The Kids Are All Right
Yesterday I attended the first session of an Osher Class called “International Politics of the 1930s.” This is a very unusual Osher Class and I want to tell you a little about it.
The professor, Michael Butler, calls this class a “mash-up” between the History Department’s “Capstone” seminar (required of all college History majors) and an Osher class. As part of their participation in the Capstone seminar, the college students are required to give a short presentation of their research to a public audience. A few years ago, Professor Butler decided that the Osher clientele provided a perfect public audience, and he offered us the opportunity to sit in on the class presentations. I was able to take advantage of this during two semesters before things got shut down by COVID restrictions; this spring is the first time in two years that this class has been offered in this format, and I was quick to sign up.
(Just FYI: Professor Butler has been an adjunct professor at William and Mary since 2012. He has a PhD in History from the University of Virginia and retired in 2010 after a 30-year career in the Foreign Service. He brings a wealth of real-world diplomatic experience to his capstone seminars.)
The college catalog identifies seven sections of this capstone seminar; each one featured various topics – ranging through Asian, European, Latin American, and American History – from which the History majors can select. The section I was sitting in on, HIST491C 05, has 15 students, who meet on Monday and Wednesday afternoons from 3:30-5:00, in a classroom on the ground floor of Swem Library (the main library on the William and Mary Campus). Here’s how the catalog describes this course:
“International Politics of the 1930s” examines the collapse of the Versailles order and the origins of the Second World War in Europe and the Pacific. The course combines intensive readings on the principal issues of the thirties, recreations of the decade’s major foreign-policy decisions, and an individual research project chosen in consultation with the instructor. Students will complete a) an annotated bibliography related to the research project, b) a multi-media class presentation describing this research, and c) an end-of-semester research paper.
The students in these capstone seminars have been meeting since September 2021 as a colloquium on the subject. During this time the students read and discussed basic texts on the topic; it was during this period that they identified a possible research topic, discussed it with the Professor, and began their preliminary research. For the next several weeks, they will hone their research and write their papers, which are due during exam week in early May.
Professor Butler sent an email to the Osher participants in this class. Here are a couple of things he said in his email:
This Osher course is based upon the students’ multimedia presentations. Students will present their semester-long research project for approximately 15 minutes, with ten minutes dedicated to questions and discussions. You are welcome to ask questions following the students’ presentation, although I will give priority in questioning to other students in the capstone seminar. These presentations are one step along a multi-step research project; they will not be finished products, and students are required to address questions such as “what is my biggest research problem?/where did I hit the wall?” The presentations are designed in part for students to share research experiences and in part for the course instructor and Swem Library staff to help students work through research problems.
I ask that you observe the following ground rules for the course:
Please do not interrupt the student during his/her presentation;
Please give priority to students’ questions and responses (I will moderate the Q and A portion of the presentation);
If you have questions/comments, please keep them concise in view of the limited time available;
If possible, please reserve entrances to and exits from the room for the periods in-between student presentations; and,
If you have questions/observations that you’re not able to fit within our Q and A timetable, please send them to me at mabutler01@wm.edu. I’ll be sure that they get to the student.
We heard two presentations yesterday – one on Mussolini’s efforts to recreate the “glory that was Rome” in the 1920s and 1930s, and another on Constance Ray Harvey, a foreign service officer who served in the 1930s and 1940s as one of the first women to become a Foreign Service Officer. These were two very different presentations, but both were delightful.
I won’t go into the details of these presentations, but I want to tell you why I used the word “delightful” to describe them. First of all, these students exhibited remarkable self-confidence. They were presenting to people they knew – their classmates and their professor – but also to a group of unknown old folks – the Osher students sitting in the back and around the sides of the room. It is a lot of fun to watch baby historians flex their research and analytical muscles. Second, these students were comfortable telling what they knew and also confessing what they didn’t know.
Yesterday, one such admission shocked the old folks. One of the presenters casually admitted the difficulty she had in reading some old letters. “I can’t read cursive,” she said. We all gasped and then tried to pretend we hadn’t gasped. She went on, “Professor Butler has told us that script has become the secret code that old people can read and young people can’t.” The students chuckled, apparently acknowledging the truth in this statement. “So I took a picture of the letter with my phone and went to see Professor Butler. He read the letter to me; I recorded it on my phone and then went home and typed out what he said.” She proceeded to read the transcript of the letter (from her phone) while we were all reading from the handwritten letter she was projecting on the screen.
We have all heard about the decline in cursive instruction in elementary classrooms. I have seen the pretty bad handwriting of my grandchildren – but then, my son, who WAS taught cursive, has terrible handwriting as well. We were shocked to discover that an obviously smart upper-level student at a prestigious university was comfortable admitting that she couldn’t read cursive. Much like I would have been okay with admitting that I couldn’t read Latin when I was in college, I imagine. She had figured out how to access the information she needed and was okay with the process.
Older people are always appalled that the younger generations are not learning the same things we had learned. I can’t help but “catastrophize” her future if she can’t read cursive. But young folks always figure it out, as this student did.
The kids are all right.