Thursday, January 28, 2010

What's a Historian to do

We're working on a new website for Canada's History and I've spent the afternoon working on our New Research section. Academic research - understanding it, writing it, finding it - needs to be a part of high school history classes. It' s just not acceptable that young students should graduate from high school with no real sense of what historians do at the academic level.

But here in lies my frustration. I've been reading the Canadian Historical Review and a great article about Gender and Class in early Montreal by historian Elise Chenier. It's a really interesting piece that I think would be even more interesting given the emphasis on volunteering for high school students. It examines how young elite women moved from debutant balls and high society to more engagement in "volunteering" as economic times deteriorated.

Of course, I've been reading it through my account as a former student at the University of Western Ontario. I also am on campus at the University of Winnipeg so I could read it here in the library. But for the average high school teacher, where are you supposed to go to download a copy of this article. Worst of all, the University of Toronto Press charges $13 to get a PDF of the article. An annual subscription only costs $60 and it is just not reasonable to expect the general public to pay at that level for individual articles.

It's a frustrating experience for those who believe that academic history had an important place in high schools, in particular challenging students and encouraging them to study history at the university level. What's a historian or teacher to do?

4 comments:

Mike Cosgrave said...

The short answer is Open Access journals or open insitutional or national repositories for peer-reviewed publications; and that is something which should be high on the agenda for your society.

daniel john said...

Hi, interesting blog. This is a fantastic, It is glad to see this blog, nice informative blog,. I'm very thankful to the author for posting such an amazing development post.

College Research Paper

India Yellow Pages said...

Thnx....i personally really appreciate your work it has a lot of
info for a new blogger... i myself quite new in this field i once again say thanks for your great info..

replica watches said...

the business has lots of top reasons to come up with unique wrist watches. Go ahead and take last option instance as a cause. Omega wrist watches has come out with various designs enjoying this particular day at the actual silent celestial body and house warming than it. A beautiful enjoy that records your heart and soul involving place and explants will be the Fake Breitling Err Speed grasp Exclusive edition Celestial satellite Gents Observe, style 3577.50.One of my personal favorite designer watches ever will be the Bvlgari Diagono men's enjoy.