Bob Wheeler has asked me to comment on the origins and purpose of the National Standards for History that have been in the news lately with a series of debates between Gary Nash of UCLA and former NEH chair Lynne Cheney. Some list members may have seen their debate on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour last Friday (?).
My notes are at the office, so I will have to do the best I can
from memory. The idea for establishing a set of national standards
for elementary students in a variety of fields grew out of the
educational reform movement of the mid and late 1980s. A series of
reports, most well known being the _A Nation at Risk_ report,
suggested that the best way to raise students' knowledge and
respond to the growing concern by legislators and parents for
teacher accountability might involve creating a set of voluntary
guidelines ("standards") that could be drafted by professional
groups in each field bringing together college professors and
elementary/secondary teachers in a rare cooperative effort to
prepare students for college-level work.
A number of groups in the discipline of history responded to this
concern by creating an advisory panel coordinated, I believe,
through the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA to
follow up on the recommendations of the Bradley Commission report
(1989). I suspect Gary Nash was appointed due to his being at UCLA
or he may have a direct connection with the Center.
In the last several weeks after years of work involving
consultation with professional historical groups and a very open
drafting process, a set of three national standards in history
(world history for grades k-12 and United States history for grades
5-12) was released for publication and sale.
The recent controversy between Nash and Cheney in part involves an
ongoing concern by Cheney since her direction of the NEH in which
she tried to return NEH support toward more traditional definitions
of the liberal arts. Unfortunately from what I can gather, the
controversy also has become embroiled in the political correctness
debate that has so roiled US campuses. Cheney claims that the
standards are an attempt on the part of liberal/left college
historians to impose political correctness and a multicultural
agenda on elementary/secondary teachers and their school boards
through sale and use of the national standards. She is partially
correct in noting that the standards incorporate insights of the
not-so-new New Social History, but she overlooks the fact that
there are considerable elements of the so-called traditional
history (politics, diplomacy, war, Great Men) as well.
For the purposes of this list, we ought to be aware that these
standards do exist, that school boards, teachers, and perhaps whole
school systems may be using them to reform their history curriculum
in the next few years. In theory, once the process is in place,
the students we get on the college level should have a better sense
of history and a solid factual background that will allow us to
teach at a college level. My own suspicion is that this is a bit
overly optimistic. I fear that better funded schools in suburbs
and well off communities may put the standards in place, while
other school systems may fall further behind. But I do not mean to
editorialize. I am providing appropriate citations to the cited
materials as well as other relevant works for list members' use to
make up your own mind.
Finally, if you care to track the ongoing creation and
implementation of the history standards, you might want to join the
National Council for History Education directed by Elaine Wrisley
Reed and her assistant Joe Ribar. They can be contacted via e-mail
at ae515@cleveland.freenet.edu for membership information about
dues, their newsletter, and occasional publications. For those
interested in related history information on the Internet, you can
use your gopher capabilities to access our History Department menu
at gopher.tntech.edu then selecting with the arrow keys 3, 5, and
7.
I apologize for the length of this post, but Bob Wheeler seemed to
want a detailed explanation of an important effort to coordinate
history education between k-12 and higher education. I hope this is
helpful to list members.
RESOURCES for ELEMENTARY and SECONDARY HISTORY TEACHERS
Rebecca Anthony and Gerry Roe. 101 GRADE A RESUMES FOR TEACHERS.
New York: Barron's, 1994. $9.95. Resume writing guide geared for
teachers by two University of Iowa education placement specialists.
American Historical Association, Teaching Division. GUIDELINES FOR
THE PREPARATION OF TEACHERS OF HISTORY, 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.:
American Historical Association, 1991. One free copy per person,
$1 per copy after that. Reprinted in AHA PERSPECTIVES, February
1994, p. 18.
Donald B. Cole and Thomas Pressly. PREPARATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL
HISTORY TEACHERS, 3rd ed., rev. Washington, D.C.: American
Historical Association, 1983. 31 pp. #0-87229-025-5. $3
members/$4 non-members.
National Commission on Social Studies in the Schools. CHARTING A
COURSE: SOCIAL STUDIES FOR THE 21st CENTURY. Washington D.C.:
American Historical Association, 1989. 84 pp. $6.00/8.00 from
AHA.
HISTORICAL LITERACY: THE CASE FOR HISTORY IN AMERICAN EDUCATION,
eds. Paul Gagnon and The Bradley Commission on History in the
Schools. New York: Macmillan, 1989. 338 pp. $24.95 and Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1991. #0-395-57040-9. $10.95.
Paul Gagnon. HISTORICAL LITERACY: THE CASE FOR HISTORY IN AMERICAN
EDUCATION. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. 338 pp.
#0-395-57040-9. $10.95 paper. 1987 Bradley Commission report with
essays by Kenneth Jackson, Diane Ravitch, Michael Kammen, William
McNeill, Gordon Craig, et al.
Bradley Commission on History in the Schools. BUILDING A HISTORY
CURRICULUM: GUIDELINES FOR TEACHING HISTORY IN SCHOOLS. Washington,
D.C.: American Historical Association, 1988.
National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA. NATIONAL
STANDARDS FOR HISTORY: EXPANDING CHILDREN'S WORLD IN TIME AND SPACE
(Grades K-4). Los Angeles: NCHS, 1994. $7.95 + $5.00 shipping
from National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS), UCLA, 10880
Wilshire Blvd., Suite 761, Los Angeles, CA 90024-4108.
National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA. NATIONAL
STANDARDS FOR WORLD HISTORY: EXPLORING PATHS TO THE PRESENT (Grades
5-12). Los Angeles: NCHS, 1994. $18.95 + $5.00 shipping from
NCHS.
National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA. NATIONAL
STANDARDS FOR UNITED STATES HISTORY: EXPLORING THE AMERICAN
EXPERIENCE (Grades 5-12). Los Angeles: NCHS, 1994. $18.95 + $5.00
shipping from NCHS.
David Warren Saxe. SOCIAL STUDIES IN SCHOOLS: A HISTORY OF THE
EARLY YEARS. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. 310
pp. $57.50/18.95. 1880's to 1920's.
American Historical Association, Task Force on the Undergraduate
History Major. LIBERAL LEARNING AND THE HISTORY MAJOR. Washington,
D.C.: American Historical Association, 1990. [free copy from AHA]
Paul L. Ward. STUDYING HISTORY: AN INTRODUCTION TO METHODS AND
STRUCTURE, 3rd rev. ed. Washington, D.C.: American Historical
Association, 1985. 35 pp. #0-87229-026-3. $4.00/6.00.
TEACHING HISTORY, ed. Sallie Purkis and Richard Brown. United
Kingdom based journal for primary and secondary education teachers,
published by Blackwell Publishers for the Historical Association 4
times per year for $85.00 per year. ISSN # 0040-0610. Blackwell
Publishers, 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142.
Peter N. Stearns. MEANING OVER MEMORY: RECASTING THE TEACHING OF
CULTURE AND HISTORY. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1993. 260 pp. $24.95.
James R. Giese and Laurel R. Singleton. U.S. HISTORY: A RESOURCE
BOOK FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc.,
1989. Vol. 1: 1450-1865. ISBN #0-87436-505-8 and Vol. 2:
1865-Present. ISBN # 0-87436-506-6.
HISTORY ANEW: INNOVATIONS IN THE TEACHING OF HISTORY TODAY, ed.
Robert Blackey. Lanham, MD: University Press of California State
University, Long Beach/University Press of America, 1992. 336 pp.
#0-878981-03-X $65.00 or -04-8 $22.50. Compilation of forty-three
articles from American Historical Association's PERSPECTIVES,
1982-1991.
TEACHING HISTORY TODAY, ed. Henry S. Bausum. Washington, D.C.:
American Historical Association, 1985. 132 pp. #0-87229-034-4.
$6.00/ 8.00.
Organization of American Historians. MAGAZINE OF HISTORY FOR
TEACHERS. $15/20 per year from OAH, 112 North Bryan Street,
Bloomington, Indiana 47408 or call (812) 855-7311 or Fax (812)
855-0696. Quarterly magazine which includes articles on the state
of the art in various areas of historical scholarship, references,
sample lesson plans, book reviews.
SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTBOOKS: A GUIDE. New York: American Textbook
Council, 1994. Grade school and high school texts in history,
geography, social studies from American Textbook Council, 475
Riverside Drive, Room 518, NY. NY 10115 (212) 870-2760.
HISTORY TEXTBOOKS: A STANDARD AND GUIDE, 1994-94 EDITION. New
York: American Textbook Council, 1994. 63 pp. #0-9640064-0-5. $10
from American Textbook Council, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 518, New
York, NY 10115 (212) 870-2760. Includes chapters on The Problem
with Textbooks, Social Studies Publishing, Content, Style and
Story, Format, Textbook Review, Major American and World History
Textbooks, References, and For Further Reading.
THE INTRODUCTORY COURSE: SIX MODELS, ed. Kevin Reilly. Washington,
D.C.: American Historical Association, 1984. 162 pp. $6.00/ 8.00.
History of Science Society. TEACHING IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE:
RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES. Washington, D.C.: American Historical
Association, 1989. 40 pp. $6.00/ 7.50.
Patrick Reagan's post on the National History Standards deserves a
second. It's an extremely important initiative, likely to affect
every school in the country and, via the schools, most colleges.
The source of the Standards is a large committee that has been
working for two years. Their World History standard is just out and
if you'd like a critique of it from my own outfit, the Organization
of History Teachers, just send me an e-mail. A parallel project was
undertaken for US History by the National Assessment Governing
Board of the U.S. Department of Education. (I served on one of its
committees.) The address for their publication is 800 North Capitol
Street NW, Suite 825, Washington, DC, 20002.
-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn, <Everdell@AOL.com>
History Curriculum Guidelines Play Down Traditional Heroes and Focus on Negatives, Critics Say
WASHINGTON POST: A SECTION, 10/28/94
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
History Prof. Gary Nash said he wanted to create a second "American
revolution" by helping write new standards for the teaching of
American history. Some prominent conservatives are already in open
rebellion. The standards, developed over 2 1/2 years by 35 national
education organizations, have drawn criticism for their enhanced
emphasis on women, minorities and the common man, and their
supposed slighting of U.S. history's traditional heroes. "I feel
flimflammed," said Lynne V. Cheney, who chaired the National
Endowment for the Humanities during the Bush administration and
approved initial funding for development of the guidelines. "These
standards are really out of balance." Conservative radio and
television talk show host Rush Limbaugh was even more dismissive,
quoted by Reuter as saying the standards were the work of a secret
group and should be "flushed down the toilet." The guidelines,
entitled "National Standards for United States History: Exploring
the American Experience," are not a textbook. They are, Nash said,
a "curriculum guide" for students in grades five through 12. The
standards are divided into 10 historical "eras," starting with
"Three Worlds Meet (Beginnings to 1620)" and ending with
"Contemporary United States (1968-present)." There is no obligation
for schools to adopt the guidelines, but with National Endowment
and Education Department funding, and participation by such
organizations as the American Federation of Teachers and the
National Education Association, the project has national stature.
The Education Department also has embraced it as part of President
Clinton's "Goals 2000" educational reforms, which set academic
standards for public schools. Eventually, a bipartisan 19-member
council will decide whether to certify the standards, but the
imprimatur imposes no requirements on individual school systems.
Undersecretary of Education Marshall S. Smith said that "we welcome
the debate" over the guidelines, even though the department has
"pretty much stayed hands-off." He noted that Cheney contracted the
study, while the Clinton administration "had nothing to do with
those folks."
The debate is part of an ongoing struggle among educators over
humanities curriculum. Conservatives contend educators have been
too quick to throw out traditional authors and approaches in the
name of diversity and "political correctness." Cheney argued
yesterday that the new standards focus on "bad news" about the
United States, obscure the "good news" and are so bent on including
everyone that they are becoming "exclusive in a new way," by
ignoring or playing down "towering figures" who traditionally
occupy history's center stage. She said the standards mention Sen.
Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) and McCarthyism 19 times and the Ku Klux
Klan 17 times, but give Ulysses S. Grant one citation and duck Paul
Revere and the Wright brothers altogether. "There's a kind of
pattern here," Cheney said. "If there's some good news in the
story, you have to draw your own conclusions. If there's bad news,
you put it right out there where they can't miss it."
Nash, a UCLA history professor and co-director of the National
Council for History Standards, which wrote the guidelines, said
that although "our goal was to bring about nothing short of a new
American revolution in history education," he was "surprised" at
the controversy and dismissed Cheney as "a bean counter." "She
wants to see how many beans Harriet Tubman has [the African
American who helped fleeing slaves on the underground railroad is
mentioned six times, according to Cheney] and who has got no beans.
There are an infinite number of beans."
Instead of beans, Nash said, the 271-page standards are trying to
create a history curriculum "that is idea-driven and issue-
driven." "I think we want to bury rote learning and the emphasis on
dates, facts, places, events and one damn thing after another," he
said. "In its place we want classrooms that are jumping with mock
trials and staged debates and delving into primary sources
materials." Nash does not apologize for the project's
"inclusiveness." He agreed with Cheney that the role and
achievements of women and minorities in U. S. history have received
better textbook treatment in recent years, "but the pendulum has
not swung too far." The standards do not make judgments, but they
pose a limitless number of provocative themes: "Values-laden issues
worthy of classroom analysis include not only ... irredeemable
events ... the Holocaust for example," reads one passage. "These
analyses should also address situations ... in which what is
morally 'right' and 'wrong' may not be self- evident," the text
continues. "Was it right, for example, for Lincoln, in his
Emancipation Proclamation, to free only those slaves behind the
Confederate Lines?"
Cheney said that in many instances, the standards focus on some
groups' glories while emphasizing traditional West European
culture's warts. She said the standards stress the advances of
Mexico's Aztec civilization, but fail to point out that their
religion's reliance on human sacrifice was a key factor enabling
the Spaniards to turn other tribes against them. "They would
sacrifice 10,000 people at a time," Cheney said. "If it had
happened in the United States, I guarantee it would have been
included in the standards."
Cheney said she did not generally believe the standards were
politically slanted, except in the last era. Particularly galling,
she found, were the guidelines' characterization of former
president Ronald Reagan: "Democratic Speaker Thomas 'Tip' O'Neill
characterized Reagan as 'Herbert Hoover with a smile,' and 'a
cheerleader for selfishness,' " the standards say. "Is this a fair
characterization? Why or why not?"
WALL STREET JOURNAL (J) 10/20/94
By Lynne V. Cheney
Imagine an outline for the teaching of American history in which
George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance and is never
described as our first president. Or in which the foundings of the
Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are considered
noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the U.S. Congress is
not. This is, in fact, the version of history set forth in the
soon- to-be-released National Standards for United States History.
If these standards are approved by the National Education Standards
and Improvement Council -- part of the bureaucracy created by the
Clinton administration's Goals 2000 Act -- students across the
country, from grades five to 12, may begin to learn their history
according to them. The document setting forth the National
Standards divides American history into 10 eras and establishes two
to four standards for each era, for a total of 31. Each "standard"
states briefly, and in general terms, what students should learn
for a particular period (e.g., "Early European Exploration and
Colonization: The Resulting Cultural and Ecological Interaction").
Each standard is followed, in the document, by lengthy teaching
recommendations (e.g., students should "construct a dialogue
between an Indian leader and George Washington at the end of the
Revolutionary war").
The general drift of the document becomes apparent when one
realizes that not a single one of the 31 standards mentions the
Constitution. True, it does come up in the 250 pages of supporting
materials. It is even described as "the culmination of the most
creative era of constitutionalism in American history" -- but only
in the dependent clause of a sentence that has as its main point
that students should "ponder the paradox that the Constitution
sidetracked the movement to abolish slavery that had taken rise in
the revolutionary era." The authors tend to save their unqualified
admiration for people, places and events that are politically
correct. The first era, "Three Worlds Meet (Beginnings to 1620),"
covers societies in the Americas, Western Europe and West Africa
that began to interact significantly after 1450. To understand West
Africa, students are encouraged to "analyze the achievements and
grandeur of Mansa Musa's court, and the social customs and wealth
of the kingdom of Mali."
Such celebratory prose is rare when the document gets to American
history itself. In the U.S. context, the kind of wealth that Mansa
Musa commanded is not considered a good thing. When the subject of
John D. Rockefeller comes up, students are instructed to conduct a
trial in which he is accused of "knowingly and willfully
participating in unethical and amoral business practices designed
to undermine traditions of fair open competition for personal and
private aggrandizement in direct violation of the common welfare."
African and Native American societies, like all societies, had
their failings, but one would hardly know it from National
Standards. Students are encouraged to consider Aztec "architecture,
skills, labor systems, and agriculture." But not the practice of
human sacrifice.
Counting how many times different subjects are mentioned in the
document yields telling results. One of the most often mentioned
subjects, with 19 references, is McCarthy and McCarthyism. The Ku
Klux Klan gets its fair share, too, with 17. As for individuals,
Harriet Tubman, an African-American who helped rescue slaves by way
of the underground railroad, is mentioned six times. Two white
males who were contemporaries of Tubman, Ulysses S. Grant and
Robert E. Lee, get one and zero mentions, respectively. Alexander
Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and the
Wright brothers make no appearance at all.
I have abundant reason to be troubled by the way that the history
standards have turned out. When I was chairman of the National
Endowment for the Humanities, I signed a grant that helped enable
their development. In 1992, the NEH put $525,000 and the Department
of Education $865,000 toward establishing standards for what
students should know about both U.S. and world history. The grantee
was the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA, an
organization that had produced some fine work, including a highly
regarded publication called "Lessons From History" that was also an
effort to set standards for the teaching of history. It was this
publication, the Center for History said in its application, upon
which the government-sponsored standard-setting effort would build.
But a comparison of "Lessons From History" with the National
Standards shows only a distant relationship between the two.
"Lessons," while rightfully including important Americans, like
Sojourner Truth, who have been ignored in the past, also emphasizes
major figures like George Washington, who is not only described as
our first president but even pictured, as is Robert E. Lee.
"Lessons" conveys the notion that wealth has sometimes had positive
cultural consequences in this country, as elsewhere. For the period
between 1815 and 1850, students are asked to consider how "the rise
of the cities and the accumulation of wealth by industrial
capitalists brought an efflorescence of culture -- classical
revival architecture; the rise of the theater and the establishment
of academies of art and music; the first lyceums and historical
societies; and a `communication revolution' in which book and
newspaper publishing accelerated and urban dwellers came into much
closer contact with the outside world."
"Lessons" is honest about the failings of the U.S., but it also
regularly manages a tone of affirmation. It describes the American
Revolution as part of "the long human struggle for liberty,
equality, justice, and dignity." The National Standards, by
contrast, concentrates on "multiple perspectives" and on how the
American Revolution did or did not serve the "interests" of
different groups.
"Lessons" emphasizes the individual greatness that has flourished
within our political system and in our representative institutions.
It refers -- twice -- to "congressional giants" like Henry Clay and
Daniel Webster and the "great debates" in which they participated.
The National Standards, which mentions Clay once and Webster not at
all, gives no hint of their spellbinding oratory. It does, however,
suggest that students analyze Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992
Republican convention. The only congressional leader I could find
actually quoted in the document was Tip O'Neill, calling Ronald
Reagan "a cheerleader for selfishness."
What went wrong? One member of the National Council for History
Standards (the group that oversaw the drafting of the standards)
says that the 1992 presidential election unleashed the forces of
political correctness. According to this person, who wishes not to
be named, those who were "pursuing the revisionist agenda" no
longer bothered to conceal their "great hatred for traditional
history." Various political groups, such as African-American
organizations and Native American groups, also complained about
what they saw as omissions and distortions. As a result, says the
council member, "nobody dared to cut the inclusive part," and what
got left out was traditional history.
The standards for world history are also soon to be made public. By
all accounts, the sessions leading to their development were even
more contentious than those that produced U.S. standards. The main
battle was over the emphasis that would be given to Western
civilization, says a second council member. After the 1992
election, this member reports, the American Historical Association,
an academic organization, became particularly aggressive in its
opposition to "privileging" the West. The AHA threatened to boycott
the proceedings if Western civilization was given any emphasis.
From that point on, says the second council member, "the AHA
hijacked standards-setting." Several council members fervently
protested the diminution of the West, "but," says the second
council member, "we were all iced-out."
UCLA's Center for History suggests that its document on standards
be viewed as a work in progress rather than a definitive statement.
But there is every reason to believe that the certification process
put in place by the Clinton administration will lead to the
adoption of the proposed standards more or less intact -- as
official knowledge -- with the result that much that is significant
in our past will begin to disappear from our schools. Preventing
certification will be a formidable task. Those wishing to do so
will have to go up against an academic establishment that revels in
the kind of politicized history that characterizes much of the
National Standards. But the battle is worth taking on. We are a
better people than the National Standards indicate, and our
children deserve to know it.
--- Mrs. Cheney, who was chairman of the National Endowment for the
Humanities from May 1986 to January 1993, is a fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute. ---
from Good Morning America 10/27/94
Politically Correct History
CHARLES GIBSON: As you heard during the newscast, there is
controversy over a new report which would help establish the first
national standards for teaching history in America's public
schools. The problem? Is it wrong to emphasize - critics would
say overemphasize - the contributions of minorities, women, and
ordinary people? Joining us from Washington, one of the leading
critics of the guidelines, Lynne Cheney, a fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute. And from our affiliate KOVR-TV in
Sacramento, California, Gary Nash, the co-director of the group
that wrote the guidelines. He is a history professor at UCLA.
Appreciate both of you being with us.
Professor Nash, let me start with you. What would you do to
correct, change, the way history is taught?
GARY NASH, History Professor, University of California, Los
Angeles: Well, one way of changing it is to infuse classrooms with
lots of exciting, engaging materials, and really insist that
students not take the word out of the textbook and accept it as the
gospel, as the literal truth. We want students really to
interrogate the data. We want them to exercise their own judgment
in reading conflicting views of any piece of history and understand
that there are multiple perspectives on any particular historical
era, movement, event, for that matter. We want this to be a
democratic history, where it is a history for the people, of the
people, and by the people.
CHARLES GIBSON: Lynne Cheney, that doesn't sound so controversial.
What are your objections?
LYNNE CHENEY, American Enterprise Institute: There's a- it's not
really a matter, Charlie, of what is in the national standard, it's
a matter of what's missing. And there's a whole lot of basic
history that simply doesn't appear. Students who learn their
history according to these national standards would never hear
about Daniel Webster, they would never learn about Robert E. Lee,
they would never know about Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, the
Wright brothers. They wouldn't be aware that George Washington was
our first president, if they learned their history according to
these guidelines. They wouldn't know that James Madison was the
father of our Constitution.
It's a very good idea, and we have done this already in our
schools, to make history inclusive. We want to be sure that
students understand about the contributions of women and what
African-Americans and Asian-Americans and Latinos have contributed
to this country. But it's a very great error to quit teaching
basic history in the name of political correctness, which is what I
think has happened in these national standards.
CHARLES GIBSON: Let me take that back to Professor Nash. Are you
leaving out some of the basics? Are you leaving out the people she
talked about?
Prof. GARY NASH: That's insulting to teachers, to say that Madison
isn't in the book is absurd. Madison was one of the authors of the
Constitution, not the author. But there is plenty of material in
there which will take teachers and students to this whole business
of the Constitutional-
CHARLES GIBSON: But- but the-
Prof. GARY NASH: -Convention and how it was created.
CHARLES GIBSON: But the criticism is, Professor Nash, that in the
name of being politically correct, there is a deemphasis on some
people, particularly the white males in the past.
Prof. GARY NASH: There are white males on every page of this
document. I think people better get this book and read it for
themselves. I suggest that Lynne Cheney can't find a page in which
white males aren't present.
CHARLES GIBSON: Lynne Cheney?
LYNNE CHENEY: Well, it's simply the case that George Washington is
not ever described in here as our first president. James Madison
was the father of the Constitution. I did not say author. He was
the father of the Constitution. Students learning their history
from these standards wouldn't know it.
CHARLES GIBSON: But-
LYNNE CHENEY: I think that people are going to be very, very
dismayed when they see these standards. I have never written an
op-ed piece that has received quite so much- elicited so much
response as the one I have-
CHARLES GIBSON: But-
LYNNE CHENEY: -written on this piece. Parents are-
CHARLES GIBSON: But-
LYNNE CHENEY: -very, very troubled, and they deserve to be.
CHARLES GIBSON: But Lynne Cheney, is there anything wrong- As I
understand, and I have not read this document-
LYNNE CHENEY: Right.
CHARLES GIBSON: -but I have read a lot about it now. Is there
anything wrong with the idea of studying concepts, like causes of
the Civil War or reasons for industrialization-
LYNNE CHENEY: Well, I- I-
CHARLES GIBSON: -rather than studying generals or specific
inventors?
LYNNE CHENEY: This is- this is certainly something Mr. Nash and I
disagree about. He told Reuters a few days ago that he was against
hero-driven history. I think our kids need heroes. I think that
they need models of greatness to help them aspire. I think they
need heroes so that they can become heroes themselves.
CHARLES GIBSON: Let me take that back to Professor Nash.
Prof. GARY NASH: I'd like the American people to understand that
Lynne Cheney's successor at the National Endowment for Humanities,
Sheldon Hackney, wants us to have national conversations across the
country to talk about who we are as an American people. Now, this
book is a splendid example of a three-year national conversation,
because it was a conversation among 29 major organizations filled
with teachers, filled with educators and historians, indeed,
virtually every large membership group that has a claim to the
teaching and writing of history. All of them participated in an
open, democratic process of trying to reach broad-based consensus.
CHARLES GIBSON: All right.
Prof. GARY NASH: That was our charge-
LYNNE CHENEY: But-
Prof. GARY NASH: -from NEH, and we have achieved it. And I think
we have indeed received the support of almost all of these-
CHARLES GIBSON: Let-
Prof. GARY NASH: -organizations.
CHARLES GIBSON: Lynne Cheney, last 20 seconds is yours.
LYNNE CHENEY: Well, Gary, the NEH gave Mr. Nash a very different
charge. He was supposed to write a balanced and even-handed set of
standards. And he certainly has not done that. There's nothing
wrong with a national conversation. There's something very wrong
with putting politically correct history standards in our schools.
CHARLES GIBSON: At that- at that-
Prof. GARY NASH: But this book-
CHARLES GIBSON: I'm sorry, I have to leave it at that, although
you say you wanted to touch off a national conversation, you have
certainly done that, and it will continue. Gary Nash, thank you
very much. Lynne Cheney, thank you.
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed. However,
although the text has been checked against an audio track, in order
to meet rigid distribution and transmission deadlines, it has not
yet been proofread against tape.
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 20:19:40 -0800 (PST) From: ASLAING@UCRAC1.UCR.EDU
Thank you for posting the Cheney/Nash confrontation. It is hard to
say which was the more amusing: Cheney's nonsensical objections to
the standards, or the quality of a "debate" which is inserted
between commercial segments during "Good Morning America".
Annette Laing, ABD, U.C. Riverside
Moderator's note: Since the issues raised in this post concern
Survey courses I thought list members might want to comment. Bob
Wheeler H-Survey
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 10:32:04 -0500
From: MANNING@neu.edu
What an interesting can of worms "Good Morning America" has sought
to explore. To get this discussion started, I would like to make
some observations, with quotations taken directly from the posted
transcript.
"...one way of changing [history teaching] is to infuse classrooms
with lots of exciting, engaging materials." [Gary Nash}
This observation is not about content, but presentation. No one has
ever suggested that history should be boring.
"[we] insist that students not take the word out of the textbook
and accept it as the gospel, as the literal truth."
If the student, particularly at first exposure, is not to trust the
textbook from which exams and the like will be taken, what is the
point of having one? If the information from the teacher is not to
be taken as factual and important, then what is the point of
studying it at all? Furthermore, does Professor Nash want to apply
his questioning attitude to the new books as well as the old?
"We want students really to interrogate the data."
Anthropomorphism notwithstanding, any scientist knows that you can
not test results you do not have. Before the student can question
the organization of data, he must first have data and organization.
At the high-school level, the first and most important task of
history teachers is to communicate information, the raw data which
the students will eventually learn to evaluate.
"We want this to be a democratic history, where it is a history for
the people, of the people and by the people."
Charming mush. Most of the history of the world is NOT democratic
in any sense of the world. I can want history to be about
interaction with space aliens, but this only makes sense once there
are space aliens with which [whom?] I might interact. For the sake
of asking it, especially since Mr Nash seems to want to study
"groups", which people is history for, of and by?
Lynne Cheney: "We want to be sure that students understand about
the contributions of women and what African-Americans and
Asian-Americans and Latinos have contributed to this country. But
it's a very great error to quit teaching basic history in the name
of political correctness."
America is a country formed by immigrants. Therefore, by
definition, contributions of each immigrant group are worth noting.
[I understand here that the word immigrant includes those who were
willing as well as those who were not]. But, the difficulty arises
when we segregate or artificially carve up the picture. As a
sub-set of American history, any individual discipline is
worthwhile, to a certain point. We must first teach our students
to be generalists before we get them to focus on a narrow area. As
a case in point, I had to learn about the history of Europe before
I decided to concentrate on France; the history of France came
before specialization in a particular century and the final
specialization into a particular breed of intellectual history
during three decades of the sixteenth century. By all means let
us add relevant details that contribute to the whole story, but at
the high-school level we do our students a dis-service by
overspecializing the curriculum.
Charles Gibson: "Is there anything wrong with the idea of studying
concepts, like causes of the Civil War or reasons for
industrialization?"
Unless you know when the civil war took place and who the warring
parties were, asking what caused it is pointless. The question is
a good one to ask, but in order to answer it, the student must have
a grasp of relevant details! Who, what, where and when must come
before WHY.
Lynne Cheney: "[Mr Nash] told Reuters a few days ago that he was
against hero-driven history. I think our kids need heroes. I
think that they need models of greatness to help them aspire."
I hope no one has proposed teaching the "great-man" theory of
history that is so common in France [or was -- I'm a bit out of the
loop now]. Still, if history is to be for, of and by the people,
it must include people, not merely amorphous groups and social
trends. Can you teach about the Civil Rights movement without
mentioning the people who defined its goals, those who fought for
change and all that sort of stuff? Don't be silly. History of
suffrage would include those who first proposed the idea that
sovereignty rested with the people, those who expanded the idea to
"universal suffrage", those who argued for the "3/5 compromise" and
a whole host of characters I can not even begin to mention.
Individuals, not groups or social trends, will help history come
alive for our students. I'm not proposing hero worship, as Mrs.
Cheney apparently is, but without individuals, history is a
meaningless, pastel canvas.
Humbly submitted,
Chris Garton-Zavesky
North Carolina State University
gartoncj@hcl.chass.ncsu.edu
Fri, 11 Nov 1994 17:38:17 -0600
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 17:38:17 -0600 (CST)
From: Gregory Singleton <ugsingle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>
I had the great pleasure and privilege of receiving part of my
graduate education from Gary Nash (I took courses with him and he
was on my doctoral committee). I can attest to his ability to prod
advanced students to go beyond the static information and craft
theoretically informed interpretations.
HOWEVER, we all came to his classes with a considerable amount of
information loaded in our little hard drives and a fair amount of
experience in theoretically grounded analysis before we got there.
Furthermore, we woke up in the morning thinking about little else
than the issues before us as history graduate students. These
thoughts dominated the rest of each day. (Well, to be perfectly
honest, back in those days at UCLA we also gave passing thought to
how--not whether--the Bruins would win yet another National
Championship in basketball).
It may be the case that elementary and secondary students are ready
for greater rigor than we usually credit them, but until we create
an educational system in which the information has been already
loaded, and a cultural environment in which students can and will
stay focused on a set of issues for a long period of time, we will
not have the conditions necessary for a critical consideration of
all sources of information. What is more likely under the present
circumstances is that the proposed curriculum will lead to
a-historical cynicism.
|| Gregory Holmes Singleton || "Let us consider that we are all ||
|| ugsingle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu || partially insane. It will explain ||
|| HISTORY (312)794-2805 || us to each other. . ." ||
|| NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY || ---Mark Twain ||
From: "HI3001" <HI3001@ruby.indstate.edu>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 20:58:48 EST
The recent posts which emphasize the need for facts before
concepts, ideas, interpretations are astounding to my way of
thinking. Do we really expect students, at any level, to sit down
with dictionary, glossary, and index and commit terms and
vocabulary to memory so that they can then (when they finally enter
_our_ classes) move on to making historical sense out of these
discrete, free-floating scraps that cannot yet be labeled
"information"?
Nash has it right in seeing that the problem is basically one of
pedagogy. Getting students to turn off the TV and read actively is
the problem we face. Is this a problem that will be solved by
handing students a list of five or five-hundred "facts" each Monday
morning and threatening them with a "test over the material" on
Friday?
We should all sit for a minute and think real hard about how we
learned all those facts which are justifiably called trivia until
given context and _used_.
Gary Daily
Indiana State University
Sat, 12 Nov 1994 08:31:41 -0600
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 1994 08:31:40 -0600 (CST)
From: Gregory Singleton <ugsingle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>
Do we really expect students, at any level, to sit down with dictionary, glossary, and index and commit terms and vocabulary to memory so that they can then (when they finally enter _our_ classes) move on to making historical sense out of these discrete, free-floating scraps that cannot yet be labeled "information"?
What a nice straw man someone has constructed here!
I don't recall any of us suggesting the method characterized in the
first clause of the above senentence. We are talking about a
matter of emphasis.
Nash has it right in seeing that the problem is basically one of pedagogy. Getting students to turn off the TV and read actively is the problem we face. Is this a problem that will be solved by handing students a list of five or five-hundred "facts" each Monday morning and threatening them with a "test over the material" on Friday?
Again, this is a rhetorical divice. Rather than come to terms with
an argument as presented, push it to it's absurd potential outter
limits and then dismis it.
We should all sit for a minute and think real hard about how we
learned all those facts which are justifiably called trivia
until given context and _used_.
I would suggest that we think real hard (to use the diction from
above) about the origin of the term "trivial." For some centuries
the two divisions (upper and lower) of a university education were
called the "trivium" (cluster of three subjects) and the
"quadrivium" (cluster of four subjects). The former were
considered foundational, and the latter were considered advanced
subjects in which students would apply the skills learned in the
trivium. Foundational studies are indeed trivial, but dismissal of
the trivial as inconsequential (thereby anachronistically applying
a 20th-century meaning of a term to a far older pedagogical debate)
is perhaps one of the best arguments for a re-introduction of the
trivium and quadrivium.
|| Gregory Holmes Singleton || "Let us consider that we are all ||
|| ugsingle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu || partially insane. It will explain ||
|| HISTORY (312)794-2805 || us to each other. . ." ||
|| NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY || ---Mark Twain ||
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 1994 23:52:24 -0500 (EST) From: Don Adams <dadams@ideanet.doe.state.in.us>
From: Gregory Singleton <ugsingle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>
What a nice straw man someone has constructed here!
'Twas a women, methinks.
I don't recall any of us suggesting the method characterized in
the first clause of the above senentence. We are talking about a
matter of emphasis.
Please excuse me from your "us." I perceived that the "method
characterized" is strongly implied...must be something in the
Hoosier air. Indeed, emphasis IS the issue. But why must "we"
construct a either-or twixt brother Nash and sister Cheney? Do "we"
emphasis the gravy or the mash potatoes? <- see why Qualye muffed
it...he thought they said potatoE-s.
Don Adams
Teacher, Mooresville High School
Mooresville, IN
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 08:59:17 EST
From: "Bob Wheeler, Cleveland State Univ" <R1199@VMCMS.CSUOHIO.EDU>
An article in this morning's NYTimes by James Atlas "Ways to Look
at the Past" raises an interesting question. If the Standards are
likely to include more anonymous masses and less history from above
Atlas wonders since "What goes up must come down. The current
fashion for questioning the old historical "narratives" may well
come to be seen as symptomatic of an era when history was in the
grip of a fanatical reformist zeal. Why, future historians might
wonder, was historical scholarship in the '90s so out of step with
its times? Why was it so militantly progressive when the mood of
the country was so conservative? (Witness last week's election
results) Was it because liberal ideology had become so
"marginalized" that the only place it could find was in the
academy? Just asking." I wonder what list members think.
Bob Wheeler, H-Survey
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 94 10:49:07 EST
From: tpowers@uscsumter.uscsu.scarolina.edu
Those interested in the current flap over the National History
Standards and the Nash-Cheney debate might be interested in John
Higham's article on the Future of American History in a recent
issue of the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY (I forget the number.)
Even more to the point, in my opinion, is Lawrence Levine's OAH
Presidential Address "Clio, Canons, and Culture" in Vol 80, No. 3
(December 1993) of the same journal.
Tom Powers
Professor of History
The University of South Carolina at Sumter
TPOWERS@USCSUMTER.USCSU.SCAROLINA.EDU
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 94 07:51:06 EST
From: tpowers@uscsumter.uscsu.scarolina.edu
In an earlier post, I referred to Lawrence W. Levine's article
"Clio, Canons, and Culture," in the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY,
Vol. 80, No. 3 (December 1993) pp. 849-867, a slightly revised
version of the presidential address he delivered to the
Organization of American Historians at Anaheim on April 16, 1993.
Bob Wheeler asked me to post a summary of the major points of
Levine's argument. Here's a brief description for those who want no
more than that, followed by more extensive quotations for those
who'd like to read a bit more.
Levine begins by noting the changes taking place in history in the
last few decades. He insists that these mark, not an abandonment of
norms, but an enlargement of them. He praises this enlargement, and
notes that "many cultural assumptions, often based more on
prejudice than on careful study, are being overturned or
rethought."
He then takes note of the intense criticism aimed at higher
education today, particularly those aimed at that very enlargement
of norms which Levine finds so exhilarating. He argues that these
often bitter disagreements are not, like more common tempests in
the profession, about varying interpretations of events, but
concern what events are worth studying in the first place. "We are,
whether we recognize it or not, debating the historical canon."
Such debates are not new. Levine traces the history of curriculum
battles in the United States from the 19th century to the present.
He finds the present battle analogous to the one after the Civil
War when the elective system, encouraged by Charles Eliot at
Harvard, superseded the old canon of classical culture.
Traditionalists lamented the passing of the rigid Latin- and
Greek-based curriculum, and claimed that its loss to such
insubstantial and trendy programs as biology, modern history,
modern languages, and even Shakespeare marked the triumph of
cultural barbarism.
In World War I, the canon reasserted itself, this time in the guise
of the Western Civilization course and curriculum. The story of the
creation of the Western Civilization course and curriculum as a
response to the conditions of World War I is by now well known in
the profession; Levine does not go into it in great depth. (He
cites Gilbert Allardyce's famous article "The Rise and Fall the
Western Civilization Course in the AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 87
(June 1982) 695-725 for those who want more.) "The immediate needs
of the federal government coincided with the long-term education
needs that some faculty had been grappling with. At a time when
ethnic diversity bore heavily on American consciousness because of
the massive immigration from southern and eastern Europe, the
migrations of African-Americans from the South to the cities of the
North, and the European war, which exacerbated tensions between
ethnic groups in the United States and gave rise to President
Woodrow Wilson's warnings about 'hyphenated' Americans, Western Civ
promised to be a unifying and assimilative force that taught the
separate immigrant groups that they had a common and deeply rooted
heritage that bound them together. . . . It was a whiggish view of
history that pictured 'Western Civilization' as the end product of
all of world history, or at least all of world history that
MATTERED, since entire continents, whole people, and complete
historical epochs were ignored as if they had not existed, and for
the purposes of the new Western Civ ethos, they had not."
But Western Civ itself was destined for an early decline. Strong
through the end of World War II, it found itself less and less
relevant in an environment of superpower competition in a
decolonized world. Growing protests and assertions by minorities
within the US continued to draw attention to America's own diverse
origins, origins which "could not be comprehended solely by tracing
the development of western and northern European civilization. . .
Increasing challenges in the decades after World War II to the
belief that Western Civ should be the centerpiece of the humanities
curriculum were produced by alterations in the spirit and temper of
the times, not by the infusion of a handful of 1960s radicals into
the faculties of the 1970s and 1980s, as critics of the
contemporary university assert ad nauseum."
The present controversies are only a continuation of that process,
but that does not make them any less bitter nor any less difficult
to resolve than those were. People educated in a given tradition
are unlikely to concede its irrelevance, or the legitimacy of that
which supersedes it. Even worse, some old ideas have become so
ingrained that they become taken for granted as rock-solid
realities, and not "ideas" at all. They are therefore not subject
to debate and refutation as ideas are. Any challenges to these
presumptions are seen as entirely illegitimate and outside the
limits of acceptable historical discourse. Such ideas as "Western
Civilization," and "the melting pot" have achieved this status, and
challenges to their absolute truth and necessity in the curriculum
seem like assaults on rationality itself. "This perception accounts
for the ease with which critics lump scholarly and nonscholarly,
carefully researched and primarily rhetorical, challenges together
and dismiss them as 'politically correct' and therefore unworthy of
credence or careful examination."
Levine concludes, "To teach a history that excludes large areas of
American culture and ignores the experiences of significant
segments of the American people is to teach a history that fails to
touch us, that fails to explain America to us or to anyone else. We
need, not a new history, but a more profound and indeed more
complex understanding of our old history. This need presses down
upon us relentlessly, and we will ultimately be judged by how well
we meet it, by how able we are to keep our understanding of the
American past open, dynamic, and responsive, free of the weight of
fixed symbols, rigid canons, and useless shadows."
Now for some quotes:
"Let me state at the outset that what I am referring to is not an
abandonment of the genres of history that were the norm when my
generation entered the profession, but an enlargement of that norm
reflecting an increasingly inclusive notion of where the
historian's quarry lies, a broader sense of historical
significance. Those of us fortunate enough to have practiced
history during these decades have been free to learn from people
previously invisible to us, to study subjects once thought beneath
us. The result has been exhilarating. By reaching out and making
our craft more inclusive and complete than it has ever been before,
historians have created an exciting period of growth and discovery
in which many cultural assumptions, often based more on prejudice
than on careful study, are being overturned or rethought."
"We are, whether we recognize it or not, debating the historical
canon. And what troubles me most profoundly about the debate is
that those who have most vigorously criticized current
historiography have not done so by writing research studies of
their own revealing scholarly errors and shortcomings and proposing
sounder and more valid hypotheses... Rather, the arguments have
centered, not on scholarship and interpretation, but on the very
subject matter of the new history, the focus upon everyday people
of all types and their cultures, which, it is charged, has diverted
our attention from such significant subjects as politics and
diplomacy, balkanized our understanding of the United States, and
deprived us of the 'wholistic' sense of the past we once had. It's
not that the studies are necessarily wrong or faulty; it is simply
that they exist at all that distresses many of the critics. Thus,
it has been the expansion of the curriculum and the elasticity of
the canon that have caused the greatest disquiet and are usually
what the critics have in mind why they disparage what they call
'PC'. Although those who decry present college campuses as centers
of 'political correctness' tend to portray a golden age when
universities were governed by the eternal verities of Traditional
Learning and a canon of great and enduring works was firmly in
place, the fact is that the contemporary debate is merely the
latest episode in a continuing struggle. Higher education in this
country has been in ferment almost from its inception, and the
nature of the curriculum and the cannon has invariably been at the
center of that ferment."
"The urges that established Western Civ as the core liberal arts
course transcended the patriotism of the moment. For a decade or
more before the war, the faculties of ... American colleges were
perplexed: What would, what should, replace classics as the core of
undergraduate education? The happy discovery professors made on a
number of campuses during the war was that the immediate needs of
the federal government coincided with the long-term education needs
that some faculty had been grappling with. At a time when ethnic
diversity bore heavily on American consciousness because of the
massive immigration from southern and eastern Europe, the
migrations of African-Americans from the South to the cities of the
North, and the European war, which exacerbated tensions between
ethnic groups in the United States and gave rise to President
Woodrow Wilson's warnings about 'hyphenated' Americans, Western Civ
promised to be a unifying and assimilative force that taught the
separate immigrant groups that they had a common and deeply rooted
heritage that bound them together. The Western Civ courses that
evolved on campus after campus in these year went beyond the
immediate, practical connections to Europe and envisioned the
United States and Europe tied together in a cultural embrace that
had its historical origins in the classical world and its
development in medieval, Renaissance, and modern Europe. It was a
whiggish view of history that pictured 'Western Civilization' as
the end product of all of world history,or at least all of world
history that MATTERED, since entire continents, whole people, and
complete historical epochs were ignored as if they had not existed,
and for the purposes of the new Western Civ ethos, they had not."
"It is important to recognize that the Western Civilization survey
course, which many critics of the contemporary university imply has
long constituted the heart and soul of the humanities curriculum
and therefore must be defended to the death, did not come into
being until somewhere around World War I, remained in the ascendant
for less than fifty years, and declined in the decades after World
War II. The complexity of knowledge, the complexity of culture, the
complexity of the world, and the complexity of the United States
itself became more difficult and more dangerous to deny and more
imperative to confront and comprehend. All of these developments
created an atmosphere less supportive to ideas of a unified core
curriculum devoted to promulgating the dominance of a single
cultural stream that would explain the United States to its people.
. . . Increasing challenges in the decades after World War II to
the belief that Western Civ should be the centerpiece of the
humanities curriculum were produced by alterations in the spirit
and temper of the times, not by the infusion of a handful of 1960s
radicals into the faculties of the 1970s and 1980s, as critics of
the contemporary university assert ad nauseum."
"The diminution of Western Civ courses and general education
programs, like their adoption earlier in this century and like the
abandonment of the classical curriculum at the end of the last
century, was caused not by willful groups of malcontents and
philistines, who somehow seized power, but by deep societal changes
and developments. College curricula do not exist apart from the
culture in which they develop. The transformation of the classical
college curriculum into the modern system of electives and
specialization at the turn of the century was directly related to
the transformation of the United States into an industrial state
with a need for students trained in modern scientific and
humanistic knowledge -- directly related, that is, to the needs of
the people and the society. Precisely the same is true today. The
United States has always been a multicultural, multiethnic,
multiracial society, but in our own time these truths -- and their
implications for higher education -- have become increasingly
difficult to ignore."
"People educated to believe that only certain forms of culture --
classical music, for example -- are worthy of study in a university
are upset to see the introduction of courses dealing with jazz,
blues, or country music. People educated to believe that history
means narrative accounts of the powerful and influential are
disconcerted to see the emergence of a scholarship based upon a
more inclusive historical approach. People educated to believe that
one part of the world, western Europe, contributed everything
culturally worthwhile in American society are confused and even
angered by the rise of a scholarship based upon the idea that other
peoples may well have influenced seriously the formation of
American culture, character, and society. This phenomenon should
not surprise us any more than the fact that those educated to
believe that the earth was the center of the universe and humankind
the essential center of the earth were distressed by the
introduction into the curriculum of sciences that were not quite so
sure of either proposition. Teaching subjects in schools and
colleges gives them cultural legitimacy. And what we are now
witnessing is a struggle over legitimacy, which explains why the
current confrontation over the curriculum and the canon is so
intense and so public."
"Certain ideas become so deeply ingrained, so taken for granted,
that they do not seem like ideas at all but part of the natural
order. Thus when someone comes along who both perceives and TREATS
them as ideas, subject to the challenges all ideas should be
exposed to, it is as if reason itself were being challenged. The
notion of the melting pot -- that great crucible of the American
environment swallowing, nurturing, transforming -- and the notion
of American culture as deriving primarily from northern and western
Europe came to assume this aura of the natural order. Any
challenges, then, no matter how scholarly and carefully rooted in
the sources and the normal rules of historical discourse, have been
seen by many as assaults on rationality. This perception accounts
for the ease with which critics lump scholarly and nonscholarly,
carefully researched and primarily rhetorical, challenges together
and dismiss them as 'politically correct' and therefore unworthy of
credence or careful examination."
There's more. Read the article.
Tom Powers
Professor of History
The University of South Carolina at Sumter
TPOWERS@USCSUMTER.USCSU.SCAROLINA.EDU
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 15:26:22 -0500 (EST) From: "Dr. Bill Mitchell" <MITCHEWI@SNYBUFAA.CS.SNYBUF.EDU>
I would like to add a comment to Tom Powers' excellent summary of
Professor Levine's address. Secondary history, for which the
national standards were created, is taught to promote effective
citizenship. Such an undertaking always involves political
agendas. I too would like to present some quotes for thought:
Societies reconstruct their pasts rather than faithfully record
them and do so with the needs of contemporary culture in mind.
-Michael Kammen-
Respect for tradition leads people to reconstruct the past as they
considered it ought to have been.
-Marc Bloch-
The twilight zone that lies between living memory and written
history is one of the favorite breeding places of mythology.
-C. Vann Woodward-
What people believe to be true about their past is usually more
important in determining their behavior and responses than truth
itself.
-Michael Kammen-
I encourage everyone to read Kammen's excellent study," Mystic
Chords of Memory."
William I. Mitchell, Asst. Professor
Dept. of History/Social Studies
Internet: Mitchewi@snybufaa.cs.snybuf.edu State University of New York
BITNET: Mitchewi@snybufaa College at Buffalo
Phone: 716-878-5437 1300 Elmwood Avenue
FAX: 716-878-4009 Buffalo, New York 14222
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 19:00:11 -0400 (GMT-0400) From: "H-Teach (Mark Kornbluh)" <hteach@hs1.hst.msu.edu>
Moderator's Note (MLK): Below is a letter from Joyce Appleby on the
National History Standards and excerpts by Gary Nash from the
standards. this should add additional substance to our already
fascinating discussions.
Dear Historians -- The bruhaha over National Standards presents a
simultaneous crisis and opportunity. Newt Gingrich pointed to them
in his speech yesterday as an example of an elitist, left wing
program to subvert American values, and people, picking up on this
are apparently deluging their Reps with anguished cries of outrage.
This is not just misinformation; it is manipulation of political
passions. This is the crisis - to counteract these impressions
before they gel. The opportunity is to get people to think about
teaching in the schools with the help of a superb teachers' guide
which refelcts, I think, the best thinking from historians and
teachers. Nothing would help more than for you to write to your
Congress person. Attached are some sample standards taken at
random from the book so you can see the quality and un p.c.ness of
the text.
Points that are worth making:
1) These Standards were produced by hundreds of participating
historians and teachers, informally and through their organizations
(all listed in the book) We're not likely to get an effort like
this again soon and I would stress, not one headed up by as
dedicated an American historian as Gary Nash.
2) Far from being p.c. or undermining American values, these
standards will help guide students to the basic study of the
American past, one in which all of the familiar white, male movers
and shakers are present, but placed in the context of the parallel
lives of others whose existence framed their world.
3) Like the very best in the American tradition, these Standards
encourage independent thinking based on sound evidence and
comprehensive knowledge.
4) The hyperbolic reaction - including comparisons to Nazi and
Bolshevik efforts to shape public opinion - are so wide of the mark
that one can only think that someone is trying to create a target
or a battle field for carrying on a vendetta of sorts against
serious efforts to improve the quality of school history teaching.
5) This is one product whose integrity sells itself. Encourage
people to order the Standards for $18.95 plus $5. from National
Center for History in the Schools, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024.
Nothing will be more effective in deflating the Standards'
opponents than getting them to look at them.
For the past thirty years, history instruction has taken a back
seat to Social Studies. Here is a grand chance to demonstrate how
rich the history of the United States is and what is involved in
getting students to think about. The opponents of the Standards
have the organization, but we have the quality product, and I hope
you will give the time to appraise it.
Joyce Appleby asked me to send you a few samples from the National
Standards for United States History. Would you please forward them
to the History Net? Thank you!
ERA 3: REVOLUTION AND THE NEW NATION (1754-1820s) Standard 1B
DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING OF THE PRINCIPLES ARTICULATED IN THE
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE BY:
Explaining the major ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence
and their sources. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
Demonstrating the fundamental contradictions between the ideals
expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the realities of
chattel slavery. [Consider multiple perspectives]
Drawing upon the principles in the Declaration of Independence to
construct a sound historical argument regarding whether it justified
American independence. [Interrogate historical data]
Comparing the Declaration of Independence with the French Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen and constructing an argument
evaluating their importance to the spread of constitutional democracies
in the 19th and 20th centuries. [Compare and contrast differing sets
of ideas]
ERA 3: REVOLUTION AND THE NEW NATION (1754-1820s) Standard 3B
DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING OF THE ISSUES INVOLVED IN THE CREATION AND
RATIFICATION OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW GOVERNMENT
IT ESTABLISHED BY:
Analyzing the factors involved in calling the Constitutional Convention,
including Shay's Rebellion. [Analyze multiple causation]
Analyzing the alternative plans considered by the delegates and the
major compromises agreed upon to secure the approval of the
Constitution. [Examine the influence of ideas]
Analyzing the fundamental ideas behind the distribution of powers
and the system of checks and balances established by the Constitution.
[Examine the influence of ideas]
Comparing the arguments of Federalists and Anti-Federalists during
the ratification debates and assess their relevance in late 20th-
century politics. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
ERA 6: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDUSTRIAL UNITED STATES (1870-1900) Standard 1A
DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN INDUSTRIALIZATION,
THE RISE OF BIG BUSINESS, AND THE ADVENT OF THE MODERN CORPORATION BY:
Explaining how technological, transportation, communication, and
marketing improvements and innovations transformed the American
economy in the late 19th century. [Examine the influence of ideas]
Comparing the various types of business organizations. [Compare and
contrast differing institutions]
Evaluating the careers of prominent industrial and financial leaders.
[Assess the importance of the individual in history]
Explaining how business leaders sought to limit competition and
maximize profits in the late 19th century. [Examine the influence of
ideas]
Comparing the ascent of business entrepreneurs today with those of a
century ago. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
ERA 7: THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA (1890-1930) Standard 3B
DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW A MODERN CAPITALIST ECONOMY EMERGED
IN THE 1920s BY:
Explaining how inventions, technological innovations, and principles
of scientific management transformed production and work. [Examine the
influence of ideas]
Examining the changes in the modern corporation, including labor
policies and the advent of mass advertising and sales techniques.
[Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
Analyzing the new downtowns and suburbs and how they changed urban
life. [Explain historical continuity and change]
ERA 8: THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND WORLD WAR II (1929-1945) Standard 1B
DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW AMERICAN LIFE CHANGED DURING THE
DEPRESSION YEARS BY:
Explaining the effects of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl on
American farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers. [Analyze multiple
causation]
Analyzing the impact of the Great Depression on industry and
workers and explaining the response of local and state officials
in combating the resulting economic and social crisis. [Analyze
multiple causation]
Analyzing the impact of the Great Depression on the American
family and gender roles. [Consider multiple perspectives]
Explaining the impact of the Great Depression on African Americans,
Mexican Americans, and Native Americans. [Consider multiple
perspectives]
Explaining the cultural life of the depression years in art, literature,
and music and evaluating the government's role in promoting artistic
expression. [Draw upon visual, literary, and musical sources]
ERA 10: CONTEMPORARY UNITED STATES (1968 TO THE PRESENT) Standard 1C
DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING OF MAJOR FOREIGN POLICY INITIATIVES BY:
Assessing U.S. policies toward arms limitation and improved relations
with the Soviet Union. [Examine the influence of ideas]
Explaining Nixon's detente with the People's Republic of China and
how it reshaped U.S. foreign policy. [Analyze multiple causation]
Examining the interconnections between the United States' role as a
superpower and the evolving political struggles in the Middle East,
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. [Analyze cause-and-effect
relationships]
Explaining Reagan's efforts to reassert U.S. military power and
rebuild American prestige. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
Evaluating the reasons for the collapse of communist governments in
Eastern Europe and the USSR. [Analyze multiple causation]
Evaluating the reformulation of U.S. foreign policy in the post-
Cold War era. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 21:54:27 -0500
From: LeslieT500@aol.com
I would encourage everyone to read John Patrick Diggens Op-Ed piece
in today's New York Times. Not all the reaction to the standards
comes from the hysterical right. Just because Newt doesn't like
them doesn't mean they are above critical analysis. Let's have
critical thinking on these standards and not resort to guilt by
association. I find Mr. Gingrich hard to take but I also have
trouble with some of the standards.
When my son came home from 5th grade earlier this year and told me
that Chris Columbus was a "mass murderer" I began to have doubts
about teaching critical thinking at that level. I tried to
encourage him to have a less negative view of Columbus, to try to
see him in the context of the times, but can we really expect him
to raise these issues with his teacher? I think not. Perhaps we
do expect too much on 9 and 10 year olds. What's wrong at that age
of thinking that their are "heroic" figures in the world? Can't we
save that for later? Or must the harsh world of reality enter even
into the worlds of what used to be considered young children.
Here are a few of many articles that have appeared on this subject
recently in the national press:
The End of History
By Lynne V. Cheney
WALL STREET JOURNAL (J) 10/20/94
History Curriculum Guidelines Play Down Traditional Heroes and
Focus on Negatives, Critics Say
By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer
WASHINGTON POST: A SECTION, 10/28/94
Historians Propose Curriculum Tilted Away From West: Critics Worry
Contributions Of Europeans, Americans Will Not Get Proper Due
By Gary Putka, staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal
WALL STREET JOURNAL (J) 11/11/94
World History Teaching Standards Draw Critics: As With American
Guidelines Last Month, Dissenters Say Western Contributions
Shortchanged
By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer
WASHINGTON POST: A SECTION, 11/11/94
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 07:05:53 EST
From: Bob Wheeler <R1199@VMCMS.CSUOHIO.EDU>
NY Times, 11-19-94, op-ed page. final paragraph.
"Historical Blindness" by John Patrick Diggins (professor of
history at CUNY Graduate Center)
Students are asked to exercise "independent judgment," yet it has
already been decided that they should not spend an excessive amount
of time studying "great civilizations." They are told to "detect
bias," yet any detection--for example, questioning a text for
emphasizing the achievements of one culture over another--runs the
risk of being dubbed racist. They are to "weigh evidence and to
evaluate arguments," yet they dare not pronounce the Federalist
Papers superior in political wisdom lest they commit the elitist
mistakes of the past. They are advised to "sniff out spurious
appeals to history," yet they should beware of studying the "great
men," the very thinkers who were in the vanguard of inquiry. Some
standards.
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