Editor’s note: First-year students, prospective students (and some
of their parents) wonder and worry how they will handle the academic
transition from high school to college. In a series of stories, UDaily
speaks with University of Delaware professors who teach courses commonly
taken by students during their first year on campus. The series
includes professors who teach biology, writing, business, calculus,
political science and sociology, and those stories can be read on the
How I Teach website. In this story, Professor Darryl Flaherty explains his approach to teaching world history.
At the beginning of the semester, University of Delaware history
Professor Darryl Flaherty gives students in his world history class a
non-graded quiz to gauge their understanding and sense of the world. One
of the questions: What percentage of the world lives on less than $10 a
day?
He said most students are surprised by the answer: 66%. But the point
of the quiz isn’t to get all — or even most — of the answers right.
“The exercise isn't so much about did you get it right or did you get
it wrong. I really want, in my teaching, to try to get students to stop
thinking that way, to stop trying to check the box that you got the
answer right,” he said. “Rather, I try to get them to think and begin to
question and begin to see the bigger picture. I think that many
students have not been asked to look at the world and question their
understanding of the past and how it’s connected to the world that we
inhabit now.”
The introductory-level course is officially termed World History
Since 1400 (HIST104), but even determining when exactly “modern history”
begins is a question Flaherty poses to his students. When asked what
defines “modern,” many students instinctively reach into their pockets,
pull out their phones and say, “This is modern — the ability to answer
any question in my pocket,” Flaherty said. In other words, technology is
what makes things modern.
Flaherty then asks his students: If technology is what defines
modernity, where do the technologies — Flaherty gives the compass,
watertight compartments on ships and movable type printing as a few
examples — that began to create a connected world come from? The answer:
China.
But Flaherty counters that technology isn’t the definer, so he offers
students another idea, which is that merit, or an individual’s ability
to contribute to society, is the marker of the modern world. That idea
that an individual’s value should be measured by standards of civility
(which was defined by Confucius long before what anyone considers the
modern era, Flaherty notes) began to take shape in Song Dynasty China.
So that’s where the course begins. But, equally important, where does it end?
“Where do we start the story? Do we start with Columbus in 1492,
which is another conventional way of thinking about the beginning of the
so-called Age of Exploration. But if you start there, then you're
saying that modernity begins with Europe,” Flaherty said. “And then, of
course, where do we end the story? If we end it now, then we see also
the kind of newly ascendant China again. If we take the span of time and
stretch it out, then the picture looks very different than if we start
with Columbus, and end with, say, the fall of the Berlin wall. So I
encourage them to begin to think about those kinds of questions.”
A key element of the class is getting students to question the
meaning and purpose of history, which Flaherty said is the value added
for a college level history course. HIST 104 is open to everyone —
there's no expectation that anyone's ever studied world history or even
any kind of history at all. But many of the students who have studied
history have done only a “names and dates” study of the past where
they're required to simply master chronology.
“The skill that many students master in high school is the capacity
to summarize. In other words, they're given a narrative and then they're
asked to reflect that narrative back to the instructor, and that's an
important skill and a level-appropriate skill,” he said. “In an
introductory college course, the emphasis shifts more to the questions
of how and why. My sense of history is that it's telling stories about
the past that have meaning in the present.”
Lectures and lots of readings are to be expected in any history
class, but the lectures are very interactive. During weekly discussion
sections, Flaherty offers guided questions, but it’s the students who
drive the discussion.
For an entry-level course, it’s not an easy class — but it is a rewarding one.
“I don't think he's an easy professor. He truly does challenge his
students,” said Emma Knapp, a first-year international relations major
who took the course in the fall of 2021, her first semester on campus.
“It was one of my toughest classes, but I also learned more from this
class than any other. So if you're a student similar to me — you love to
learn and you love to go beyond the readings and communicate with the
professor frequently — then this class is definitely a really good
course.”
The topic of world history is broad and huge; it would be impossible
to discuss every world event spanning 600-plus years within the confines
of a 14-week course. So Flaherty encourages his students to delve
deeper into their own concerns or interests.
Over the course of the semester, Flaherty has his students work on a
project of their choosing. Working either individually or in small
groups, students can take any question or concern that they have about
history and then develop it through any medium. Many students choose to
write a paper, but it’s also an option to make a video or even create a
piece of artwork. Flaherty has had students write a paper about Japanese
math, explore the world history of physical therapy and even critique
the documentary “Babies,” which contrasts child-rearing in four
different cultures.
Flaherty purposely makes the assignment as open-ended as possible.
“Students are keyed to be prompted, and I want them to prompt
themselves,” Flaherty said. “Some students are frustrated with that.
They’ll come to me and say, ‘You're talking about XYZ, and I'm
interested in Q and you’re not talking about Q very much.’ The Q — the
student’s interest — I can facilitate that. I'm a historian, so whatever
your Q is, I will help you get there, but you have to ask.”
Creating a community of learning is the teaching philosophy Flaherty embraces.
“One model of learning is that students are empty vessels that I fill
up. That’s not my model. I don't see people as empty vessels,” he said.
“I see everyone as having interests and enthusiasms, and world history
allows me to open the door for them to explore and develop something
that they're interested in or concerned about, and then connect that to
the broader history of humanity.”
Aidan McGinnis, a first-year political science major, was surprised by how much he got out of the class.
“When you think about gen-ed classes, I think for a lot of us, it's
kind of a box to check,” McGinnis said. “My first semester I have to
take history, math and science. I check the box and then I get to do the
stuff that matters — the stuff I want and stuff that will develop me
for the job I want. But for me, taking that ‘check the box’ class and
actually being able to take something from it and apply it to my future
career wasn't something I expected but was something I was really
excited about. Professor Flaherty made sure that everybody took
something from the class so that they felt this course wasn't a
check-the-box course but was really essential to their success in their
field.”
Our world is global in ways that many people experience every day but
don’t think critically about, yet much of our history remains national,
Flaherty said. Whether it’s news about Ukraine, the pandemic or the
effects of climate change, we all live globally, and Flaherty wants his
students to think critically about the global world that we inhabit.
“We all understand that, yes, we live in a global world, but when we
think about the mental structures that we bring to our everyday lives,
they're usually focused on our immediate communities, and then more
broadly, if we think critically, usually it's through the lens of the
national experience,” he said. “So I think it's important to try to
develop a world lens, and world history is key for doing that.”