Learning is a reoccurring theme for me this past week. It has been made abundantly clear that learning is a huge component of my job. In fact, one of the reasons I haven't been updating Pull of the Tides is that I've been expending mental energy to absorb all I need to know about the job I started last summer. This past week I began to learn new software that will enable me to complete some very important assignments during the summer and beyond. I am also learning the larger lessons of how to work within the assigned parameters, whether or not I agree with the methods executives choose to use. And now I'm training two young people for their summer internships, and mentoring has always been a way for me to learn and to grow.
The fact is that I cannot imaging a life without learning. I thrive on it. If my work includes a component that allows me to learn new things and constantly, I'm as happy as a clam. I'm just doing my job to filter through the information, and hopefully the water I output from my shell is clearer than it was before.
I have also encountered the theme of learning in my women's group meeting last Friday. It was one of the dominant themes of an otherwise playful and fun gathering. I remarked on the fact that of the ten women present, nearly all mentioned that they were (or had been) a teacher of some kind or the other. It's remarkable because we came to the meeting from diverse backgrounds and disciplines and lifestyles and, yet, teaching and learning were such common threads that united us and our discussion.
Several women mentioned how the Internet has changed their ways of thinking or processing what they have learned. They talked about how communication and learning walk hand-in-hand and how the Internet brings communities of like-minded people out there together to solve problems or answer questions. The Internet can also be sensory overload -- too much information thrown at you in a small space of time. Like most tools, the Internet becomes a resource and inspiration, but it can also bring on a kind of madness. For me, Facebook has been a fascinating experiment that I have found to be a tool of connection to people in my distant and not so distant past. It's also a site that can play amusing games with the viral method of transmitting fads, mini-games, and trends. Sometimes I find it's traffic so overwhelming I cannot visit it or begin to respond to all of the "pokes" and insistent "requests" from friends. And all because a friend who lives 500-miles distant invited me to join.
In the Digital Age, we see to learn information about events and people in oddly incomplete ways. We may know the latest tragedy or scandal the instant after it happens, but try to find reliable sources for the background on a news story and you really have to use your research skills. It's not easy to find reporters who aren't all quoting the AP wire or a single source or two. This is not to denigrate the work that journalists do, but rather to comment on the fragmented and two-dimensional ways that "easy information" comes to us.
As an archivist who works with primary sources every day at work, I understand all too well how important it is to choose your information sources carefully. A personal letter might tell one side of the story for a family tragedy that results in a court case, while the official record may record very different perspectives and collate a variety of local opinions on the case. Which is true is a question that the scholar has to decide. What case will she make? Whose side will she be one? People write about themselves differently than others may write about them. And what is "Truth" anyway? My graduate education in the humanities has taught me that there is no one version of the Truth. It changes depending upon who you are, what information you have at hand, and the cultural lens with which you see the world.
This brings me to a final way that I've been learning in the past week. Reading is a huge pleasure for me and has been ever since I acquired the skill in early childhood. I read both fiction and non-fiction for fun. At the moment I am reading a book published several years ago by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich named for a phrase she had used in a graduate student research paper that she wrote in the 1970s: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. In the book she explores the odd ways in which her "radical" phrase has spread through poplar culture since a reporter quoted it in an article. Women and men have interpreted her phrase to mean quite a different set of values and concepts over the years and Ulrich catalogs many of these uses. To her mind some are quite positive and life-affirming, while other uses of the quote have been negative, destructive, and even copyright infringement.
Yet Ulrich does not stop there. She then selects three literary women who made history: one in the wake of the Renaissance in Europe, one in the years of Suffragette struggle in the United States, and one modernist author very dear to my own heart (and past research). I find it fascinating that Ulrich can find threads of meaning between such distant personalities. I find it thrilling that she explores both their struggle as feminists and their struggles to find their own voices. If you are looking for a radical departure in scholarship, you will not find it in this book. You will find -- if you dare to look -- a sense that history has a way of repeating itself, of moving forward slowly. Some battles have been won, but the very popularity of Ulrich's phrase suggests there are still a few to be fought.
I'm still reading this book and still considering Ulrich's arguments. I am swayed by her argument that historians don't control history. Individuals do have the opportunity to make history themselves. Historians can sway opinion, but often they are the servants of history and their own cultural world-views. You can learn all you want about the past, but the knowledge you gain make teach you as much about the present as it has about history.
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