Historical Thinking and Other Unnatureal Acts: Debates about National History Standards Become So Fixated on the Question of "Which History" That a More Basic Question Is Neglected: Why Study History at All?
2010; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 92; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-6487
Autores Tópico(s)Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy
ResumoThe choice seemed absurd, but it reflected exactly what debate about national history standards had become. Washington or Bart Simpson? asked Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) during congressional debates. Which figure represents important part of our nation's history for our children to study? (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1997: 232). To Gorton, proposed national standards represented frontal attack on American civilization, an ideologically driven, anti-Western monument to politically correct caricature (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1997: 234). The Senate, in apparent agreement, rejected standards by vote of 99-1. The architects of standards did not take this rejection lying down. Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross Dunn, team largely responsible for collating reports of panels and committees, issued 318-page rebuttal that was packed with refutations of Gorton; of his chief sponsor, Lynne Cheney; and of their various conservative allies, of them op-ed columnists and radio talk show hosts. True, Nash and his colleagues admitted, Gorton was right in claiming that no standard explicitly George Washington as first President. But this was nothing more than mere technicality. The standards did ask students to examine major issues confronting young during [Washington's] presidency, and there was more material on Washington as father of our country in standards for grades K-4 (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1997: 197). To Cheney's claim that Americans such as Robert E. Lee or Wright brothers were expunged because they had misfortune of being dead, white, and male, Nash and his colleagues responded by adding up names of people fitting this description-700 plus in all--and announcing that this number was many times grand total of all women, African Americans, Latinos, and Indians individually named (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1997: 204). Similar exercises in tit for tat quickly became standard in debates over standards. But just below surface, name counts took on an even uglier face. Each side felt it necessary to impute to other basest of motives. So, to Bob Dole, Republican candidate for President in 1996, national standards were handiwork of people worse than external enemies (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1997: 245). In view of Nash's team, critics of standards were driven by latent fears of diverse America in which new faces [that] crowd onto stage of history ruin symmetry and security of older versions of past (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1997: 10-11). Put in barroom terms befitting such brawl, those who wrote standards were traitors; those who opposed them, racists. The rancor of this debate served as rich soil for dichotomous thinking. Take, for example, forum organized by American Scholar, official publication of national honorary society Phi Beta Kappa (1998). American Scholar asked 11 prominent historians to write thousand words in response to question What history should our children learn? Should children learn the patriotism, heroism, and ideals of nation or the injustices, defeats, and hypocrisies of its leaders and dominant classes? In case panelists didn't get point, they were further asked whether United States represented of great historical success stories, or served as the story of one opportunity after another lost? Fortunately, sanity prevailed in this potential parody. Edmund Morgan of Yale University, author of Stamp Act Crisis and thus no newcomer to propagandizing, noted that any answer would necessarily look more like slogans than any reasoned approach to history, adding wryly that he didn't need a thousand words to say it. (1998: 103). Given tenor of debate, it's wonder that history was ever considered part of humanities, one of those disciplines supposed to teach us to spurn sloganeering, tolerate complexity, and cherish nuance. …
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