What is History?
Works of the Alta Historian
If you’re reading this (or listening on the Substack app), you may be asking, “What is history?”
I often hear from friends, family, and students, “You don’t have to do anything once you build your courses besides grade — history already happened!” Well, if all I had to do was grade, I would quit — that is the worst part, especially if students use AI to do all their work (I will revisit this).
One of the best explanations I have heard on the question of “what is history” is from historian Bob Bain. Bain is a former high school history and social studies teacher who later entered the professoriate at the University of Michigan.
Here is a quote from Professor Bain, explaining his journey and perspective:
“I’ll be honest — if my high school history teachers knew I became a historian, they’d be shocked. I was a terrible history student because I hated the subject. To me, history meant memorizing names, dates, and events I didn’t care about, delivered through heavy textbooks about a past that felt irrelevant to my life. That changed in college…
History, I learned, is like detective work: past events happen and disappear, leaving behind traces — documents, objects, records — that historians turn into evidence by questioning them.”
Things in our world are happening all the time — history is everywhere. At the time I am writing this, the world is vast and open, with a wide variety of events that will have us looking to history for answers.
In my Latin American course, this includes Venezuela and U.S. intervention, the hard political shifts from left to right (Nayib Bukele and Javier Milei), and policies in Mexico that were centuries in the making.
In my U.S. history courses, pre-1877, this includes the Monroe Doctrine, historic moves into Latin America, the ideas of the Federalist Papers and republicanism (not the party, but the form of government), party conflict, and how we often perceive these ideas as static — like the Constitution — rather than as living documents to analyze.
At the moment, California’s history is on a wild course through current events that tie directly to it. Talks of wiping out Proposition 13 echo the over-taxation that caused citizens to revolt and bring the proposition to the table in the first place. Look at Proposition 50 and other propositions like it and the way California’s republic ties back to the elements that allow direct democracy on the ballot under Article II, Section 8.
And do I even need to say anything about the new technologies that have unlocked and rewritten our knowledge of the ancient world?
History is the way we understand our world: our government, human nature (evident in Plato’s and Cicero’s Republic), religious or atheist traditions, patriarchy, and even the computer or device you are using to read or hear this — all of it comes from history. We are merely guardians of this civilization.
In this course, we will use the words of Plato to engage with his mentor Socrates’ method — the Socratic approach — as we work through history together. What is the importance of education? Here is a small snippet from Plato’s Republic:
But there is, I think, small wisdom in legislating about such matters — I doubt if it is ever done; nor are any precise written enactments about them likely to be lasting.
It would seem, Adeimantus, that the direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
Does not like always attract like?
To be sure. Until some one rare and grand result is reached which may be good, and may be the reverse of good? That is not to be denied.
People are naturally drawn toward what they are trained to value, and the study of history with me as your professor is a form of training (for all of us), which I hope you will come to value. This course is here to influence you, as Plato noted, but perhaps not in the way you think. Early influences usually determine the kind of person you become — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse — so I ask you to take the bull by the horns with your education.
Also, I am here not to tell you what to think, but to help you learn how to think in a way you may not yet be comfortable with — to explore ideas, explore yourself, and understand that history is a record of billions of people who lived before you. People who had the same doubts, similar obstacles, crushing bias, tragedy, and pain. Why not learn from them without directly enduring every bad decision already made by another?
History allows us to look at other lives through their lens, but only if we allow ourselves. Why did “they” (those we will study) take actions that now appear ill-advised, heroic, bigoted, glorious, genius, selfish, selfless, or otherwise? Take yourself out of the picture, and examine the world through their eyes. Their motives. Their wants, desires, and feelings — and, at times, their biases.
That is what history is: how it applies to you in your journey and to me in mine is up to us. I only ask that you take yourself seriously enough to challenge yourself and your ideas. My role as your professor is to take what I know and help guide you on this historical journey of self.
And this brings me back to my AI policy. You may use AI as a tool to assist you, but that is where it must end.
Here it is in a sentence:
If you are unable to see history through the lens of historical figures — outside of your own bias — you will have done yourself a great disservice.
AI will not help you see varying perspectives when, in the real world, you are dealing with a spouse, a boss you despise at a job you desperately need, someone who dislikes you because you’re incredibly handsome (like me 🤣), or the opportunity you dreamed of being in someone else’s hands.
At the end of this course, your grade will go on a transcript — I don’t care about that, and if you ask me, neither should you — your grade will be much better if you just get to work.
You will be judged in those moments I mentioned, void of AI’s help, and only then will you know whether this course was helpful to you.
Professor Romo. The Alta Historian.
Bibliography | Notes
Bain, Bob. Intro to History. Video, part of 7.2 Ways of Knowing: Agriculture and Civilization, OER Project: Big History. https://www.oerproject.com/OER-Materials/OER-Media/Videos/SBH/Unit-7/7-2-Ways-of-Knowing-Ag-and-Civilization/Intro-History.