TOPIC: Oral history training and teaching
Papers read:
“National Education Meets Critical Pedagogy: Teaching Oral History in Turkey” by Leyla Neyzi
“Is Half a Loaf Better than None? Reflections on Oral History Workshops” by Lu Ann Jones
“Embracing the Mess: Reflections on Untidy Oral History Pedagogy” by Anna Sheftel
Interesting talk about reflection and critical thinking about the process of teaching and training oral history.
Teaching .v. Training
The central debate was about training and teaching oral history. The ‘half a loaf’ paper wondered if we distilled oral history too much and whether squishing oral history into a couple hours doesn’t allow for the participants to get into the nitty gritty of it all. Where teaching oral history involves papers, philosophy and critical thinking, training is far more practical. Someone compared training to learning to drive. You learn the basics, then you pass your test and then you only really learn how to drive properly afterwards. How you learn the basics can also be questioned as the majority of training happens in groups and so people often don’t get the chance for any one-to-one work, which can be extremely valuable.
I love a good tool box
Is it ethically OK to ‘train’ people for a couple of hours and then declare them ready to interview or design?
The big thing I took from it all was this parallel between oral history training and the various ‘tools’ and ‘systems’ the design industry offers. These mass produced ideas that are often not tailored to the needs of the situation. This tailoring is offer better through teaching and more time. As Natascha Jen says design is not just a step by step process its a mindset. You cannot teach people a mind set in two days.
But can you give them the tools to create a mindset for oral historys?
Are we too practically focused?
The conclusion was that there was a lack of reflection on the processes used to train people in oral history.
I wrote this many many days later because I have been surprisingly busy, which is why this is rather uninspiring.