American History X

Well, if it were done properly, that is, if the children were taught to see Lee as a man of honor, courage and ability who was on the wrong side, it would be a very constructive exercise, a vast improvement over the comic book history that most people learn (and that many academics teach), in which everyone is either saint or monster. I’ll never forget a law school classmate who expressed bafflement over the Dred Scott decision, noting that Taney (the author) had been appointed by Andrew Jackson, who was “good.” That Jackson, like most men, might be a morally ambiguous figure was an idea that he had never until then.

I fear for US Law Schools.

Well, didn’t take long to find some data; looks as if the lib’rul media was too nice:

http://www.h-net.org/~world/threads/stan3.html

Lynne Cheney, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which helped finance development of the standards, points out that they mention McCarthyism 19 times and the Ku Klux Klan 17 times-but never mention Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein.

http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Periodicals_and_Newspapers/Fins-PaN-20.txt

from the latter:

Lynne V. Cheney complained in the Wall Street Journal Oct 20, 1994,
quoting an unnamed member of the National Council for History
Standards, that the 1992 presidential election “unleashed the forces of political correctness.” According to this person, “those
who were pursuing the revisionist agenda” no longer bothered to
conceal their “great hatred for traditional history.”

…

Widening the net on Jan 24, the House Appropriations Subcom-
mittee on Interior heard testimony on abolishing the National
Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the
Humanities. Lynne V. Cheney appeared and cited the National
Standards for History as “an intellectual shell-game,” in support
of abolishment of the NEH. Cheney also brought into question the
World History Standards, which she described as “the single most
irresponsible part of the National Standards,” in which 5th and 6th
grade students are encouraged to read a book [Eleanor Coerr’s,
Sadako] about a Japanese girl of their age who dies a painful death
as a result of radiation from the atomic weapon that the United
States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Cheney testified “And this
is *all* that they are encouraged to learn about how the war was
ended” but Rep. David E. Skaggs (D-Co) pointed out “that is not the
only thing the standards suggest being known about World War II and
Japan.” Cheney then admitted “if I said that I certainly mispoke.”

The LATimes reporting is not an isolated incident. See the Salon article on related topics: http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/08/26/lynne_cheney/index.html
Also, I believe she was for the standards before she was against them.

“Who controls the past controls the future. And who controls the present controls the past.” –George Orwell

The phrase “traditional history” makes me feel like Dick Cheney, unable even to figure out where to begin, so many things wrong with such a pair of words — history is separate from tradition, they are not the same thing and it is damaging (maybe to both?) to conflate them.

Since I last read the Standards about a decade or so ago, feel free to take the following with the entire salt shaker. In case you’re wondering why I looked at the Standards: my father worked on the World History Standards.

1. The National Standards themselves didn’t say anything. They prescribed learning outcomes, as opposed to actual content.
2. The content-based objections were actually directed against the recommended paths to those outcomes. Not at all the same thing. (Given how most people think when presented with guidelines, however, the recommended procedures would no doubt have become the regular procedures.)
3. My father observed at the time that there really was a big flaw in the National Standards–namely, that it over-emphasized social history at the expense of political history. The imbalance was pretty noticeable.
4. Both the US and World History Standards were primarily drawn up by teachers. Professors like my father acted as advisors and/or attempted brakes.
5. Interestingly enough, the Times, which interviewed my father about the “Golden Age of Greece” guide for the World History Standards, very much interpreted the entire project as conservative and anti-PC in its intent. See Peter Stothard, “Lessons from Athens,” The Times 28 Dec. 1991. (I must say, though, that Dad was horrified to find himself coming across as a fan of Allan Bloom!)

Brian, on the question of Lee, I’d think that most would want a great deal of focus on Lee. After all, before the war he was a person respected for honor and courage. That certainly wasn’t the case after the war, so his story demonstrates that honor and courage aren’t themselves enough for someone to be praiseworthy. His story also, from a pedagogical perspective, illustrates nicely the more typical lesson of how many citizens thought of their dual national and state citizenship at the time of the war.

Cheney testified “And this
is all that they are encouraged to learn about how the war was
ended” but Rep. David E. Skaggs (D-Co) pointed out “that is not the
only thing the standards suggest being known about World War II and
Japan.” Cheney then admitted “if I said that I certainly mispoke.”

Case in point.

“Robert E. Lee, whatever you think of him, affected a lot more American lives than did Harriet Tubman, and altered the course of our history as she did not.”

No, I don’t think that is as open and shut as you think it is. Not to hijack the thread, but Lee is kinda overrated He wasn’t a mover in Secession, and most (most, note, not all) of his success came because of or at least with the very great help of incompetent Northern Generalship. Tubman, on the other hand, had a noticeable effect. The growth of the abolitionist movement was one of the contributing factors to the civil war — it helped demonize Southerners and helped create a constituency for opposing Southern demands on slavery issues. It could even be argued that the presence of escaped slaves in the North helped spread the abolitionist movement, and it can certainly be argued that the success of the Railroad contributed to the South’s insistence on a harsh Fugitive Slave Act. All that in turn, helped to start the civil war.

You have a better argument with Revere, but, again, its not that open shut. Compared to people like Franklin, Washington, Adams, Arnold, the British generals, Hale, Jefferson, the French Generals, etc who had more of an effect on history?

Robert E. Lee, feh. It would be like German textbooks praising Rommel. The somewhat gallant face of the most evil system to exist on this continent.

If Ms. Cheney really wants to show the “better people” of that era, and wants to include a great Southern military figure, there’s General Thomas.

C.

Paul Revere was a fine silversmith, but he wasn’t the only messenger dispatched from Boston in 1775. He didn’t even get as far as William Dawes did, who is seldom mentioned in history books.

What makes Tubman heroic was a serious crime in her day. Cheney represents the people who were outraged at the destabilizing of established order Tubman and her supporters caused.
We have this sense of “us” fighting against slavery and a nebulous “them” fighting against it, but “they” were, and are, the people whose lives were made secure by the inhumanity Tubman opposed. In Tubman’s life it was the racist gloss on human slavery, in ours it’s more complicated, and far less racial, but just as inhuman. Cheney and her cohort need that inhumanity to keep themselves comfortable.

Probably not helpful, but I recall a number of historians at the time pointing out that Cheney lied about what was actually in the standards themselves. I got a feeling, but am too lazy to check out, that Lee wasn’t ignored, nor Paul Revere. In any event, I hope somebody not obsessing about the debates bothers to look it up. You can’t take Cheneys at their word.

Please go back and read the Salon article I posted the url for above. This is really about far more than whether or not Lee is important or Tubman is important and at what rate and ratio. It’s really about controlling what is allowed to be history. Yes, Lee and Tubman should both be taught. But should Tubman be “flagged”? It is a worrisome trend.

“The somewhat gallant face of the most evil system to exist on this continent.”

Antebellum South vs. the Aztecs. Discuss.

“I’m just flabbergasted that she thinks stressing Tubman’s role is part of the (alleged) denigrating America project.”
It is precisely that. It makes America blacker. Afrikaners certainly resented a world opinion that prominently featured Nelson Mandela, whose liberation Cheney’s husband explicitly opposed – as he did the creation of the MLK holiday.
I am quite serious.

Unlike Harry, I was rolling in the aisles when I read:

Doing history is knowing how to evaluate, contextualize, and synthesize evidence, making a cogent argument based on evidence, and presenting the results of that argument in reasonably graceful and convincing prose.

Yeah, ok, but we’re talking about American high school students here right? How many are able to evaluate, contextualize, synthesize evidence, make a cogent argument based on evidence, and present the results of that argument in reasonably graceful (graceful!!?) and convincing prose about anything, never mind the Civil War?

I would also modestly suggest that deplorably notable in its omission from the list is knowing some facts about the events. I’m worried that the sneering comment about “stuffing students with factoids” means the writer thinks that knowing when the Civil War started (yes the year! as in a four digit number!) isn’t important. How can you “contextualize” without some basic knowledge?

Remorse as contextual background seems like maybe a piece of the puzzle that goes unmentioned. “Politically correct…” standing in for the “Oh my God, what have we done?” that’s at the heart of a lot of people’s engagement with US history as it was in reality.
There was nothing inevitable about slavery, or the genocide of indigenous people. It was done, it had no moral justification, and this nation would have been impossible to create without it. Coming to terms with that is no different, and no less arduous, than the process of remorse an individual who has erred grievously must undergo.
The mental illness is pretending nothing happened. Justifying the schizoid denial because of the economic disruption an honest inventory would cause.
That’s the polarizing nut right there.
“Everything’s fine” versus the abject humbling of an honest assessment.
What we are versus what we’d like to be.

For starters, let’s remember that Cheney is part of the crowd that renamed Washington Airport into Reagan Airport. So much for the Cheneys and balance in history.

As for the idea that high-schoolers can’t learn history, enterprising teachers regularly have their students “do a little history” and the students do quite well. Frankly, we would probably all be better off if we spent at least one course gathering spoken history and reconciling it with the facts on the ground and the written record. This would give people a lot better sense of how to evaluate history.

Anyone who has studied much history knows that the dates are just tombstones erected over the corpses of ideas that died years previously. “The Battle of Waterloo won on the playing fields of Eton” and all that. Millions of Americans have memorized huge parts of “Lee’s Generals” and ended up knowing less about the Civil War than when they started.

Harumph!- and- various grumpy old man sounds. Let them read and emulate Thucydides- that ought to keep them busy for a while.

Well, in my opinion, Stonewall Jackson was a nutcase, Jeff Davis a stubborn git, J.E.B. Stuart a showboat, and Pickett an airhead.

But Bobby Lee is a great man, or if not a great man, a tragic figure.

The soldiers of the Civil War, for the most part, were eager to leave the disputes of war behind once the hostilities ceased, why can’t we?

Mostly, I agreed with Brian’s post, but cheap shots at Lee I can’t abide.

As a good man who served the side of slavery, I think he makes a fine person for our children to study.

Robert E. Lee is an interesting and I agree tragic American figure. I think you will learn more about the nature of humanity in studying him over many other American figures.

First I have to disagree that the Confederacy was necessarily evil. They were after all fighting over the right of Succession, a constitutionally guaranteed right which the North was refusing them. Their motivations may not have been pure, but neither were the North’s.

Secondly, and more to the point, Robert E. Lee chose to side with his state over his country even though he reportedly did not agree with his state’s decision to side with the South. In other words, he made his decision based on personal honor rather than choosing what he felt was best for those involved (in my viewpoint he made an immoral choice).

I have always felt that Lee’s choice led to a needlessly long war, and to the loss of countless lives and a ten-fold increase in suffering and misery over what would have occurred had he not fought for the South. Lee was in fact *that good* as a general.

There are many other parallels of the Civil War with today, including a country which had to decide whether to have a national elections when half of its states were overrun with “insurgents”. Lincoln had some pretty nice words about that circumstance as I recall…

Ayjay wrote:

First of all, anyone who doesn’t have access to what Cheney actually wrote ought to shut up. As anyone who has been quoted more than once or twice in an American newspaper knows, the chances of being quoted fairly and accurately — even when the reporter has no axe to grind — are pretty low. So If Brian couldn’t be bothered to track down Cheney’s essay he shouldn’t have posted the comment.

The full text of Mrs. Cheney’s 1994 article is available here:
http://www.aei.org/news/filter.all,newsID.18942/news_detail.asp

It took about ten seconds to find using Google and the one sentence being quoted in the LA Times excerpt. You’re quite correct though that Brian Weatherson should have included the article in his story although since reading the actual context of Cheney’s remarks might have negated his subsequent rant, it’s understandable why he didn’t include it.

on the question of Lee, I’d think that most would want a great deal of focus on Lee. After all, before the war he was a person respected for honor and courage. That certainly wasn’t the case after the war, so his story demonstrates that honor and courage aren’t themselves enough for someone to be praiseworthy.

Much the same could be said of Colon Powell.

But to the topic at hand: I think that this little gaffe on the part of Lynn Cheney is telling, in that she’s expressing the desire to promote a General who comitted attrocities over a dark skinned woman who made large social changes peacefully. It’s like the Zeitguist has her by the throat. She’s screaming, “Respect the Troops!” 150 years after they’re dead and burried, their atrocious actions long since examined and found wanting. I imagine something similar might happen in a hundred years or so concerning Generals Sanchez or Abizad.

In a country where education is actually respected, Lee and Tubman would get equal study. I wonder if Canadaian schools teach anything about the US Civil War?

Heartfelt apologies to Paula.

My remarks dated from the classroom as it existed two generations ago and were not meant to reflect the contemporary efforts of those who, from her remarks, are doing exactly what good history teachers should.

There was a time when everyone one who had a hand in the making of the nation was represented as an unflawed character, perhaps with the idea that students couldn’t handle ambiguity and required the hero/villain approach. My only intention was to suggest that they can, and that the job of a good history teacher is similar in some ways to that of a good trial judge–make sure the rules of evidence are observed and don’t do the jury’s job, too.