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The "Reframing History" Toolkit, Come to Life on TikTok (and here's what educators can take from it)

Writer: Christine Henseler
Christine Henseler
Aug 27
2 min read

Over the past year, I've been analyzing social media, capturing how students talk to each other, peer-to-peer, about the value of the humanities. Today I came across a TikTok by "Professor Meredith" (18.8K followers) that, with 6,956 likes, put a research finding to the test, one I happened to be reading about this same morning in a report called "Making History Matter."



"Professor Meredith" stitched a video arguing history degrees are impractical, that the only "useful" skills come from STEM. The 196 comments told a different story. Hundreds of people, unprompted, described what studying history actually involves: the ability to weigh conflicting sources, hold multiple perspectives at once, and make an evidence-based argument. Several joked they couldn't remember a single date, but could talk for twenty minutes about why something happened.


That's not a coincidence. It's exactly what the research behind the “Reframing History” communication toolkit predicts. Created by the FrameWorks Institute and American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), with support from the Mellon Foundation, it's an evidence-based guide to help historians, museum staff, and educators explain what history is and why it matters.


The guide's core finding: the public—including our students—tends to assume history is about finding "the truth," one fixed, objective account to memorize. That framing backfires. It makes any interpretation feel like "just an opinion," fuels claims of bias, and opens the door to the idea that history can be freely "rewritten" to fit an agenda.


The fix, says the guide, isn't to argue harder about facts. It's to reframe what historical work actually is: critical thinking. Historians investigate the past the way a detective works a case, by gathering evidence, weighing sources, updating conclusions as new evidence surfaces. That's the skill those commenters were describing, even without the language for it.

It's also why "history helps us not repeat our mistakes" only gets you so far. The more effective message, per the research, is that engaging with history, including its hardest chapters, is how we make progress toward a more just future. Not looking back. Moving forward.


The TikTok commenters' own accounts back this up: they describe their own history education as built on analysis, research, context, and understanding why events happened, not rote memorization. Those skills, they stated, carried history majors into law, science writing, museums, research, costume design, and more, pushing back against the STEM/practical skills and direct job applicability only mindset. (The American Historical Association (AHA) created a superb booklet and webpage “Careers for History Majors” to further this line of communication.)

Our students live and breathe on social media, and it's where videos like the one above help reframe the conversation about the value of a history or a humanities degree more generally; it is also where we need to offer more reframed material to reach students with joy, humor, and a sense of purpose.


If you've seen a video, thread, or comment section where students are making the case for the history or the humanities in their own words, in ways that effectively reframe conversations and perspectives, please share by adding it in the comments or sending it my way (henselec@union.edu).


 
 
 

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