This is the third of a three-part post focusing on what I term, following Caroline Coffin, the “language of history” and substantive concepts.
After the first post
set out a broad theoretical framework, and the second post proposed
approaches to foreign-language terms as substantive concepts, this post argues
that we should aim not just to teach students to use substantive concepts but
also to question and critique them.
I’ll be presenting on this
topic with colleagues at the upcoming Schools History Project (SHP) conference
in Leeds in July 2025, so this is also a first attempt to set out and develop a
broad methodological approach to this work.
Questions, comments, and
criticisms are very much welcome!
George Orwell once argued, “The worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them.” If language is there "for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought, let the meaning choose the word, not the other way about." (Orwell, quoted by Brubaker and Cooper, 2000)
Accepting uncritically the words others give us is to surrender to them. It means us and our world being defined by others in their terms. Mastering and manipulating words to our own ends means we can define ourselves and our world in our own terms.
In that case, words in the classroom hold enormous power. They
give us, the teachers choosing the words and how to use them, power. They can
also give our students, if they can master those words for themselves, power.
In relation to substantive concepts – those weighty
conceptual terms we use to group together different phenomena the past – we
have a responsibility to not just teach our students concepts, but also to invite
them to question and critique those concepts.
The philosopher Herman Cappelen echoes Orwell, arguing that people can be divided into two broad groups, defined by their attitude towards concepts (Cappelen, 2018, pp. 5-6):
- the representationally complacent: “The representationally complacent uncritically take over the representational devices that are handed to them. They do their thinking and talking with whatever concept they have inherited from their peers, teachers, and community.”
- the representational skeptics [sic]: “Representational skeptics do not uncritically take over the representational devices handed to them. A significant part of their intellectual efforts consists in questioning and trying to improve the concepts of their peers, teachers, and community. When a representational skeptic starts reflecting on an issue, the first question she asks herself is whether the language used to articulate the key question is good enough.”
Cappelen is arguing here that a key element
of critical thinking is criticism of concepts. And if we accept that argument,
then we also set ourselves the challenge of turning our students into
“representational skeptics”, that is, into individuals who question and
critique the concepts we give them. We encourage our students to interrogate
the meanings – open and hidden – behind the terms we use as substantive
concepts. And we empower them to adapt, change, and if necessary abandon those
terms as a result of their critical engagement with them.
This post explores what this might look like
in the classroom.
Sceptical Approaches to Substantive Concepts: Adapt, Change, Abandon
Cappelen (2018, p. 35) puts forward three broad approaches to dealing
with concepts as a sceptic.
Broadly speaking, these involve:
- keeping the term (i.e. the word) and changing the concept (i.e. the idea it expresses) so the concept is improved (in other words, the idea expressed by the term can be used to better describe and analyse the world);
- changing the term and improving the concept, so we have a new word to express a better idea;
- abandoning the concept altogether, so that neither the word nor the idea it expresses are used at all anymore - neither are good enough.
In relation to history teaching, this suggests that substantive
concepts can be adapted, changed, and potentially even abandoned altogether. I
think there are very good reasons to take this idea seriously. But there are a couple preliminary
points I’d like to make. These will frame my argument and thinking for the rest
of this post.
Firstly, Cappelen’s approach is not just analytical. It also
has a moral dimension. It suggests that we don’t just try to improve the way
we’re using concepts but actually try to improve those concepts so we make the
world a better place. In the case of us, as history teachers, I’ll argue means
we should encourage students to use, question, and critique substantive
concepts in a way that not just make them better historians, but that invites them
to challenge injustice and build a better future.
Secondly, although the idea of keeping, changing, or
abandoning concepts might seem straightforward in principle, in practice it is quite
complicated and can lead to some rather surprising outcomes. This doesn’t mean
we shouldn’t do it; it does mean, though, that we should think carefully about how
and why we do it.
To illustrate these two points, let me consider a concrete
example of a very problematic substantive concept: “race”. Here, I’ll
present the case for abandoning this term and the concept it expresses, then ask
what would actually happen if we tried to do so. (I should point out that I’m restricting
this discussion to one substantive concept for reasons of brevity. The question
of how we should critically engage with substantive concepts is inevitably
much, much bigger and really needs to be considered with a great range of
substantive concepts; at the end of this post I’ll give a very brief
illustration of what this might look like.)
The Case
Against “Race”: A Flawed and Problematic Concept
The use of “race” as a substantive concept in the
history classroom is hugely problematic.
Emerging in the early-modern and modern periods (c.
1400s-early 1900s), the term as commonly understood today suggests humans can
be divided into basic types or categories. These categories have tended to be
based on physical characteristics, including
but not limited to skin colour (Wade, 2015). Developed with the help of some
truly bogus science and anthropology (Rutherford, 2021; Saini, 2018), the
concept was foundational to what historian George M. Fredrickson called
“overtly racist regimes” and underpinned systems of discrimination, imperialism,
slavery, segregation, and extermination especially between the 18th
and 20th centuries (Fredrickson, 2015).
Following the Holocaust, the term and concept of “race” became
so tainted that its very existence as a way of categorising human difference
was called into question. In 1950, a panel of experts convened by UNESCO (the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation) concluded
that “For all practical social purposes ‘race’ is not so much a biological
phenomenon as a social myth” and “it would be better when speaking of human
races to drop the term ‘race’ altogether and speak of ethnic groups.” (UNESCO,
1950) Although this statement was both rather ambiguous and controversial at the time, it marked a general shift away from “race” as a
legitimate category for biological analysis. (Wade, 2015, p. 89-90)
In many ways, then, “race” seems like a prime candidate for
a substantive concept that should be abandoned.
Certainly, there’s one way that I really don’t think “race” should be used in the history classroom, and that is as a
factual, objective description of how the world really is (or was). In teaching
about the British Empire and Holocaust, for example, I’ve tried to emphasise to students over the
past few years that, even though people in power
really believed in it, “race” was not and is not a factually accurate
description of human difference. Most scientists today accept there is one human
race and that the genetic differences between large population groups are just
too minor to see them as different human races. I’d argue that presenting this case to student is
not just an intellectual imperative, but also a moral one: the damage which the
concept of “race” has enabled and justified in the modern world means that its dangerous
assumptions should not go unchallenged.
In this case, we may well be better (as the UNESCO experts concluded in 1950) to abandon the term along with its concept, referring in our classroom not to “race” but instead to “ethnicity” (or “culture”, “heritage”, “pigmentation”, or another more specific and appropriate term to describe what we’re talking about).
Schrödinger’s
Concept? “Race” As Category of Analysis and Category of Practice
But is this actually the right approach? In fact, we quickly
run into problems when we try to abandon or replace a term of concept.
By getting rid of a term from history, we might compromise our ability to describe the world in which it was coined. In the last post, I introduced the idea that a concept was both a category of analysis and a category of practice. To recap, this idea was elaborated by Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper (2000) and means that concepts might be seen as both:
- objective: as categories of analysis, concepts can be used to analyse and conceptualise the past (as we do when we use an abstract noun to talk about recurring phenomena in history with our students);
- subjective: as categories of practice, concepts reflect the beliefs and experiences of those who, themselves, experienced the past and used these terms to describe it.
What this means in practice is that, even when we have as problematic a term and concept as “race”, there is a way of it being legitimately used in the classroom (even if, intellectually, we reject the concept itself).
Why so?
As a category of analysis, “race” is extremely
dubious and perhaps even valueless. If we accept that humans cannot be divided
meaningfully up into different “races”, then we might go as far as to say
“there is no such thing as race”. However, as a category of practice,
“race” does have real meaning. It is a social construct (Wade,
2015), an idea developed by humans which had (and still has) a real, tangible
impact on not just people’s ideas about the world, but also how the world
worked (and still works).
In other words, racist ideas may have been based on a
fallacious concept of the world’s populations, but when they led to racist policies
they had a concrete and undeniable impact on those populations. And in order to
perceive the world in which this concept was created and used, and in turn to question
and critique that concept and its impact on the world, we really do need the term
that was used to describe it.
This means that we can legitimately use a word without
using it in the same way as the people from history whom we are studying. To
quote Brubaker and Cooper (2000):
The mere use of a term as a category
of practice, to be sure, does not disqualify it as a category of analysis. If
it did, the vocabulary of social analysis would be a great deal poorer, and
more artificial, than it is. What is problematic is not that a
particular term is used, but how it is used. […] The problem is that
[concepts such as] ‘nation’, ‘race’, and ‘identity’ are used analytically a
good deal of time more or less as they are used in practice…
To my mind, this means that problematic concepts such as
“race” are something akin to Schrödinger’s cat. They are (potentially)
both dead and alive at the same time. Viewed from one angle, it is absolutely
legitimate to say “there is no such thing as race”. For the purpose of us,
history teachers, teaching students how the world objectively is and was, the concept
is therefore dead. But look from another angle and, hey presto! It’s alive and kicking.
In the minds, actions, and institutions of the people we teach about, “race”
really did exist and matter.
In that case, it makes sense that we not only invite and
empower students to question and critique the objective reality of concepts but
also teach them how and to what end those concepts were constructed. In this
case, as Kerry Apps has argued, students should be able “to understand that
race as a way of understanding difference was a concept constructed at a
particular point in history.” (Apps, 2021)
Improving
Flawed Concepts
So far, I’ve suggested that we might respond to a
problematic concept such as “race” by both abandoning it as a
category of analysis and accepting it as a category of practice.
However, there is a third possibility: that we keep a term,
weighed down as it might be with centuries of toxic baggage, and adapt the
concept so that it means something slightly different. To reiterate, this means that the word “race” remains, but the idea of what it means
changes.
Adapting a concept in this way might seem unrealistic, but
in the context of classroom teaching I think there’s a strong case for trying.
Remember that it’s not just people from the past who use flawed concepts and
terms like “race”; it’s also people today. And that means that, even if we
deliberately don’t use a word in our teaching, once they leave our
classrooms our students will nevertheless still come into contact with it in
everyday language. We therefore can’t expect our students (much less those
people we don’t teach) to stop using a word just because we do.
Moreover, especially with a term such as “race”, it’s worth
considering that for some people it carries highly powerful and positive
connotations linked to very legitimate grievances in the past and present (consider
the power of calls for “racial equality” or “racial justice” by groups repressed
on the basis of their skin colour or geographic origin).
In that case, we might accept the word but consider
carefully what we mean when we use it. We might choose to tell our students
that, while the idea that humans are made up of different “races” is
objectively flawed and caused great destruction and injustice in the past, the
term “race” can be accepted insofar as it refers to meaningful
differences between large groups in society, such as broad variations of skin
colour or geographic origin. We might also make explicit to students that,
while some people reject the term because of its connotations and past usage, others
embrace it as a way of empowering themselves and their communities.
I should say here that I’m far from comfortable using such a
toxic term as “race” in this way (I don’t, and most likely won’t, use it to
describe how the world really is to students; realistic or not, I’d much rather
live in a world where this concept and term didn’t exist at all). However, I
think this is an approach worth considering. Given that conceptual terms are out
there in wider society (whether we like them or not), there may be instances where
we choose to use the word but adapt what we mean by it, rather than change the
word or even abandon it and its concept altogether.
Turning
Students Into Sceptics: Concluding Thoughts
I started this post by arguing that we should seek to turn
our students into what Herman Cappelen calls “representational skeptics”, willing
and able to question and critique the concepts they encounter. I’ve tried to
make the case that, in the history classroom, we should empower students to interrogate
the terms by which we refer to phenomena from the past and, if necessary,
choose to change or even abandon those terms and the concepts they represent.
Although this discussion has focused on the substantive
concept of “race”, I think the approach of either keeping (and adapting), changing, or
abandoning conceptual terms has much broader applicability in the history
classroom. Below is a very brief illustration of how it could be used to
address a number of substantive concepts.
|
Substantive Concept (term) |
Keep the Term but Change the
Concept |
Change the Term and the
Concept |
Abandon the Concept Altogether |
|
“Empire” |
Acknowledge the (potential) range of kinds of empires
through history, including not just colonial systems, but also (e.g.) systems
of economic or cultural dependency |
Replace with specific and precise terms to describe forms
of external control over lands and peoples, e.g. “colonialism”, “economic
dependency”, “cultural assimilation/repression” |
Recognise the vagueness of the term and avoid using it on
the basis that it does not effectively link related phenomena from the past |
|
“Genocide” |
Recognise the range of ways, beyond physical destruction,
that groups can be destroyed, e.g. attacks on culture, language, economy,
politics |
Replace where necessary with more specific terms describing
destruction of elements of group or collective life, e.g. “urbicide” or
“domicide” |
Recognise the difficulty of reaching a common understanding
of the term (e.g. due to politicisation and contestation of its present-day application)
and avoid using it for purposes of analysis |
|
“Race” |
Emphasise actual differences between population groups,
e.g. pigmentation, geographic origin |
Replace where necessary with more specific, objectively
accurate terms such as “ethnicity” or “culture” |
Recognise both the objective inaccuracy and historical
injustice behind the term and refuse to use it on moral and/or intellectual
grounds |
|
“Resistance” |
Recognise a much wider range of possible acts of resistance
than previously considered, e.g. language, art, music, religion |
Replace where necessary with more specific or accurate
terms describing particular actions, such as “non-compliance” or “peaceful
protest” |
Recognise the vagueness of the term and avoid using it on
the basis that it does not effectively link related phenomena from the past |
|
“Terrorism” |
Conceive of a wider array of political violence as
terrorism, beyond the that of non-state actors (e.g. national militaries,
governments, or special forces) |
Replace with more specific terms, such as “assassination”,
or with broader terms, such as “political violence” |
Recognise the violence of terrorism being neither distinct
from broader military violence/war or general criminal violence |
|
“Totalitarianism” |
Shift the meaning of totalitarianism to indicate less than
full state control of a society and focus instead on the totalitarian
intentions of a state |
Replace with a term that acknowledges impossibility of
total state control of a society, such as “authoritarian nationalism” or
“authoritarian socialism” |
Abandon altogether the notion of total, or near-total,
state control of a society |
As these examples might indicate, I think the first option
(of keeping the term but adapting the idea or concept it describes) is actually
something history teachers do routinely with many substantive concepts. Indeed,
given the inherent slipperiness of substantive concepts (something I discussed
in my first post), this is probably inevitable if we’re going to address
them explicitly in our classroom.
I would also suggest that these three strategies can be
combined, not just by using one for some concepts and another for others, but
also by choosing in certain circumstances to use a term in one sense and not in
another. This, for example, might be describing a group of people as a “race”
in order to analyse the use of that word in the past, i.e. as a “category of
practice”, while choosing to change the term or abandon the concept altogether as
a “category of analysis” in our own language in the present.
However we approach this, I think one thing remains most important. In order to give our students power over words, we should
help them to question and critique the terms and concepts we use, thereby
turning them into sceptics.
Further
Reading
Kerry Apps, “Inventing race? Year 8 use early modern primary
sources to investigate the complex origin of racial thinking in the past”, Teaching
History 183 (2021), pp. 8-19
Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity’”, Theory
and Society 29: 1 (2000) pp. 1-47
Herman Cappelen, Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual
Engineering, Oxford University Press (2018).
George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History, Princeton
University Press (2002)
Adam Rutherford, How to Argue with a Racist: History,
Science, Race and Reality, Orion (2021)
Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science, Beacon
(2019)
UNESCO, The Race Question, UNESCO (1950)
Peter Wade, Race: An Introduction, Cambridge
University Press (2015)
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