The history wars, they are a comin'. Actually, they're here, as red states across the nation take a stand against teaching our kids about Critical Race Theory. Never mind that most of what they object to has nothing to do with CRT, which is just a handy label for scaring the rubes. The important point is that there really are things they object to and they're mad as hell about it.
It's worth noting that (a) this is nothing new, and (b) both sides take it seriously because they know that what we teach our kids will eventually become what they believe as adults. It's well to remember that 2,500 years ago Socrates was executed less for his heterodox beliefs than for the fact that he insisted on teaching them to the impressionable youth of Athens. More recently, these kinds of fights have been common in the postwar era, centering on evolution, reading, math, history, civics, and just about every other subject imaginable.
But I have a . . . test? Yes, a test for you. It's easy to vaguely take one side or another in the latest history war, which primarily relates to how much American children should be taught about slavery and racism in both the past and the present. So let's quantify this with a scale from 0 to 10. The extreme ends look something like this:
I imagine that few of you are on either of these extremes. But where are you? Let's expand our scale a bit:
A numerical score may seem almost pedantic at first, but it forces you to take a real stand. Just how much should our ugly past dominate the teaching of history? And how does this change at different grade levels? No one thinks we should teach third graders the full, gruesome facts about slavery and native genocide. At the same time, nobody (I hope) thinks we should withhold this kind of thing at the university level.
So go ahead. Pick a score for elementary school, high school, and college. Just how much should our history curriculum emphasize slavery in the past and systemic racism in the present?
6!
your scale doesn't work because statements from every range are not contradictory. i fact, i am an adherent to statements across your scale from #1 "god bless america" to #10 "born in sin, built on slavery and still racist to it's core"
I agree. I reconcile it this way: "Born in sin, built on slavery, but it's the one we've got." So we can either fix it or give up on it. Only one of those two seem plausible.
Yep, pretty much what I was going to say.
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin!
Talk about falling for the framing. Sheesh! Yikes! Triple Yikes.
The problem is that acknowledging slavery has absolutely nothing, nothing to do with whether the USA is a good country, or a great country, or an average country.
Agreed. This is a bit like a guy kneels during the national anthem to protest police violence and the response is "He hates the troops!"
That's not really true. Failure to acknowledge slavery means we cannot be a "good" or just country. That said, we could acknowledge slavery and still be a very bad country. But acknowledging slavery is absolutely necessary.
4
John Oliver had a bit on fights in Texas about teaching history a few months ago and there was a clip of some white dude (of course) at a hearing I don't remember his exact words but basically was "The only thing I want my kids to learn is that the worst day in America is better than the best day in any other country"
My first thought was what a ridiculously stupid thing to think. I mean just off the top of my head I think the Swiss have it pretty good. But in general having traveled a lot I'm gonna say the average middle class person in Dallas or Amsterdam or Oslo or Berlin or Sydney or pick any 1st world country, is basically living the same lifestyle.
But taking it even further, what a fked up stupid way to think, your life is so pathetic that you get validation out of thinking rah rah, we're better than country X. I mean your basically living life as an obsessed sports fan whose entire identity is rooting for their team.
I see that in several rankings by "quality of life" and such, the place of the US ranges from 15th to 20th.
You don't feel any affinity to the place you're from?
Historically that's pretty bizarre.
You can have affinity while also living in reality. You can have affinity and have more sophisticated understanding than a toddler.
No, I don't have any affinity for place where I grew up. I found it to be a place of small-town thinking and small-town aspirations, and I left it behind as soon as I could.
As for affinity to the larger United States, it's too big and too diverse for me to have an affinity with an entity as amorphous as "America". I've been lucky enough to have driven across the US four times, and I've visited and spent time in 43 states out of the lower 48. There are many places in this country were I feel as foreign as if I were visiting another continent. And I'm a cis white male, I can only imagine what it would be like for someone un-white, and overtly un-cis.
As to our historic narratives, one of the repeating themes of US history has been people with a *lack of affinity* for their place of origin, moving on and looking for new opportunities. Starting with the Pilgrims and then with the whole movement west, it was a bunch of dissatisfied people without affinity to their place of origin who built this restless and dissatisfied nation.
So true. I mean, the arc of history is pretty obvious, yes? Tell me if I am so far indoctrinated that all of the below is not accurate:
1. Per "Guns, Germs & Steel" North America was situated to become a part of the First World.
2. European exploration saw to it that native North American people were either wiped out or subjecated.
3. Due only to its size and the aforementioned factors, North America was much better situated than Europe or First World Asia in terms of offering a route up from working class through sheer availability of land.
4. The advantage of point 3, what made the US the place to emigrate to, was extended (in terms of time) when the rest of the First World bombed itself almost to oblivion in not one, but two World Wars in the space of forty years.
5. Points 1 through 4 allowed, up until almost the present day, for the US to avoid the class struggles which the rest of the First World had to deal with. Here, there was always more cheap land to be worked, basically.
6. We had our own, specific class problem, where a group of people were not only labeled as "lower class" but actually held as slaves for hundreds of years, followed by another hundred years of being legally kept as an underclass.
My editorial comment is that we have not addressed our own class problems now, we are working through them. Because for African Americans the issue of class is tied tightly to race, it makes it harder, not easier. Ask any other person from a first world country how "easy" it is to deal with class. Doesn't look very easy to me.
None of this has anything to do with whether the US is a "great" country. Its no better, basically, than the rest of the First World. Which is hardly surprising given its size.
It's also notable that a zero-sum force multiplier was embedded in #4 (and beyond): America's abundant resources and geographic isolation from the Old World powers led America to become enriched tremendously when it came time to supply their all-encompassing wars. The staggering amount of global wealth transferred from Europe to America during WW1 alone fundamentally realigned global power dynamics...
I saw/was struck by that comment too. My first thought was “there’s a man who has never traveled out of this country.”
I remember when I was young thinking I couldn’t even imagine living in another country. Then I traveled a little bit around Europe and discovered there were plenty of places I wouldn’t mind living, or perhaps even prefer to live. The guy in the John Oliver video said something to the effect that the poorest person in the USA is better off than a rich person anyplace lees. Clearly living in a fantasy world.
I think if you had asked me a few years ago, I would have been a 5, but by learning more history I would adjust upwards to a 7... or maybe more. The two areas in which I'm particularly concerned with US actions:
1) internal treatment of blacks, native americans, and other sub-populations
2) international support of politico-socio-economic structures and events that disadvantage the poor: e.g., from the blatant (1953 Iranian coup, 1973 Chile coup, etc.) to the indirect (supporting US corporations who abuse the environment and labor in 3rd world countries). The fact that Central America is so poor and unstable when they are our next door neighbors is tragic.
But... I think #2 is particularly tricky. Might these coups have happened even if the US had opposed them? Foreign aid and support of strong anti-corruption institutions abroad is actually very tricky to do well. How many other nations would have done better than the US if they had been the global superpower for the past 50 years?
So my guess is my number would bounce up and down depending on my cynicism on any given day...
So, interpreting "God bless" and "Greatest" and "Great" as to varying degrees excluding any criticism at all -- which I think is a fair description of the attitudes of a lot of Republicanists and other fearful ignorami -- then I'll put myself squarely in the middle.
But I would say that part of what makes a country -- or an organization or an individual -- "great" is the ability to receive, process, and react sensibly to criticism." By that definition I don't see any contradiction within the #5 description: part of what (should) make us great is our ability to face the past squarely.
I mean, Jeezus, if Germany could do it ...
I think what makes "critical race theory" such a potent buzz-phrase for the MAGAts is that it combines three things that they fear and hate: the ability to reason from messy observations to sound conclusions, the mention of race, and the notion of criticism. It's a trifecta of MAGAt monsters!
Did they? They certainly suppressed the fascists but did they eliminate pools of fascism in their country?
Since WWII, they have yet to elect anyone remotely as racist as we did in 2016 to either their president or their chancellor positions. So if there are pools of fascism left in Germany (and there almost definitely are), they aren't (yet) awarded as much power as our electoral system does for our pools of fascism.
The Germans have elected multiple ex-Nazis to their chancellor position so I wouldn't be all happy about their behavior.
And they confronted Nazism squarely, issuing official apologies, opening (admittedly sanitized) death camps, outlawing display of its symbols, and perhaps most importantly, incorporating lessons about Nazism into school curriculums, beginning early.
We would not eliminate racism entirely by confronting historical racism (and its contemporary effects) and systemic racism, but I'm pretty sure it would change how a LOT of people think about it -- especially the latent racists and fuzzy thinkers -- and it would bring a measure of justice.
Right. We can't erase our past, but we sure as hell can do a better job of confronting it.
Huh?
We should teach history as history, not as either a pep rally or a an indictment or anything in between. Teach the known facts. Don't hide any; don't belabor any either. Leave moral criticism to the Ethics101 class. Teach to the intellectual level of your students, neither above it nor below it. Is this really all that complicated?
We're starting to reintroduce history that has been consciously hidden, andthere are some who see this as an indictment. That says a lot about them. Let them stew in it.
Teach the known facts
Which ones? You can't teach all of them, so you have to choose which ones. That choice is going to shape the story you're telling, will likely be altered by your perception of right and wrong, and will generally reflect your biases. So already -- just in "teach the facts" -- you've introduced moral choices.
I agree.
A good start would be to teach the things which were intentionally and immorally chosen to be hidden or erased from history. That would practically by definition be the correct moral decision.
But it would still be a moral decision, which tdbach doesn't want.
(And which hidden facts? There's more than could be possibly taught. History's big.)
Also I'd argue that you cannot separate opinion from History. History is all about the viewpoint of the narrator.
Not necessarily. All courses of instruction require professional judgement to be exercized about content. The decisions should be made after considering what will best achieve the desired learning outcomes. The choice of learning outcomes may or may not take moral values into consideration. For example, demanding that students not learn anything about slavery wouldn't be a moral choice, but a partisan political one.
Who decides on the moral values?
You’re stuck, because as soon as you actually start to think about it, you realize that what to study is a choice driven by values. What is important enough to study is a value judgment.
Of course it's a value judgement, but not necessarily one based on moral considerations. When I decide what to include in a new business course, I base my decisions on what will be of most use to students in their future careers, not on abstract questions of right and wrong.
In the spirit of your scale, I'd likely start with 4 in elementary, 6 in high school, 7 or so in college.
By HS I'd start to question validity of our "imagined community" of America.
I think they should teach that America genuinely was founded with a lot of ideals about its purpose and government, but that it's always struggled to live up to those ideals and there have been real compromises made along the way.
Mostly, I think you need to teach history as a process more the older kids get. Teach them stuff that historians debate about, and why. It'd probably be good if they picked one particular thing - say, the Mexican-American War, and then had them look at primary sources, etc to see what the view-points of everyone involved thought.
Elementary school, 3 and 4.
High school, and everyone else, 7 and 8.
Nothing gets higher than 8.
1 and 2, and 9 and 10, are social conservatives, incapable of context.
Overall I think I'm a 6. Perhaps elementary school civics should be more towards 4 or 5, and college-level civics should be more towards 8 or so.
I know about a lot of the racist crap since it happened in my lifetime (born in '53), but I am humbled that I didn't know about Tulsa 1921 until the past 10 years.
4
Currently 7. Before Trump and Ferguson, MO, probably a 5.
Probably closer to a 9.
For example America is powerful, a great power the greatest power, but that's not really what you mean when you say a "great country" right? Deeply flawed sure, but a force for good? I think we are a force for our interests many of which do benefit others but I wouldn't call our FP based on what's "good." Thats what the neo cons said. No countey does things with thinking of the benefits to itself.
On the other hand I disagree with the full on CRTs who think that reason and fairness devalue the lived experience or marginalized people like myself. Like the san fran school board leader who was interviewed and essentially indifferent to historical accuracy. More over no country's hands are clean and while to the extent the society is structured to benefit a single group that's should be changed, I don't think whiteness is a bad thing as a matter of course.
I guess in the end I feel like the USA just isn't an exceptional country. Our economic and military strength is largely incidental to our national character. Any society with our resources, weak neighbors and giant ocean protection would become very powerful. Consequently I fall into neither camp.
I will add that rich white culture tends to shelter kids way too much. Obviously I don't advocate forcing kids to live the things poor white kids in meth country or poor dark kids in urban blights go through. But I think kids can handle that people did bad things to other people for money and because they looked different at a pretty young age.
I don't accept the premise of the question. While it's true that we shouldn't teach 3rd graders the gory details (murder, rape, brutality, et al) of slavery, there's no reason to avoid any of the statements on your scale.
If you think our country was born in the sin of slavery and is still racist to the core why not teach that to all students, including 3rd graders?
Personally I might take some issue with the "racist to the core" teaching. But that has to do with my view of the United States, not with what 3rd graders should be taught.
Maybe you should set up a Google Forms like you've done in the past.
But, instead of laying out your questions on a singular scale, split them into two or more measurable opinion factors: (1) Structural racism today -- exists widely, a little, or not at all; (2) Racism at founding of nation -- extremely important, somewhat important, or not at all; (3) Teaching about how racism affected direction of country throughout US history -- need way more, about right amount right now, or no need.
Then, you could overlay them in a radar chart or something similar.
Elementary school students: 2
Middle school students: 4
High school students: 5
College students: 8
My take is somewhat orthogonal to the way this was posed.
Sure, teach the good and the bad of our history, in varying degrees of technicolor, to kids of different ages. But let's think about what time periods to emphasize. Slavery ended over 150 years ago. The slaves and slave owners are all long dead. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say that there are no lingering effects of that history on contemporary blacks, I think it is far more important to make everyone aware of the Jim Crow policies and even things like redlining in the mid-twentieth century and beyond that probably do account for a substantial part of the adverse situation that many blacks live in today.
I suspect every kid in America who has made it through 6th grade knows something about slavery. And I suspect that most high school grads have never heard of redlining. To my mind, that's what needs to be fixed. Educated citizens need to understand the recent and still active forces that unfairly shove blacks disproportionately to the bottom of the economic ladder today. Because it is those legacies, more than the legacy of slavery, that we must deal with to achieve justice.
I have sometimes told people (on “both sides” of the issue) that calling the USA the greatest country ever was as extreme - in its own way - as calling it irredeemably racist to its core. I’ve never received a positive reaction from any of the people attached to either one of those extremes;
But now I see Kevin’s scale, and it’s the first image I’ve encountered which puts my point in graphic form. I wonder if that would help get the point across to anyone still attached to one extreme or the other?
For college, I would say that a “6” on the scale is appropriate. And I might surprise some people by pointing out that I do currently interact with college professors and students (in a grad program), and that a “6” to “8” range is fairly common. I never encounter an “America is the greatest country ever” attitude in those grad courses. But I’ve encountered the “America is irredeemably rotten to its core” attitude a lot less often than the headlines would imply. Sometimes I get the impression that there really might be a “middle” out there somewhere.
I'm a five or six. Our founding documents have been an inspiration for and a practical model of Good Government around the world. Unfortunately, the genetic makeup of our ancestors have poisoned the well. They were the dissatisfied, the chancers and the rebels of their societies in Europe and Asia, including Native Americans but not African Americans dragged here in chains. The African Americans who survived the horrors of the Middle Passage and generations of slavery were also the most resilient and determined of their contribution as well.
This dissatisfaction and risk-taking has been GREAT for our economic well-being. Don't discount having the highest proportion of quality arable land of any large country in our stupendous wealth, but basically we're excellent business people.
As for ethical behavior, well, let's just say our God is REALLY "Old Number One".....ourselves, and that's a pretty stinking basis for a genuine religion.
Elementary school students: 5
Middle school students: 7
High school students: 8
College students: 10
If you want self-taught and informed citizens, make everyone register for compulsory service [the draft]. Most of what I know about civic morality was learned trying to understand why we were fighting in Vietnam.
Theodore "Ted" Logan
"He is sometimes known as the father of modern thought. He was the teacher of Plato, who was in turn the teacher of Aristotle, and like Ozzy Osbourne, was repeatedly accused of corruption of the young."
One of favorite movie quotes of all time.
I'll forgive quite a bit just for "War Pigs."
History is kind of like science, certain things happened/are facts; e.g., early Americans enslaved people and later denied them equal rights as well, the land we all live on once belonged to aboriginal peoples who were exterminated, forced onto reservations etc... This is no different than scientific reality such as life on this planet being a consequence of evolutionary processes. Why would both not be taught to all levels of education? Children are fascinated by nature, I spent countless hours watching nature CDs/shows with our son when he was very young as well as exposing him to nature and, as a young child he was well aware of the fact that most animals get killed and eaten. Humans have wars, enslave each other and commit genocide - he knew that too as a child, we watched the entire BBC WWII series together. He grew up to be a very gentle and caring person who loved nature and people. Knowing things makes one think and it makes them a better more thoughtful person. Moreover, physiologically, our neural connections in our brains are made when we are young. Perhaps it is this obfuscation of reality that we ‘think’ is best for children that created that 45% of Americans who voted for Donald Trump?
“ the land we all live on once belonged to aboriginal peoples who were exterminated”
Sure. Who did the land belong to before the Native American tribes encountered by the European colonists?
those aboriginal people who you say were "exterminated" are very much alive. that's part of the complexity of teaching history. it's not a simple narrative.
I'm in the 5-7 range. I think the "American exceptionalism" thing is a little silly.
However, I think that we also need to look at history in context. From our modern prospective, slavery is clearly wrong. In the 18th century, that wasn't so clear. Slavery was accepted in all but a few countries and practiced to greater or lesser extent. Many people truly believed that women and slaves were not capable of thinking as true human beings. Even the bible had nothing negative to say about slavery.
Although there were stirrings of abolitionism and feminism before the American Revolution, the new constitution really triggered a lot of debate about the issues both in the new country and around the world. You can also think of the founding of the US as the beginning of the abolition process rather than as a complete failure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom
H.S. history teacher here: In order from high school down to elementary school, 10 in high school, 5 in elementary and middle school. Leave God out of it, except for the pledge; we're stuck with that.
Leave god out of it?
Not with a load of people flocking to faith centered schools.
That won't happen
I went to Catholic school. Yes the U.S. was the best in everything - 'cause God wanted it that way.
So I asked the following questions
If we grow 5 times MORE food than we eat how come people go hungry here?
If blacks are so inferior why do the majority of people here believe that all MEN are created equal?
If Jesus said that the rich should share the wealth why is economic disparity so apparent here?
I was labelled a trouble maker.............
...except for the pledge; we're stuck with that.:
Actually, you are not stuck with that. The statute passed in the 1950's that added the words "under God" to the pledge made it optional.
588.
The scale implies that teaching history necessarily involves persuading kids to accept value judgements about the "greatness" of America at one end, or its "sinfulness" at the other. That's a deeply flawed frame of analysis. I learned a great deal about Australian history at school and university, and I've learned a great deal more since from reading books and articles about it. None of the material I've encountered felt it necessary to rate Australia's relative greatness against other countries, or to personalize the nation by evaluating its history in moralistic terms.
Hahhahheheh. Oh yes, tell me about Australian history and how neutral they are about the Diggers and ANZAC and WWI.