Interview with Bob Galante: Part 1

Bob Galante has quite the resume. He has a Master of Arts in Teaching Social Studies from Fairleigh Dickinson University, is an adjunct professor of American history at Syracuse University, is a Two-Time Teacher of the year in Rumson, New Jersey, and has received the Philip Merrill Award from the University of Maryland in 2012, just to name a few. He also runs The History Dr.com, a consulting site for teachers as well as the Educators' Blog and the Boomerang Blog, the latter of which deals specifically with history. I reached out to him for his opinion on a range of subjects pertaining to history and how it is taught. As you can see, his brilliance in history is only matched by his passion for it. 

What attracts you to history?

I'm attracted to history because it's alive. It's all around us. The study of history allows us to perceive patterns in society. It enables us to go back and forth quickly between the present and the past. I believe very firmly that in the history of the world there are very few questions; they just keep playing out as ferociously as if it had never happened before. By studying history we can get out in front of the trends in society. We can see where society is going, so we can get out in front of those changes and make them work for us.

History allows us to take present controversies and see where they have happened before. We get to see previous examples of current issues and problems and then we get to see how it turned out in the past. We can then think [about] the results [and the lessons of them] and applying them [to] now. History is all around us.

Take something like Shays Rebellion in 1787. Revolutionary war soldiers were being thrown into the debtors prisons because they couldn't pay their bills. They were having farms foreclosed on by the courts, with their possessions seized and auctioned off. They rebelled against the system. Where do we see something like that right now? Think about the treatment of veterans coming home from our foreign wars. Should Congress exempt them from foreclosures if they fall behind on their mortgages? Something like Shays rebellion would get all of three sentences in an average history textbook for students but the issues of Shays rebellion are enormous. And they are all around us right now.

I'm attracted to history because it allows us to pick up a newspaper, read the current events and stories, and very quickly come to conclusions about what is at stake. The goal of history is to take today's problems and see where they've happened before. Or to take problems in history and determine current manifestations and current examples of them. History really matters.

I'm attracted to history because it makes us smarter and better people who were able to make more enlightened decisions about the human future by knowing its past.

Why start a blog?

I started The History Dr.com in July 2016 with the mission to share the meaning of democratic citizenship with others. While I no longer teach full time in the public schools, I still want to make a contribution to societal discourse. I want to help move some issues along in our society. 

The blog History Dr.com is a very exciting project, because it allows me to practice what I believe is important: that is, seeing of events around us in exploring how the past reveals examples and outcomes of the core problem. The blog allows me to try to go back and forth quickly between past and present, looking for similar motives of people, arrangements of power, and the interests of different factions of people. The blog allows me to try to be valuable to my readers in illuminating the connections between past and present, and hopefully writing in a clear and direct way.

Join us for Part II, coming soon!