

I am not aware of much information available on "postholing." It is discussed briefly in the "What to teach - Chronological Narrative" section of my web site. Discipline-based analysis is a type of postholing, and it it discussed in some depth in the "What to teach-Thinking Strategies" section of my web site. This approach was advanced in Great Britain ( by The Schools Council History Project), and perhaps serves as a model for the Australian approach.

Many American educators are looking longingly at the British approach and would like to see more of it in the U.S. In Britain, however, some educators are raising serious questions about the lack of a chronological overview, and I suspect the pendulum will be swinging back again over the next several decades.

You asked how I will incorporate historical analysis in my teaching next year...Well, until somebody forces me to teach differently, I will continue to offer a chronological overview of history and geography beginning with the Big Bang and ending with globalism, biotechnology, terrorism, etc. I have two years to do this, 9th and 10th grades, and I will continue to use my concise textbook alternative, the Student's Friend to provide the content and structure for this overview. I supplement this written narrative with many overhead transparencies of maps and images, and a lot of video material taken from quality series such as "Ancient Civilizations," "Ascent of Man," "Civilisation," etc.

At various points in this narrative overview, I bore-in, taking a more detailed look at particular historical events. You could say I do "postholing" within the context of the chronological narrative. I have typically done this through films, simulations, plays, or writing activities involving primary source materials. In future, I will attempt to develop formal "discipline-based analysis" activities using primary and secondary source materials. These will merely replace some other kinds of activities, such as a movie or the research paper that I use now.

I hate to say it, but much of what you are describing to me sounds like a nightmare. I think it is wonderful that educators in Australia are actually trying to teach prospective educators how to teach history, but what they seem to be telling you strikes me as confused and counterproductive. I guess I prefer the haphazard, unfocused approach here in the U.S. where I am free to do that which is reasonable.

English language usage is not a "unit" to be taught in history courses...but a communication skill to be reinforced on every assignment. In my school we call it "Writing across the curriculum." We try to reinforce writing skills in every subject every week including technology, wood shop, and physical education.

Bits of pieces of history are not history, the root word of which is "story." Bits and pieces are merely bits and pieces. Bits and pieces are anathema to cognitive understanding. See: "What to teach - conceptual frameworks."

By the way...there are exceptions of course, but most of my 9th and 10th graders appear to be rather interested in understanding the flow of history. I don't hear a lot about how boring history is. I hear a lot of questions and comments about how and why this or that happened the way it did. I get the feeling that many--maybe most--of my students rather share my view that the past (and the present) is a kind of interesting multi-layered puzzle...and the more pieces we can connect, the better we can see the big picture.

Based on your intelligence and passion, I suspect you are going to be an excellent teacher. I think it is healthy for us to keep railing against the idiocy.

4/21/02 Sam Wineburg reply (researcher, author, professor)
I read the whole correspondence (above); I don't think that here in the US you have evidence for 'discipline-analysis' vogue. In UK (until the National Curriculum, yes) but here? When 4/5th of history teachers lack a history B.A.? When the "teaching of history" course is a RARE RARE bird in Schools of Ed? No, I think you are overestimating incidence.

By the way, postholing, to go back to Beard's usage, is how you have defined it -- not isolated units, but, putting down a post in the midst of a broad story. Anything short of this disfigures the idea.

5/4/02 studentsfriend.com reply
About the vogue of discipline-based analysis...you're right; my view of that vogue is vague. I feel the vogue is more apparent in the U.S. among education intellectuals than practitioners...much as progressive education was always bigger in schools of education than in schools.

9/1/01 Dan Deneen, teacher, Vermont
I confess to ambivalence about teaching historical overviews. At one level, there are things that all student simply should know, and if learning events, sequences, historical persons, the development of ideas, and even --gasp-- the odd date, if it all seems dry and tedious to students, well... tough. Deal with it. Think of it as multiplication tables. You need to know it, and you're going to have to work to learn it. There is simply a critical mass of historical knowledge which is a necessary prerequisite to that "historical sense" you speak of. So take out your notebooks and get started.

On the other hand.... I have learned, painfully and firsthand, that most students simply will not bother to work to understand and remember material that consistently bores them. They know their parents don't know it. They know that there aren't many jobs that require knowledge of Spanish Armada or the Treaty of Versailles. "Dipping" into cultures, eras, events, people...allows more opportunity to put flesh on the bones, and a greater opportunity for the kind of engagement with a topic that is more likely to leave some kind of lasting understanding.

In the end, I leaned toward the latter. Not that I could manage a satisfactory resolution of the ambivalence, but for selfish reasons: the "postholed" or in-depth units were simply more interesting to teach. And I could justify that selfishness by results: the engaged teacher stands a better chance of engaging his students.

And I really believe that there are many different ways to be successful teaching history (even more, alas, to be unsuccessful!) and that the degree of personal engagement by the teacher is absolutely a key...that personal interest will not escape, nor fail to have an impact, on all but the dullest student.

9/2/01 studentsfriend.com reply
I share your ambivalence regarding the breadth vs depth issue, and probably many teachers grapple with the same questions. While you lean toward the postholes, I lean toward the historical overview. While I very much want to put flesh on the bones, I also believe the bones need to resemble a skeleton that gives some form to history. Our discussion appears to resemble the old traditional vs progressive dichotomy. Still, we share so much common ground that I have to believe that a reasonable balance can be found.

I was thinking of the posthole analogy. I have used a similar analogy to describe how I structure my history/geography classes. I see the overview provided by the Student's Friend as sort of a concrete slab foundation. I regard my in-depth activities, such as films, as pylons sunk to anchor the foundation. I know my in-depth activities can be improved, and after having seen your lessons, I think I will do a better job with mine.

I like this collaboration stuff.