We tell kids they can do anything and be anyone. In fact, most people grow up to occupy the same—or comparable financial and professional circles that their parents occupied. Exposure makes a world of difference. What eighteen-year-old aspires to a career they have never seen in practice before?
Meeting people in a wide variety of different careers can make a difference. Unfortunately, it isn’t always an accessible option. Most schools struggle to keep their students reading on grade level. They can’t afford to put much energy into career day.
Robust history education can provide students with valuable levels of exposure that introduce them to jobs they’ve never seen before.
In this article, we take a look at how history programs can prepare students to discover new careers. We also examine why it is important.
History Provides Context
Jobs look a little different when you can see how they play out over the course of centuries. Every high school student has heard of lawyers. Maybe they’ve seen the obnoxious billboards that seem to line every highway in the country. Do they know that lawyers of the 18th century helped frame the Constitution, and that every attorney to work in the United States since then has—at least in a sense—interpreted and defended it?
You don’t even need to go all the way back to the Declaration of Independence to get a new perspective on familiar jobs. Recent history has revealed the incredible importance of healthcare workers. Today’s high school students will remember the pandemic but they probably weren’t old enough to understand just how important, or even heroic nurses were.
Pandemic-related healthcare shortages are still causing problems that today’s seventeen-year-olds might be well-positioned to alleviate in the near future.
Many jobs develop an almost heroic perception in the face of history. What major global situation hasn’t been enormously influenced by brave journalists?
History courses don’t need to radically change in order to emphasize the way people can make a major difference just by doing their jobs. Simply spotlighting the various careers that played a role in shaping historical events can make a major difference.
In the next few headings, we take a look at peripheral benefits that slightly modified history curriculums can create.
Career Readiness
When kids make the transition into junior and senior year of high school, they begin to experience a lot of pressure to start thinking about a career. It’s quite a lot to ask of someone who is almost a decade shy of even being able to rent a car, but that’s the system we’ve got.
History isn’t exactly great for picking out jobs. “Julius Caesar was a senator? Well, politics here I come!” However, the qualities that are frequently preserved in history books can help inspire students in their professional and personal lives.
The value of struggle. Persistence. Percervience. The innate quality of human strength that characterizes all great moments in recorded history.
Remember: Storytelling is our oldest and perhaps most effective means of passing along information. As your students begin to think about the next stage of their life it can help to look back at what people were doing in the past.
Underachiever?
One of the hard things about being an “uninspired” student is that they are quickly assigned labels. The idea that someone is an underachiever seems to suggest that they are innately flawed for their unwillingness to adapt to the structured environment of a public school.
But surely no one would call Albert Einstein an underachiever. Though the famed scientist consistently scored high marks in math and science, he was a notoriously mediocre student in all of his other classes, rarely earning above what would be considered a “C” by today’s grading scale.
History is full of rags-to-riches stories, which can be very motivating for people who feel discouraged by their current circumstances. The story of Alexander Hamilton is a good example, and certainly one that has experienced renewed interest thanks to the play. There are many other examples that kids from every background can use as inspiration.
It’s important for kids to gain access to archetypal narratives that extend beyond the rather narrow social structures of high school life. Rather than falling neatly into a John Hugh’s-like slacker persona, they can begin to understand their own complexity by assessing how other people reacted in similar situations.
Many students struggle in school not because the materials are difficult for them, but because they aren’t well adapted to their school’s structure. History provides a lifeline, showing that it is still possible to carve a niche out for yourself, even if you sometimes feel like a square peg.
History Can Also Motivate Change
Lackluster students aren’t the only ones who can feel inspired by the call of history. Our social record is also full of people who have stood up to insurmountable odds, and come out the other permanently distinguished in the public consciousness.
In situations where the exterior (or even interior world of your school) feels unfair or unsafe, historical figures can be a great point of reference for how change is possible. For example:
- The women’s suffrage movement demonstrates that anyone can make their voice heard when they develop the right platform.
- The civil rights movement proves the power that even the disenfranchised can wield in an unfair society.
- The gay rights movement indicates that people can change their minds.
Now, granted, none of those initiatives were perfect. Women, black people, and the LGBTQ+ community still experience an enormous number of challenges. However, there is a narrative arc to each one of these moments in human history that can be inspiring to a young person who feels overwhelmed by their circumstances.
Civil struggle is all about people claiming power for themselves, even when the rest of the world is quite adamant that they not have it. That’s a narrative that most kids will be able to relate to at certain points in their lives.
