The thrust of the piece, by Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history and education at New York University, talks to the ongoing discussions down in Texas about what should be in—in this case—public school history text books. As the professor points out, these issues can be about our fundamental understanding of who we are as Americans.
What if we gave our kids multiple points of view instead? Recent history gives us a perfect opportunity to do precisely that. After the arch-liberal author Howard Zinn died in January, his A People's History of the United States shot to No. 12 on The New York Times paperback nonfiction list. Just behind — at No. 15 — was Larry Schweikart's and Michael Allen's conservative A Patriot's History of the United States, which received a big boost when Glenn Beck pumped it on his radio and TV shows.When I was growing up my home environment told me that President Eisenhower was seen as just holding things in place and Governor Adlai E Stevenson was seen as a forward thinking chap who should have been President. Later I came to see that President Eisenhower did take action, as when he federalized the National Guard down in Little Rock, Arkansas (School Desegregation). And, President Eisenhower managed to not get us entangled too much in the Viet-nam war, while giving the South a chance to stand up on its own.
So here's a modest proposal: Instead of bickering about the "correct" version of the past, the Texas school board should decree that every high school history class use both of these texts.
Views change over time and the job of education is to give us the tools to sort through all we see and hear to come to our own, independent, views.
Regards — Cliff
PS: This OpEd Originally appear in The L A Times.
I kinda, sorta agree with your assessment. But I do think that it is important to be as objectively factual as is humanly possible when writing "history." Reporting will always be tinged by the personality and perceptions of the penman, and it is that aspect that critical thinking should smooth out.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I am one of the cantankerous (I know you are surprised) opponents of those modern day "journalists" who report things as they want them to be, pushing their own agenda, and not as they are. To permit their revisionist reporting to be representative as truth only perpetuates a lie, and we have far too much of that today.
A great deal of my fear of allowing revisionism into the classrooms of very fertile minds is that our education delivery systems do little if anything to enable required analytical/critical thought. Kids are taught to memorize information, but not to question its veracity or completeness. Of course, before laying the sin on the heads of Education, it is my opinion that parents play a HUGE roll in promoting that process, and sadly, today, I would venture that a majority of parents don't/won't. Too often I hear the lamentation that "we pay all this money for schools and my kid still doesn't know anything." We Dad, Mom, stupid is as stupid does.
And today, we have a President who thinks that competency testing should be thrown out as a measure of education performance. HUH?? And then we measure what? Not that I am for the current testing mess. Still, at least the schools feel compelled to teach something, and something is almot better than nothing.
As a teacher, our current status quo is deeply saddening as it frightening.