Any teacher of an American history survey course has wrestled with organizing a vast amount of material into a concise, integrated, and understandable series of lectures that can be presented within a few months. Covering the major national events that occurred between 1865 and the present often leaves little time to explore the underlying causes and effects that propelled historical development. Both themes focus on change and development and highlight the impact that national trends have on the everyday lives of Americans.
Oral history provides students with an important tool to make such connections.
Interviewing people who experienced the poverty of the Great Depression, the violence of school integration, the turbulence of the Vietnam War era, or the fears of the Cuban missile crisis dramatically underscores the evolutionary nature of American history. As part of my teaching curriculum, I require my students to conduct historical interviews for their term paper assignments and to present their findings during class discussion. I instruct each student to choose one event covered in class and to interview at least two people who lived through that event. That process alone can raise as many questions as it answers. Students often discover during an interview that individuals forget or gloss over painful subjects.