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Talking Texas History
Talking Texas History
Teaching's Shifting Sands
Charles Waite, who teaches Texas History at UT-RGV, joins Gene and Scott to survey the fascinating landscape of teaching Texas history, academia, and personal anecdotes. Our conversation is steeped in nostalgia, as we reminisce about our shared experiences at Texas State University - San Marcos (Southwest Texas State) left an indelible mark on our academic journeys.
Our conversation with Chuck demonstrates the trials and triumphs of pursuing an academic career. Together, we discuss the evolving challenges of the academic job market and the dedication required to thrive in such a competitive environment. As Chuck recounts his path to becoming a history professor, we explore the influences of mentors and teaching styles that shaped his approach to education, emphasizing the importance of cultural diversity in teaching Texas history along the dynamic Texas-Mexico border.
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the past.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. I'm Scott Sosbe and I'm Gene Preuss, and this is Talking Texas History. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Preuss.
Speaker 1:I am Scott Sosby. Gene, we continue our I think it's our we're going through our week of your old my old home week. Home week from people at Southwest Texas State, which I don't can we say Southwest Texas State anymore, or is it like somebody? The police are going to come rain down on us and make it say Texas State?
Speaker 2:The police are going to come rain down on us and make it say Texas Tech. Well, we're talking with probably my oldest friend from college, and that is Charles Wade.
Speaker 3:Hello how are you.
Speaker 1:We all three went together. We were in graduate school together at Texas Tech, and so this is old home week for a lot of us, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:Right, but Chuck and I started at San Marcos in. I started there in ninety, ninety, eighty, nine, ninety.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I started OK man, that's a long time that is a long time ago. That was long before. It's longer the more you think about it, chuck, that was a long time ago, but Chuck is now down at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, which is a relatively new school. When did they go together?
Speaker 3:They merged. Whatever they did, they combined in 2015.
Speaker 1:2015. I couldn't remember exactly when that was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we were UTPA in Edinburgh and UTBTSC in Brownsville.
Speaker 1:I guess it all worked out and y'all did all right. Yeah, it kind of surprised us with it. Well, we know all about you, Chuck, but maybe not everybody in the audience does. So why don't you start us off by telling us about yourself, education, how you got interested in history, where you're from, what you do, all those kind of good things?
Speaker 3:All right, well, hello folks. Education, how you got interested in history, where you're from, what you do, all those kind of good things. All right, well, hello folks. My focus is US history, especially the South, the Old South, the Civil War era and Texas history. I've been at what used to be Pan Am's UTRGV now since 2004, which seems like forever ago and teaching various classes there. I'm excited to be on the program here.
Speaker 1:You got degrees at UT right. Did you get your? When you got your diploma from Southwest Texas State, did you send it back and get the one that says Texas State on it?
Speaker 2:now, sure, you had the original one still.
Speaker 1:I guess they got you to do that right. And then, of course, you completed your doctorate at Texas Tech. We were all there and, you know, every time people get together we start reminiscing, I suppose, and many of these people maybe people in our audience haven't heard of, but everybody has memories of graduate school. Why don't you tell our audience who are some of the most memorable professors you had and give some insight? Most memorable professors you had, and it gives some insight. What made them so memorable and what do you think you learned from them more than anything else?
Speaker 3:Well, I remember let's see what was it. Summer of 87 at UT Austin, I had a when they used to call it Western Civ. I had a Western Civ class, but our prof was a guy named Carlos Le Gray from Italy, and the approach he had to teaching the class was to go in and throw up his hands or talk with his hands a lot, and he would say something like good day students, Welcome, friends of the French Revolution. And should we rise up and kill the aristocrats, or should there be a counter-revolution with Napoleon? We argued all this stuff. We read about the French revolution, we read the communist manifesto, we read an extremely depressing book called life in Auschwitz, and I remember a lot from that class.
Speaker 1:What we do in the classroom, we all model shows. In fact, one of my thing I'm talking about I had been here four or five years and I was in a graduate seminar class and I remember that my eyesight had started to go and so I got some glasses and they were resting on my nose and I leaned forward on the chair and I said look class. And I just kind of called myself and I said, oh my God, I'm turning into Paul Carlson right here before my eyes. But we all modeled ourselves on some people. Is there somebody that you saw with it that you said this is who I model myself on in the classroom?
Speaker 3:Carlson kind of borrow a little bit. Don Walker is a good one.
Speaker 1:I think we all have a little bit of Don Walker. He did the nice folksy approach to Texas history.
Speaker 3:That's true. Go out back to the building hey boys, let me buy you lunch and talk about Texas.
Speaker 1:He has the best opening line. I still use it In a Texas history class when he taught the undergraduate Texas history. Now listen, if you're in this class and you think you're going to come in here and listen to this gun smoking bullshit, you're in the wrong class.
Speaker 3:Wow, that is a good opening line. They remember that.
Speaker 2:Was that Carlson that said that?
Speaker 1:No, it was Don Walker.
Speaker 2:Don Walker said it. So, chuck, you TA'd for Carlson right.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, my first semester.
Speaker 2:So I remember that Chuck would, because Chuck and I were roommates and Chuck would come home. Chuck says Carlson ends the class with hug somebody, it'll make you feel better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he gave a little snippet on your way out and he's like the gruff voice again. He'd say hey class, hug someone, it'll make you feel better.
Speaker 2:Don't hug me though, yeah.
Speaker 1:Don't hug me, doc. You do that. You do that these days you might get in trouble.
Speaker 3:That's right. Remember the day I showed up for classes started my introduction to graduate school through Dr Carlson was oh wait, you're here. You're late. We got a lot of shit to do. Yes, sir, All right, but he was right, we did have a lot of shit to do.
Speaker 1:First time I ever met him, I told him this story. He claims that he didn't do this, but I should have recorded it because he did, because he was the graduate advisor.
Speaker 1:And when I came in and he was the graduate advisor, and when I came in, and he was the graduate advisor when I came to go to graduate school, and so you know, in those days you had just went and showed him your little card and they, you know, signed off on it. So I gave him my card. He's sitting behind his desk leaning back in his chair and he couldn't see, and so he's accordion arming out there at that card and he goes why the hell do you want to take these classes? And I didn't know what to say and I just said one of them is your class, sir. And he goes damned if it isn't. Damned if it isn't. And he started laughing. He signed my card and went on.
Speaker 3:That was my experience. I took whatever there was the first semester and then I go to sign up for the spring and he says what idiot signed you up for these classes? You did, sir.
Speaker 2:That's your introduction to grad school. So, Chuck, what?
Speaker 3:made you with all these great stories? What made you decide to be a history professor? That when I okay, I started as an undergrad, I wanted to be an engineering major. My dad was an engineer, you know he made decent money and all that I could. As an undergrad, I wanted to be an engineering major. My dad was an engineer, you know he made decent money and all that. I could get a job, but bad idea, because there's lots of math and science Next semester.
Speaker 3:After that I'll be a business major. Didn't want to do that either. Finally, rick realized I could be a history major. I thought, well, this is good, I'll get a master's degree, teach at a JUCO or something community college. And then I found out a lot of PhDs are going there. So it was kind of like stack up the degrees so you'll get a job, and it worked out well in the end. It's a strange process, how the hiring has gone over the years.
Speaker 2:So you just kept going to school, basically.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, stay out of. Vietnam.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's right. Well, you know, the hiring process is one of those things we're talking about now, but we were talking before this about how hard now, if you get a PhD, whether you're going to get a job or not in the history profession, that's probably next to nothing. If you get a PhD, whether you're going to get a job or not in the history profession, that's probably next to nothing. All three of us finished roughly the same time. When did you finish your degree, chuck? 2002?
Speaker 3:99, I did my defense.
Speaker 1:Oh, did you really that?
Speaker 2:early. Oh, Chuck finished his classes and he pushed through that dissertation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the dissertation was when you finished your dissertation. It was in 99?, was it that early? Yeah, the dissertation was wait. When you finished your dissertation was in 99?, was it that early?
Speaker 3:Yeah, August of 99. Really I couldn't do this today, but I buckled down and just cranked out a chapter every couple months and got through it.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I thought it was a little later than that. Then I finished in 2004, which, gene, also right, because we graduated at the same time, gene and I yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Gene was on the 40-year plan of going through and we all three got jobs at tenure-track universities when we were told that was fairly rare, but it actually wasn't. Now it really is, and the job process and the job market is really really tight these days. If somebody came to you, Chuck, and said I'm thinking of going to graduate school and getting a PhD in history, Honestly, what would you tell them? What advice would you give?
Speaker 3:honestly, I'd say it's a bad idea if you want a job. When a student comes by and asks me about that, I say, basically, sit down and shut the door and I've got some things to tell you. And you've got a huge investment of time, first of all, if you want to spend the next five years going to school five years or more huge investment of money and then the chances of a job on the other side. Now, having said that, it's a great job and I hate to rain on anybody's parade and not have them sign up because of me, but they've got to know what's ahead of them.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of in the same situation, although you know, we're all getting pretty old, maybe we're all going to retire soon and open up a bunch of positions for some of these young PhDs to come along and fill our shoes. Well, they won't be able to fill our shoes, but they can try.
Speaker 2:So do you remember Don Walker? And I don't, you know, saddest maybe this is you and me, chuck. Don Walker sat us down and said boys, we're outside smoking a cigarette. Boys, you know, whenever you get your PhDs you know he shook his finger a lot there's going to be a lot of openings, right, there's going to be all these openings and you guys are going to fill them. And, as it turned out, I think we were told later on that our group Scott, Chuck, myself were the last ones to get tenure track positions out of the gate.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's right. Well, maybe Leland did. Leland did pretty quickly. Oh, he doesn't count because he's already quit. Yeah, there's not very many, that's for sure. And and always the here's the analogy I use is that you know the famous when they talk about the profession. Uh, the famous example so many people use when we were in graduate school was the fact that I think it was in 1986 that ucla alone produced more PhDs that year in history than there were jobs open in the whole United States.
Speaker 1:Wow the 80s were that time of just it was just barren. There was like it is now, where nothing was happening and people were not getting jobs. But then in the late 1990s, those, all those people that were hired in the 70s and the early 60s and the 70s began to retire and so the jobs opened back up and the window came open. And we got to slide into that window. But, man, about 2008, 2009, that window slammed shut. Nobody's opened it back up really, since then. Then it's a.
Speaker 3:It's a tight market, but it still is a good market well, maybe we're the ones that have to retire it up, but that's what it is.
Speaker 1:We are. Well, all three of us teach texas history. It's what we, that's our main thing that we teach. Uh, what do you we've talked on this with with? This is a question we ask a lot of professors and they come on our class, on our show what take? What do you want your students, chuck, when your students leave your classroom at the end of your Texas history class, what do you want them to take away from your class?
Speaker 3:I've gotten away from the. You memorize this fact, this date, this governor, this president and more towards. Here in Texas, you've got at least four or five different cultures coming together. You start out with Native Americans, then you get the Spanish, the French, later German immigrants, african Americans, people from the old South, lower South, upper South, midwestwest, everywhere else, and it all makes this big. Um, I don't know this, this mix. I think it's very interesting that culture is a big thing these days, especially where I am, it's close to another, being in the middle of another one.
Speaker 1:That's true, it's. I mean, I mean, definitely the border is a different culture. Well, I mean, I teach that I have a whole section on border culture, uh, and, and it really is a unique culture. I'm not so sure. I don't know, chuck, you're down there in the guts of it and I've always maintained I don't know whether this is true, but 50 years from now, that border culture that may be the culture in the whole of the state.
Speaker 1:It may become the dominant culture in Texas, which is not a bad thing If I'm still alive. The food will be better the food will be better, that's for damn sure. We need some of that border culture to come to East Texas to teach these people how to make Tex-Mex food. I'll tell you that right now.
Speaker 3:Well, we've got a. There's a program here what do they call it? B3 Scholars. They have these classes that have a multicultural element and, yeah, the language. Once you understand the language and the culture and how it all fits together, it's about 50 years from now.
Speaker 1:I don't know what's going to happen. How many students do you all have that are from Mexico, that come over we?
Speaker 3:usually have. Okay, I've got sections of 30 and then, um, if I'm in edinburgh, which is about 20 miles from the border, we might have two or three either cross from reynosa somewhere else across the border, or maybe they grew up in mexico. Now you get up brownsville and teach there, which I do sometimes, and Matamoros is right next door. Some people are just crossing and then you can see the river almost from the university. So it's much more enmeshed there.
Speaker 1:I guess that was more my point. How many people are actually? They live in Matamoros or Reynoso and then they come and commute to school at UTRGB.
Speaker 3:Not as many as they did. Reynoso's had some issues in the last few years and it's tough to get across the border, but Brownsville's still more back and forth in Brownsville and whenever border stuff comes up about, clamp down the border, longer wait times, that sort of thing. It always affects us.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm sure, I'm sure, without a doubt, that would be the case. Well, something else in the classroom that we all do, you know, Gina and I did a in fact I listened to it the other day while I was working out, as a matter of fact back in I guess we did it in October last of how to arrange your class and how to arrange your history class and how you teach it, and one of the things we talked about was certain themes that we all have in a class. So in your classes not just your Texas history class maybe, Chuck, but even when you teach the US history surveys are there certain themes that you like to hit on and make sure you are brought out in your class, certain theme that you like to hit on and make sure you are brought out in your class.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I do the chronological theme, you know, pre-columbian, colonial, early Republic, and then onto the 20th century, and then the cultural thing, and if you got a theme that they understand it better, I'm always kind of changing them, like the one, the one leading up to. I'm always kind of changing them Like the one leading up to the Civil War is divergence of opinion over slavery and religion and territorial expansion. Something they can get their hands around and it gives some coherence to a lesson, but the themes are always changing. It seems like.
Speaker 2:Do your themes change? You know, scott, when Chuck and I were at San Marcos there was a professor named Yeager who taught there. He taught modern US graduate and then he taught the second half US survey and I guess he taught the first half too. But he had these themes One the first theme for the US survey, and I guess he taught the first half too, but he had these themes One the first theme for the US. Let me see if I can remember this. This was in the 80s and 90s. See if I can remember that far back.
Speaker 3:He was the Hamilton versus Jefferson guy. Yes, that was his theme.
Speaker 2:That was theme one Hamilton versus Jefferson. You know, big government or not big government, but active government versus kind of laissez-faire government.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he had them do readings that were consensus or conflict.
Speaker 2:Right, that was a bit. Can you imagine? I don't. That was an advanced level book.
Speaker 1:And that was the big part of colonial history. I mean, that's what they all argued over. I don't know that that's a big is it? Is that a big part of colonial historians these days? I don't know whether they still argue that consensus conflict thing like they used to do. Well, now it's.
Speaker 3:Atlantic world.
Speaker 1:It's not that, oh it's all part of the Atlantic world. I mean. Think about how much I mean even all of us. We change how much way history is taught. We've all been doing this for a long time. What about you, Chuck? What do you think is the biggest change in how history is taught? I say this I'm in the. I succeeded in parts in McDonald East Texas Historical Association and I've got these old file cabinets here. I was just going through them the other day. There were some of his old exams.
Speaker 2:He left his stuff there.
Speaker 1:His old exams that he gave were kind of illuminating. He asked questions of some of his Texas history exams. These were some of the questions on his exams how many cannon were at the Alamo? Who was the secretary, mean secretary? Who was franklin pierce's second secretary of war?
Speaker 2:wow we would never think of asking questions like hey then, but that was considered history you say that, but what was the name of the history club at tech DD Tompkins, right? Oh, yeah, and where did that name come from? It was a comp question. It was a comprehensive question.
Speaker 1:He was Monroe's vice president, but that's just it. Would anybody ask a comprehensive question like that now? Would either one of us if we were given one, why would you?
Speaker 3:I'd be afraid of the answer. Who was DD Tompkins?
Speaker 1:given one. Why would you? I'd be afraid of the answer. Who was dd thomas? Well, for the record, franklin pierce's second, uh uh, secretary of war was jefferson davis, but which is probably why I asked yeah, but it's changed a lot. So what? What do you think has changed?
Speaker 3:most of all, chuck I like asking them in any class, and especially in Texas history. I try to get them to do essay questions and writing assignments where they're thinking about something that they might not remember who a Secretary of War is or which order the presidents are but they can put a theme together, have some coherence to their essay.
Speaker 1:I agree. I've gone to where it's almost all take-home essay. Now with the growth of AI and all this you know. I may have to rethink how we're going to have to do this.
Speaker 3:Do you have a policy yet?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have to have. That's one thing we've had at our beginning of meetings this semester. We have to include a policy on AI in our syllabi.
Speaker 1:I mean it's a tool. It's a tool that you can use and it can be a very good tool to use, but it can also become just another crutch. I say it's a lot of how you ask the questions, and if you do a good job in how you ask the questions, you're going to reduce the reliance on AI to produce the answers to a question. If I ask an AI, hey, how many cannon were there in the Alamo? They might give me an answer. You know what the totally correct answer to how many cannon were at the Alamo is, don't you? What's that?
Speaker 2:Not enough.
Speaker 3:That's true. Well, if they could take something like cannon the Alamo and make it into a story that somebody would find interesting, that's not produced by AI, and then they could point out well, this is why the cannon mattered, and the rifles and the muskets the Mexican soldiers had it's. Ai is not at the point it can do that yet, Is it that's?
Speaker 1:that's right. And, but that's what students can take from that and do that of course you know I don't want to get too pedantic, but you know the weapons at the Alamo mattered. It mattered that the Mexican soldiers were using surplus Napoleonic war muskets that were not accurate and had a killing range of maybe 50 yards at most, while the Tex texian soldiers are using up-to-date long rifles with killing range of 200 to 250 yards that made a big difference, that's. That's how 187 people could hold off a thousand uh on an attack in that regard.
Speaker 1:So, and that's the kind of thing I think we want our students to be able to take away from, uh, when they do that, and that's one thing I think we want our students to be able to take away from when they do that, and that's one thing. I think history has changed in that regard, that we do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the same story happens 10 years later. The US Army is down here in South Texas and then across the border and they're using more or less modern equipment, and the Mexican Army? Its gunpowder is bad. They don't get enough to eat. They're having revolutions. It was a disaster Once they could see the threads where this happens and Mexico loses the war.
Speaker 1:They're thinking when your commanders are siphoning off most of the money that should have gone to soldiers from the very top. That tends to happen, doesn't it? I love it when I tell my students quite often I said y'all don't understand. Mexican history is so fascinating. It is just unbelievably fascinating. And what goes on throughout mexican history will blow your mind if you go and try to study it and see how how it has progressed and and the levels of corruption, of course, are unbelievable. I mean, you know, us history has. The levels of corruption, of course, are unbelievable. I mean, us history has its levels of corruptions. And then there's something else that goes on beyond that, as we've been.
Speaker 2:How has technology, how has this stuff changed for you? What have been some of the biggest challenges?
Speaker 3:The big thing to me is the PowerPoints in the classroom and putting in video clips and all that. The more I'm going to put one of these together. I try to think that the words don't matter as much.
Speaker 3:You've got a few sentences here that can follow the story, but the images Right. I remember kind of laughing at some of the folks in tech would wheel the PowerPoint thing into their classroom. Why do you need to do that? They got a book but the book can't project Like. I showed them an image yesterday of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I said, okay, here's why this is important in South Texas and in Mexico. Because you have a fairly dark skin iteration of the Virgin, mexican peasants can look up to her Catholicism extremely important.
Speaker 3:The whole visual aspect of that you just didn't have before.
Speaker 1:We were in graduate school, remember they didn't issue us computers. Our offices didn't have computers. Now, that would be so foreign to walk into any office now and there is no computer. Gene has that old photograph he digs out every once in a while of us many, many, many, many, many years ago sitting around with no computers. I mean, we had a phone. That was the biggest technology we had.
Speaker 3:You had the old system where once a semester you wheeled in the video equipment and you showed for the whole hour. You showed a video, Right. I can't imagine holding your attention for an hour with one video. You couldn't hold their attention for an hour.
Speaker 1:Well, you can't hold their attention for an hour now, for anything. That's how it works.
Speaker 2:Well, not only that, but I remember still having to load and I knew this because I did it in high school for all the teachers how to load a film projector. Then we moved into video, Then we moved into DVDs. Now it's all streaming. So I've got a whole box of DVDs that I used to show in class. Now it's all streaming.
Speaker 1:We had a whole it was a big thing a DVD library where students could come and check out historical films and all that stuff and it was just taking space and we gave them away and sold them all here about four or five years ago just to close that down because they we didn't need it, because it was right, it was outside and it didn't work out any uh, you know, I was doing some research last summer and, um, I was in baton rouge at the lsu archives and I wanted to look at something on microfiche and you've got these very skilled archivists and they're asking each other hey, who knows how to read?
Speaker 1:microfiche. They don't know what it is and they don't have those machines anymore.
Speaker 3:No, eventually we got something out there and kind of managed to print off some pages. But if I entered a search, especially colonial atlantic world history, of our resources here, so much of it's microfiche yeah, I wish I could pan over.
Speaker 1:I've got sitting in my corner like this, uh, a microfilm machine that I have used. When I get them over, I mean this thing's years old and it's. The ones over in the research library are not even closer with this looks like and how it works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember going to the tech library at night with a big roll full of dimes to do the microfilm printouts from newspapers, dissertation, and that's all online now. Oh, here we go.
Speaker 1:It's all, yeah's all online now. Oh, here we go. It's all it's, yeah, it's. The technology has changed. Like she said, you're doing some research. Why don't you tell us what? What are you working on these days?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the last couple of years I've been looking at soldiers from the US and the Mexican American war and how they personal accounts and US history and that kind of very traditional kind of history. But you put a cultural spin on it and a religious spin. These guys will come from Maryland or Virginia or some other place in Texas. They encounter a whole new culture once they get south of Corpus Christi. Some of them are Catholics. In fact I'm in the process of ordering the diary, the journal. I think he was a Jesuit priest who went along with the army to reassure the Mexican people that hey, we're not here to steal your gold crucifixes, we're not going to dishonor your women much, but they're basically selling the US Army to the Mexican army.
Speaker 2:Well, that was important stuff, right, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:And the more I look into maybe it's because of where I am, but the more I look into that era, so much of Texas is what it is because of that era their territorial expansion where the border is. Do you see, I read a letter from one guy who he was sick. He's writing back to his wife and he's saying oh my God, I'm in Comargo here and it's 115 degrees and I have a fever. It was nice and you can sympathize with that, more than how many cannons are in the local Presidio or something. That's right.
Speaker 1:Well, that sounds interesting, so that you're going to produce a manuscript on that? Is that the goal?
Speaker 3:Yeah, interesting. So you're going to produce a manuscript on that. Is that the goal? Yeah, yeah, the pace is not super fast right now. Well, nobody wants to.
Speaker 1:We end our podcast with a question to our guests, giving them the opportunity to wax philosophically or to pass on the nugget of knowledge that may spur some young mind to go off into some sort of just just just monumental spasms of intellectualism. So we ask you chuck way what you know what?
Speaker 3:okay, I can only think of like anecdotal things, but here's something I want to throw in on a class one day. Go in and say class, who was William Jennings Bryan and why? Was he important Because nobody knows that anymore. Oh, he was a guy from Nebraska. He was a populist, yeah, and then the Scopes trial, fundamentalism, all of that. He's somebody that's. A lot of people have been overlooked in US history, and so what's the answer? The answer is learn something about him.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks a lot, Chuck. Thank you have a great one. Okay, friends, talk to you later.
Speaker 3:Bye-bye. A lot, chuck. Thank you, have a great one. Okay, friends, talk to you later. Bye-bye, bye.
