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History Dept. Ailing

by Bryan Mulligan

The History Department is neither dead nor buried. When I spoke to Dr. Beaglehole on April 19th the Department had only one foot in the grave, and reliable sources inform me that this condition has been maintained.

It must be admitted that the department is in ill health and that the task faced by its doctors is an arduous one. Perhaps the most severely hit area of its activities is its Honours year. With three members of its staff going on sabbatical next year the offering of Honours courses will be severely curtailed.

It appears that next year there will be a mere 5 papers offered, from which each student will have to choose 4. There are several remedies being considered. One of these would have students choose 3 papers from those offered and, then, if he/ she so desires, to approach any staff member to supervise a long (research-oriented) essay upon an agreed topic in lieu of a 4th paper.

Another possible remedy would include the above suggestion but would seek to amalgamate the teaching of certain of the papers into courses of comparative study. For example, papers 403 (Pacific History: trusteeship and decolonization) and 408 (India 1917-47: the transfer of power) could become a comparative study of the devolution of colonial control. While this particular scheme has its merits, it does have serious drawbacks. It may, for example, compel students to study under a staff member they may not wish to, or in an area in which they have little or no interest. It would, if the teaching is combined, restrict student choice of study areas completely—unless such a scheme is put off until the Department is fully staffed. There also appear enormous difficulties in the co-ordination of the teaching of two (or more) staff members in order to achieve a worthwhile comparative study.

One of the other areas of concern to the physicans looking at this case is the absence of any real contact with the modern European world. Out of the three first-year courses, History 103 appears a virtual non-entity (as shown by minimal enrolments). History 104 is a comprehensive course on New Zealand which could hardly be anything but modern (and still be history), History 101 is Medieval History. And then there was History 102, Modern European History. Note the past tense however, for 102 alas has had its day. Two of its mainstays seek to teach in their specialty areas. Therefore next year History 102 will become a paper on Early Modern Europe: 1600-1850.

The Department seems to feel the present world beneath study for, with the exception of papers on Britain (204), New Zealand (104 and 308) and America (205 and 307) the modern European world is ignored. The Department has known (hasn't it?) for some time that it has a serious deficiency in the field on Post-1850 European History. It is to be hoped that this matter will acquire urgent attention in the near future.

As with most departments, History appears to demand a considerable (excessive?) amount of work from its students. Little relief of pain in this area seems possible in the near future, as, from 1976, credit-weighing for all 200-and 300-level courses will be increased from 4 to 6, thereby incurring an increased workload. It remains to be seen, however, how individual courses will exact this increase.

The charge is often levelled at History that it is irrelevant. Considerable merit resides in the arguments of those who so charge. Indeed, the rarefied atmosphere at the summit of Rankine Brown (try climbing it and see what I mean) seems to have been unduly conducive to a dignified and scholarly necrosis.

It is no understatement to claim that the physical position of the Department exemplifies its attitudes to its communal position. Our estimed Department demonstrates an unwillingness to unmask personal bias and prejudices; an over-concentration on the trees with little or no attempt to view the modern forest and a failure to tackle the root sources of the problems with which [unclear: are] are beset today.

There are, however, three problems which beset the Department that can only be cured after staffing is improved. The first of these is the old canker of 'academic integrity': the undue emphasis on disciplinary tightness which leads, too often, to attitudes best described as the ego-masturbation, and student intellect-castration evident in courses such as the Hons. papers Historiography of the Civil War and the former compulsory (but fortunately no longer compulsory) History and Historians.

The second problem is that mentioned above: academic ivory toweredness. The third is the inbred nature of the Department. The 'old pupil syndrome' seems to have reached its nadir in the History Dept., and the lack of staff in the Department, I am sure, is in large part due to self-perpetuating cliquishness.

However, being possessed of considerable skill in bureaucratic politiking, it is to be hoped that increased staff numbers are not far away, and that this will prove to be the necessary cure for smallness, narrowness in approach and attitudes and the paucity of the range of courses available which are the major ailments of the History Department.