Whose History. Whose Standards

8/9/2019 Whose History. Whose Standards

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Whose History? Whose Standards?Walter A. McDougall

THE National Standards Project, con-ceived under George Bush, born andreared by Bill Clinton's Goals 2000: Educate

America Act, and nursed with $2.2 million fromthe National Endowment for the Humanities(NEH) and the Department of Education, tooksick the moment November's election returnswere in. Conservative critics had claimed that theStandards*-two volumes of outlines and studyguides for the teaching of, respectively, world andU.S. history in grades 5 through 12-were anabomination designed to indoctrinate youngpeople in anti-Americanism. Riding this wave,Senators Robert Dole (R., Kans.) and Slade Gor-don (R., Wash.) now introduced amendmentsthat would have forbidden the use of federalfunds for implementation of these Standards, andrequired that any future recipients of such funds"have a decent respect for United States history'sroots in Western civilization."In the event, the Senate settled on a resolu-tion, rather than a law, condemning the Stan-dards. It passed on January 18 by a vote of 99-1,the lone dissenter, Bennett Johnson (D., La.),holding out for tougher action.

Does this mean that the Standards are dead?As a federal guide to state school boards, per-haps. But the fact remains that the Standards re-flect a consensus of the historical profession onwhat and how children should be taught. Indeed,they reflect what our children are already taughtin schools across the country, and are sure to in-fluence future authors of textbooks as well. If lib-eral academics suffer at al l from this affair, it willnot result from the Senate's wet blanket, but fromtheir own triumphalism in publicizing what hadheretofore been a quiet conquest of America'sschoolrooms.AMONG critics of the Standards, Lynne Cheney,former head of the NEH and thus the personwho, ironically enough, had assigned manage-ment of the project to UCLA's National Centerfor History in Schools, fired the first shot in this

latest battle of the culture wars. Imagine, shewrote last October in the Wall StreetJournal, anoutline of history that pays more attention to thefounding of the Sierra Club than to George Wash-ington. Or that invites students to celebrate the"grandeur" of Mansa Musa's West African king-dom while focusing its discussion of Europe onpersecution, imperialism, and the slave trade. Orthat makes seventeen references to the Ku KluxKlan but only one to Ulysses S. Grant, the manwho saved the Union, and none to ThomasEdison, who changed the fundamental relation-ship between man and nature. In Cheney's view,the Standards "save their unqualified admirationfor people, places, and events that are politicallycorrect"; she judges that the project went off therails because revisionist historians took heartfrom the 1992 election of Bill Clinton and "icedout" those with more traditional views.

Following Cheney, columnists like CharlesKrauthammer, Patrick J. Buchanan, and JohnLeo, and historians likeJohn P. Diggins and Eliza-beth Fox-Genovese, complained that the Stan-dards denigrate Western civilization and alwaysdepict non-Western ones in a favorable light.They adduced more examples: the Standards in-vite students to appreciate Aztec "architecture,skills, labor system, and agriculture," but ignorethe Aztec religion of human sacrifice; depictGenghis Khan through the eyes of a papal legatewhose cultural biases pupils are told to discern;ask students to indictJohn D. Rockefeller; assessRonald Reagan as "an agent of selfishness"; andcontrast the ecological virtue of Native Americanculture with our rapacious industrialism.For their part, defenders of the Standards ac-cused conservatives of forming an opinion on thebasis of a few "howlers" so often repeated thatone had reason to ask whether the critics hadreally read the volumes. "Even a cursory look,"wrote Jon Wiener (a contributing editor of theNation), "suggests that the assault by Cheney andCo. was flawed." Wiener saw no "preferentialtreatment of women and minorities." Perhaps

* National enter for History in the Schools, NationalStandards for World History: Exploring Paths to the Present andNationalStandards of United States History:Exploring the Ameri-can Experience, Charlotte Crabtree and Gary B. Nash, projectco-directors (University of California at Los Angeles, 1994).

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WAI.TER A. McDoUGAI., a new contributor, is Alloy-AnsinProfessor of International Relations and History at the Univer-sity of Pennsylvania, and editor of Orhis. His most recentbook is Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacificfrom Magellan to MacArthur.


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WHOSE HISTORY? WHOSE STANDARDS? / 37

Washington's and Edison's names do not appearwhere one might expect, but students couldhardly avoid them while doing assignments onthe American Revolution and great inventors. Inany case, counting references proves nothing,since the most mentioned name turns out to beRichard Nixon's. (One need not wonder why.)

William H. McNeill, a revered dean of worldhistorians, denied "anti-Western bias," and insist-ed that our children need to know about our "glo-bal past" and the "variety of peoples and groupsthat played a part in the development of the U.S."Finally, the New York Times accused critics of mis-representation: "Liberal bias creeps into, perhaps,a couple dozen of the 2,600 sample lessons."

How can a responsible citizen judge this artil-lery duel? One wa y is simply to take the word ofthe columnist whose politics most resemble one'sown, but to do so means simply reinforcing one'sprejudices. The opposite response is to say, ineffect, "a pox on both your houses." After all,history has no epistemology comparable to thenatural sciences; it is a function of selection andviewpoint, and hence can never be wholly objec-tive. Moreover, each generation rewrites historyaccording to new information, methodologies,and its own search for a "usable past." So why notdeclare, with Tolstoy, that history is "a collectionof fables," or with Mark Twain that it is just "fluidprejudice"?Why not? Because cynicism, unfortunately, is asure-fire sign that a nation is losing the will tosustain itself. A people's history is the record ofits hopes and travails, birthright and education,follies and wisdom, and al l else that binds it to-gether. A nation grown cynical about its own his-tory soon ceases to be a nation at all.No, the only wa y to form a discriminating opin-ion of the Standards is to study them in toto, try-ing to come to grips with not only the politicalbut perhaps especially the educational issues in-volved. That is what I did, and my report follows.

HE two books of Standards begin withalmost identical chapters describing

the purpose of the overall project. On the firstpage a tension erupts between two italicized rea-sons why history matters: first, because "Knowl-edge of history is the precondition of political in-telligence"; second, because "History is the onlylaboratory we have in which to test the conse-quences of thought."The first formula, though undeniable, is al-most an invitation to teachers to abuse classroominstruction as a ploy to help children make "in-telligent" political choices. The second formulais a corrective, inasmuch as the consequences ofideas have so often been terrible. The test of theStandards is thus whether a healthy tension ismaintained between the two formulas, or whe-ther in fact the lessons are long on "presentist"allusions and short on the perils of ideology. Weshall see.

The introduction also describes the skills thatstudents ought to acquire. Historical memory islabeled the key to our connectedness with allhumankind. (Yes, "mankind" has been purgedfrom the language.) History should teach us tosee matters through others' eyes, without requir-ing that we approve or forgive. Standards shouldbe demanding, and promote active questioningrather than passive absorption. Standards shouldbe applied to all students equally; no "dumbed-down" curricula that deny equal opportunity tolarge numbers of children. Standards should berooted in chronology and teach students to ap-prehend patterns and cause-and-effect relation-ships. Standards should strike a balance betweenbroad themes and specific events. Standardsshould impart the values of rigorous scholarshipsuch as evaluation of evidence, logical argument,interpretive balance, comparative analysis, com-prehension, and "issues-analysis and decision-making." Finally, students should apply these"thinking skills" to their own lives in order "todetect bias, to weigh evidence, and to evaluateargument, thus preparing them to make sensible,independent judgments, to sniff out spurious ap-peals to history by partisan pleaders, and to dis-tinguish between anecdote and analysis."

Who could not applaud a school that trainschildren-all children-in all these ways? Butwhat are the chances any school could do so?Consider asking high-school students, not only toread their homework assignment with a modicumof understanding but then to do the followingwith it:* Identify the source of a historical documentand assess its credibility.* Contrast the differing values, behaviors, andinstitutions involved.* Differentiate between historical facts and in-terpretations.* Consider multiple perspectives of variouspeople.* Analyze cause-and-effect relationships andmultiple causes.* Challenge arguments of historical inevita-bility.

* Compare competing historical narratives.* Hold interpretations of history as tentative.* Evaluate major debates among historians.* Hypothesize the influence of the past [sic].This splendid instructional guide for a Ph.D.thesis defense is what the Standards aim to re-quire of all 5th to 12th graders, including thosewe used to regard as in need of remedial help oras underprivileged. In practice, this curriculumwould overtax the capabilities of most teachers,not to mention pupils, with the result that 90percent of the students would flunk, or else(more likely) 100 percent would pass, under the"Wizard of Oz" syndrome. ("You're just as smartas anyone else," the Wizard said to the Scarecrow."The only thing you don't have is a degree.")Diane Ravitch has argued that the notion of


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38 / COMMENTARY MAY 1995Standards does not mean "dragging down the stu-dents at the top, but expecting more of al l stu-dents, especially those who are in the bottomhalf." It seems to me more plausible that theequality plank is meant to abolish "elitist" segre-gation of advanced students from those who arevariously "challenged," thereby raising the self-esteem of the latter. Indeed, the theory that his-tory should nurture self-esteem among womenand minorities informs the Standards through-out, and is another source of tension.

IN THE World Standards history is divid-ed into eight eras, the first of which

covers pre-history up to 4000 B.C.E., the secondup to 1000 B.C.E., the third up to 300 C.E., thefourth up to 1000, the fifth up to 1500, the sixth1450 to 1770, the seventh up to 1914, and the lastthe 20th century.Each era contains a certain number of Stan-dards, and each Standard is elaborated, in turn,in subheads describing subjects to be covered.Finally, each list of subheads is followed by studylessons deemed suitable for grades 5-6, 7-8, or9-12. The lessons number well over a thousand-one measure of their radical inclusiveness.Few would dispute that American students to-day need to learn about other cultures. Histori-ans like McNeill were arguing the case for worldhistory long before "multiculturalism" camealong. Accordingly, the Standards' general guide-lines mandate that courses "should treat the his-tory and values of diverse civilizations, includingthose of the West, and should especially addressthe interactions among them." But inasmuch asthe Standards assume that world history will takethe place of the old "Plato to NATO" Western Civcourse, it is legitimate to ask, as the critics do,whether the Standards "privilege" non-Westernhistories, thereby reversing rather than redeem-ing the wrong.As I worked my wa y through the eight eras, Idid get an impression that the West was slighted.So I made a tally of the 109 sub-standards, divid-ing them into columns labeled "Western," "Non-Western," and "Interactive" (which usually en-tailed relations between "the West and the rest").I counted the ancient Mediterranean as Western,pre-Columbian America as non-Western andpost-Columbian as Western except when LatinAmerica was lumped with the third world. Therest of the rubrics lent themselves to easy triage.The results surprised me. Western history wonout over non-Western by a margin of 43 percentto 35 percent, with Interactive garnering 23 per-cent. If we award the West a 40-percent share ofthe Interactive sections, the overall balance is al-most 50-50; that is, half the material covers whatwe think of as Western Civ, and half the rest ofthe world put together. If, in practice, studentsare obliged to take only one year-long course inworld history, every culture would be slighted. Butif students spend four or more semesters on

world history, as the Standards recommend, thenthe 50-50 division is commendable. It al l dependson what is taught about the civilizations and theinteractions among them.

One more introductory note. A peculiar fea-ture of the World Standards is the labeling ofsubstandards as either Core or Related. On firstthought, this technique seems a useful aide forteachers deciding what to stress during preciousclass time. But on second thought, the curricu-lum is so all-encompassing that most teachers willprobably not pay any attention to Related sub-jects; they will just toss them out with a sigh ofrelief. And that means genuine loss in the fewcases when seemingly indispensable subjects areinexplicably stamped Related.One such case appears in the Standard on An-cient Greece. Athenian democracy (and its "limi-tations") are Core. So , too, is the expansion ofHellenic culture by Alexander the Great. But the"major cultural achievements of Greek civiliza-tion" and the Greek wars with the Persian empireare merely Related. Thus, students learn (1) thatAthenian democracy was flawed (by slavery, classoppression, and patriarchy), and (2) that other-wise Greek civilization is notable only for themilitarism that coopted it and set off to rule theworld. Is this meant to serve as a "distant mirror"of American history? Perhaps not consciously. Butthe authors do consciously render as optional allof Greek art, science, and philosophy, the spreadof which is why Alexander was important inthe first place, as well as the moving tale ofThermopylae, when the West first united to de-fend itself against an Eastern tyranny-not tomention the birth of history itself in the works ofThucydides and Herodotus.My suspicion is that the project directors in-vented the category of Related in order to easecompromise among committee members press-ing their ow n specialties and those determined tokeep the Standards manageable. "OK, OK," saysthe weary chairman, "the 'influence of the T'angDynasty on Southeast Asia' is in, but only if it'sRelated...." At which point the China scholarbarks, "D o you have any idea how crucial theT'ang is to Asian history? Besides, Europe gotthree Cores and no Relateds last time. If you'regoing to call the T'ang Related, then make earlymedieval Europe Related, too." And so it is.

SECOND potential source of distor-tion is the Standards' determina-tion to give all cultures equal time. Thus, whilethe overall balance is defensible, some particularequations seem absurd. Standard #3 in Era 3, forexample, covers the rise of major religions andempires in Eurasia from 500 B.C.E. to 300 C.E.Does this mean what it says? Are the Roman em-pire and the first Chinese and Indian dynastieslumped together in a single Standard with theorigins of Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucian-ism? Yes! In the meantime, Standard #4 is wholly


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devoted to "the achievements of Olmec civiliza-tion," a Core subject. Such "symmetrical asymme-tries" permeate the major standards.

One surprising slight is the deemphasis on thehistory of ideas. This may not have been deliber-ate; it may be another perverse side effect of in-clusiveness. If everyone is to be covered, then ev-erything about everyone cannot be. But to omithuge chunks of philosophy, science, and art notonly contradicts the stance against "dumbed-down" curricula, it renders incomprehensibleother broad swaths of history. For instance, thestandard for 19th-century Europe covers nation-alism and social movements but labels "techno-logical, scientific, and intellectual achievements"Related. Ditto for "new departures in science andthe arts . . . between 1900 and 1940." It wouldseem that the authors do not deem the revolu-tions in power and work wrought by thermody-namics, chemicals, electricity, internal combus-tion, modern medicine, and nuclear physics tobe central to the task of teaching what the 20th-century experience is al l about.What is more, a student restricted to Core stan-dards might well escape high school without everbeing exposed to the ideas of Mill, Marx (he ap-pears once, so do not play hooky that day), Dar-win, Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein. Nor do anyof the study plans appear to explain the originsand nature of ideology. How then can studentscomprehend the relativism and totalitarianismthat are defining features of "modern times"?How, indeed, can they "test the consequences ofthought," as the Standards' introduction prom-ises they will?According to the Times, the real "treasures"are found not in the outline of history but"among the 2,600 assignments that accompanythe standards." In fact, many of these "examplesof student achievement" are pedagogically silly,whatever their ideological slant. No "treasures"are buried among the assignments designedto make the classroom "crackle" with mock trials,debates, and play-acting. Such ploys are artificial,time-consuming, and often boring to studentsnot directly involved. Moreover, no one butan expert could "recreate a tertulia, or socialgathering, held by women leaders such as MariaJosefa Ortiz" without the script being writtenfor him.

Nor are "treasures" found among assignmentsthat are impossibly difficult for most high-schoolers ("Research the core and periphery the-sis of Immanuel Wallerstein"), impossibly time-consuming ("Using books like The Scarlet Pim-pernel and A Tale of Two Cities, assess the accu-racy of such literary accounts in describingthe French Revolution"), or simply impossible("Write a dialogue between a Muslim and aHindu on what they see as the reasons for thespread of Christian missions, what the impact willbe on their faiths, and how best to resist the ap-

peals of Christian missionaries"). Crackle, snore,or make things up?

NE common criticism of the assign-ments is that they always look at

events from the point of view of the downtrod-den and their self-appointed spokesmen. Thetruth is more subtle than that.Some sections in which one would expect toencounter a "devil theory" (e.g., 19th-centuryEuropean imperialism) are in fact circumspect.

Some are bizarre: of the twenty assignments onWorld War II, five address the Holocaust, threeaddress children; three more address children inthe Holocaust, and four raise moral objections toAllied bombing. Others are skewed: enslavementof Africans and slave revolts are mentioned re-peatedly, always in Core Standards (the Haitianrebellion appears in three separate contexts), butthe American abolitionist movement is Relatedand slavery in other cultures is not mentioned atall. Still other lessons are deafening in their si-lence: China's Taiping rebellion-a slaughter onthe scale of World War I-is discussed only interms of "rural poverty," and Communist Chinesepurges and famines-slaughter on the scale ofWorld War II-are ignored with the exception ofone 8th-grade assignment inquiring after the re-sults of the Cultural Revolution.So it is true that non-Western cultures are givena moral pass, but with one exception: their treat-ment of women. If any consistent ideologicalthread runs through the world Standards, it isfeminism. Over and over again, whether the sub-ject is ancient Rome, Christian Europe, the Is-lamic world, China (footbinding gets repeatedcoverage), India, or Mesoamerica, students areprompted to ask "what obstacles [women] faced,""what opportunities were open to them," "whatlife choices were available," and "in what wayswere women subordinate"?

Nowadays few would argue against the inclu-sion of hefty doses of women's history so long asthe subject is not a fig leaf for ahistorical ideol-ogy. But who can doubt that boys and girls areexpected to conclude from the above questionsthat: women have always and everywhere beensuppressed; they undoubtedly hated their lot; andthe cause of this universal phenomenon was . . .what? Ah, there is the crux of the matter. Was itdue to the physical exigencies of child-bearing,or the economic exigencies of child-rearing, inpre-industrial societies? Or because a sexual divi-sion of labor was taken for granted by mostwomen as well as men? No; the promptings in-variably invite students to conclude (or be told)that sexual roles were always a function of patri-archy backed by theology.

Which brings us to religion, another hot but-ton. Perhaps to avoid the risk of offending BibleBelt school districts, the authors do not hold upChristianity for explicit assault, nor do they ridi-cule other world religions (except in regard to


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their dogma on women). But close reading re-veals some interesting tendencies. Judaism is re-duced repeatedly to "ethical monotheism"; theprophets and messianic promise are absent, andMoses is not mentioned by name until a queryconcerning his place in the Qu'ran. The teach-ings of Jesus and Paul are likewise described inethical terms and compared to Buddhism. TheGospel is absent. The defining debate over Icono-clasm in Byzantine history is absent. The role ofBenedictine monasteries in the founding of Eu -ropean civilization is Related (so the "Dark Ages"are condemned to remain dark). The Crusadesare treated at length, but not as the belated Chris-tian counteroffensive they were. The Reforma-tion lessons contain one question on the theologyof Luther and Calvin. And although Jews appearin various contexts, Judaism as a historical forcedisappears.So religion is treated as ethics-ethics be-trayed, moreover, as soon as believers attributethem to a transcendental source. It should there-fore come as no surprise that the finale-the lastassignment in the entire World Standards-askspupils to "define 'liberation theology' and ex -plain the ideological conflicts surrounding thephilosophy." The true "end of history": liberationtheology! Or is it not a theology but an ideology?Or a philosophy? The confusion about what dis-tinguishes these three categories may be the au-thors' most chilling shortcoming of all.

In short, the World Standards are pretty muchwhat one would expect from a committee. For alltheir balance between West and non-West, andtheir laudable stress on cultural interaction, theyare too inclusive, difficult, tendentious, orahistorical. A brilliant, tireless teacher might walkan elite class through this material in two or threeyears. Even then, I doubt whether students couldexplain why Western civilization became the onlyuniversal one; why science, technology, free-dom-and prosperity beyond the dreams ofKublai Khan-arose in the West, and not else-where; why at length the West fell into a longcivil war, and why the totalitarians lost.Am I then suggesting that students should betaught to honor Western civilization, despite itshistory of wars and oppression, and despite thecontributions of other cultures? I am. The de-cency of life in the next generation may dependon it.

TN THE context of American history, theI functional equivalent of multicul-

turalism is "diversity." According to their critics,the authors of the U.S. Standards were so deter-mined to celebrate diversity that they ended up,in Diane Ravitch's words, "accentuating 'pluribus'while downplaying 'unum."'The alleged result isa curriculum that goes out of its wa y to mentionthe struggles of "marginalized" groups at the ex -pense of what used to be thought the centralnarrative of American history.

To be sure, the Standards' criteria themselvesmention the importance of commonalities, butonly as an afterthought: "Standards for UnitedStates history should reflect both the nation'sdiversity exemplified by race, ethnicity, social andeconomic status, gender, region, politics, andreligion, and the nation's commonalities." Thelast include "our common civic identity andshared civic values," "democratic political sys-tem," and the (question-begging) "struggle tonarrow the gap between [our] ideals and prac-tices." Nowhere do the Standards suggest thatconflict between equality and liberty is the defin-ing fact of American history.

Having read the criticisms, I expected the au-thors to give short shrift to politics in favor ofsocial and cultural history. So I did another con-tent analysis. To begin with, the U.S. Standardsdivide our national story into ten eras with thebreaks coming at 1620 (arrival of the Pilgrims);1763 (end of the French and Indian Wars); 1801(end of the Federalist period); 1861 (Civil War);1877 (end of Reconstruction); 1900 (U.S. emer-gence as world power); 1930 (onset of the De-pression); 1945 (end of World War II); and1968. These watersheds conform to traditionalperiodization, and the temporal coverage (withits halfway point at 1877) is also conventional.Each era is then defined by standards (two tofour, in the U.S. case) and sub-standards listingthe topics students are expected to master.I totaled the 91 sub-standards according toboth field (political, social, economic, etc.) and"group focus" (women, Native Americans, whitemales, etc.), splitting some standards in half whenthey focused on two groups or relations betweenthem. It turns out that nearly 60 percent of thesub-standards cover politics and foreign policy,and traditional material, al l told, comprises about65 percent of the book. Not bad.

But let us turn the equation around: is not 35percent a generous portion to attribute to theimplicitly "unique" experiences of women andminorities, especially when virtually zero space isdevoted to the unique experiences of Irish, Ger-mans, Italians, or Jews? My own sense is that,while "race, class, and gender" are probablyoverrepresented, the basic political narrative isstill there. So the question hinges again on what"spin" it is given.The spin is spun on the first page of the firststandard, when 5th and 6th graders are asked tocompare Native American ideas on "how the landshould be used" with those of Europeans. In the7th and 8th grades, students ask whether NativeAmerican societies were "primitive" at all, orwhether they had not in fact "developed complexpatterns of social organization, trading networks,and political culture"? The true answer to thisfalse dichotomy is: yes, the Amerindian tribes hadsocial conventions, trade, and politics-what hu-man beings do not?-but, yes, they were primi-tive and certainly just as capable of aggression


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toward aliens (and one another) as any otherrace. But that is not the answer suggested forNative Americans, or for West Africans, who arelikewise celebrated for their high culture and "at-titudes toward nature and the use of the land."Enter Columbus. Now, Spanish and Englishpractices toward Amerindians and Africans areugly pages of history that need to be read. Butthey need to be read as history, which is to saythat students need to enter the heads of the his-torical actors. Imagine you were a 16th-centurySpaniard who happened upon an Aztec templebristling with horrific idols and priests carvingout the living hearts of men. Would you have anydoubt that you had stumbled on to Satan's ownkingdom? Can you imagine the carnage if theAztecs had managed to equip themselves with gal-leons and guns and sailed off to Portugal or WestAfrica? That Europeans were greedy hypocritesgoes without saying. The crime against history isfor the authors to pretend that non-Western cul-tures were somehow pristine.Why the pretense? The answer appears explic-itly in the introduction to Era 2: while learningabout European decimation of Native Americansand enslavement of Africans, "students shouldalso recognize that Africans and Native Ameri-cans were not simply victims, but were intricatelyinvolved in the creation of colonial society and anew, hybrid American culture." In other words,the spin is there to raise the self-esteem of minor-ity students: yes, you are victims, but you also havegreat value. And to raise the consciousness ofwhite students: you ow e much, in both senses ofthe word, to people of color.The historiography of self-esteem also de-mands a pecking order. I was surprised at firstthat the Standards follow their indictment ofthe Spaniards with assignments questioningEngland's "black legend" about the evils of Catho-lic Spain. Then I understood: Hispanics, too, arevictims, so long as their accusers are Wasps.

HE Standards on the American Revo-lution have been the subject of par-

ticular acrimony. One accusation-that they donot pay attention to the colonists' struggle to"bring forth a new nation"-is not borne out.There is plenty of material on the RevolutionaryWar and Constitution. What strikes me as idiosyn-cratic is how Tory it is. Students are repeatedlyasked whether the English Parliament's positionon taxation was not in fact reasonable, whetherthe colonies' resistance was really justified, how aLoyalist would have viewed the Intolerable Acts,whether a break with England was inevitable.A conspiracy theorist might see here a biasagainst liberty. But the real flaw in the treatmentis, once again, ahistoricity. Thus, four of the fivesub-standards covering the Revolution's effectsdeal with the contributions and frustrations ofslaves, Native Americans, and women. As the in-troduction explains, the Revolution "called into

question long-established social and political re-lationships-between master and slave, man andwoman, upper class and lower class, officeholderand constituent, and even parent and child[sic]--and thus demarcated an agenda for reformthat would preoccupy Americans down to thepresent day." And so , "students need to confrontthe central issue of how revolutionary the Revolu-tion actually was."Well, how revolutionary was it? To be sure,women in revolutionary America were not giventhe vote. But in how many countries could any-one vote in 1776 or, for that matter, 1876? Theslaves were not freed. But where else in the worlddid anguished debate over slavery occur at thattime? The authors seem surprised by al l that wascommonplace, and take for granted all that wasrare. So they ask students to seek explanationsfor the wrong data. It should not be surprisingthat 18th-century Virginia planters owned slaves.What is striking is the fact that these rusticcolonials wrote the Declaration of Independence,Constitution, and The Federalist Papers, andmade advances in self-government and humandignity that amazed and shook the Atlantic world.Finally, what "agenda" was it that the Standardssay was "demarcated," and by whom? The natureof the "agenda" is no mystery, because it reap-pears in every later era. For the 1801-61 Era, theleitmotif is a quotation from Emerson: "What isman born for but to be a reformer" (as if no"reform" could possibly have negative conse-quences). Students are told to discover the "pre-decessors of social movements-such as the civil-rights movement and feminism"-in the "at-tempts to complete unfinished agendas of therevolutionary period." The introduction to theCivil War warns against placing "[t] oo much stresson the unfinished agenda...." The one for theearly 20th century instructs students to be "fasci-nated with the women's struggle for equality...."The introduction to Era 8 concedes that "WorldWar II deserves careful attention as well" becauseit "ushered in social changes that established re-form agendas that would occupy the UnitedStates for the remainder of the 20th century."The introduction to Era 9 instructs teachers thatpost-World War II history "will take on deepermeaning when connected to the advent of thecivil-rights and feminist movements that wouldbecome an essential part of the third great re-form impulse in American history." Finally, theintroduction to Era 10 "claims precedence" forthe "reopening of the nation's gates to immi-grants" and the "struggle to carry out environ-mental, feminist, and civil-rights agendas."

Not suprisingly, given this abiding agenda, the"last word" in the U.S. Standards is this: "Evaluatethe effect of women's participation in sports ongender roles and career choices." Women's ath-letics: the real "end of history"?If, then, the U.S. Standards are not grosslyimbalanced in terms of coverage, they do explain


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42 / COMMENTARY MAY 1995the "deeper meaning" of American history interms of minority and female struggle versuswhite male resistance. This is the gnosis a pupilmust grasp to get good marks. If Europeansbraved the unknown to discover a new world, itwas to kill and oppress. If colonists carved a newnation out of the woods, it was to displace NativeAmericans and impose private property. If the"Founding Fathers" (the term has been banished)invoked human rights, it was to deny them toothers. If businessmen built the most prosperousnation in history, it was to rape the environmentand keep workers in misery.

Nowhere is it suggested that when aggrievedminorities have demanded justice, they have ap-pealed to the very principles bequeathed by ournation's architects (not to mention "The GreatArchitect of the Universe"). Nowhere is it sug-gested that women and minorities have strivennot to overthrow what white men had built, butto share more abundantly in it. Nor is it men-tioned that most women, most of the time, haveidentified with their fathers or husbands as farm-ers, clerks, or laborers, Democrats or Republi-cans, Southerners, Northerners, or Westerners,Protestants, Catholics, or Jews.

In most lessons women are just women, blacksare just blacks. Only once does an apparent refer-ence to men as just men appear, in a questionimagining the damage done to workers' self-es-teem by unemployment during the Depression.But even then the gender-neutral term "heads ofhouseholds" is substituted. Apparently there wereno men in America's past. So who was oppressingwomen all those years?

WAS especially skittish when I read thesections on foreign policy, expecting

a neo-Marxist critique of American imperialism.In fact, the treatment of 19th-century diplo-macy-the tale of Manifest Destiny-is instruc-tive and balanced. The Standards even pass upthe chance to ridicule the War of 1812, one ofthe sillier episodes in American history, and theypresent a balanced portrait of the origins of theMexican War. The section on the Spanish Ameri-can War says too little about its roots in the Cu -ban revolt, but exposes students to a range ofopinions on the U.S. colonial episode.

How strange, then, that a negative spin entersthe text with Woodrow Wilson! First, students areinvited to conclude that American neutrality wasa sham. Then students are asked to explain whyAmericans dedicated to "'making the world safefor democracy' denied it to many of their citizensat home, actively prosecuted dissenters, and vio-lated the civil liberties of nonconformists .... "Finally, Wilson's Fourteen Points are introducedfor the purpose of asking whether he lived up tothem when he intervened in Russia, whether Ger-many was cheated when it agreed to an armisticeon the basis of them, and whether they contrib-uted to the failure of the Treaty of Versailles.

These are al l legitimate issues. But they betrayan ahistorical double standard thatjudges Ameri-can motives by the most saintly ideals, while ex-cusing or ignoring other nations' deeds on thegrounds of necessity or differing values. Settingaside the question of accuracy, is it wise to teachgrade-schoolers that Wilson was foolish or hypo-critical to proclaim democracy, disarmament, self-determination, free trade, and a League of Na-tions to a war-ravaged world? Maybe the authorsare just too eager to teach subtleties better savedfor college. Or maybe they mean to answer Yes,lest a new generation be seduced by patrioticrhetoric into new Vietnam-style crusades.

It gets much worse. The 7th- and 8th-gradeStandards for World War II say nothing about thenature or ideologies of the fascist regimes, but doask students to assess American blame for goingisolationist, and to consider the causes of Ameri-can tension with Japan dating back to 1900. Thusprepared, 9th to 12th graders will have no troubleanswering, "Why didJapan set up the Co-Prosper-ity Sphere?" and whether the U.S. oil embargowas "an act of war" precipitating Pearl Harbor.The four high-school lessons on the conductof the war cover (1) the Anglo-American delay inopening a second front and the Soviet role indefeating the Axis; (2) the Allied failure to re-spond to the Holocaust; (3) the extent to whichNorman Rockwell's illustration of the Four Free-doms is an accurate portrayal of the Americanimage; (4) the decision to use the atomic bomb.What are students to conclude when al l their les-sons call into question Allied conduct?As for the Standards on the effects of the war,these include questions on women workers, in-ternment of the Japanese-Americans, the anti-Hispanic "zoot-suit" riots, the wartime contribu-tions of African-, Mexican-, and Native-Ameri-cans, and two more on the internment of thenisei. Millions of mothers and wives of service-men, not to mention the (overwhelmingly whitemale) veterans themselves who risked their livesto destroy fascism, may wonder wh y there is noroom for them.The cold war, defined as the morally neutral"swordplay of the Soviet Union and UnitedStates," is important not because this nation sac-rificed for four decades to contain another totali-tarian empire, but ratherbecause it led to the Korean and Vietnam warsas well as the Berlin airlift, Cuban missile cri-sis, American interventions in many parts ofthe world, a huge investment in scientific re-search, and environmental damage that willtake generations to rectify. It demonstrated thepower of American public opinion in revers-ing foreign policy, it tested the democratic sys-tem to its limits, and it left scars on Americansociety that have not yet been erased.

Accordingly, the lesson plans make no men-tion of Soviet expansion, or Soviet and Chinesetotalitarianism and mass murder. Instead, one


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of three questions for grades 5-6 is aboutMcCarthyism; three of five questions for grades7-8 are about McCarthyism; and two of threequestions for Grades 9-12 are about . . . Mc-Carthyism, while the third asks students how "U.S.support for 'self-determination"' conflicted with"the USSR's desire for security" in Eastern Eu-rope, and whether we threatened the Sovietsthrough "atomic diplomacy."So instructed, students would be hard-put toexplain why the United States, Western Europe,Japan, and ultimately China joined hands in fearof the Soviet Union. So beset by red herrings,students would be easy prey for conspiracy theo-ries linking the cold war to hysterical anti-Com-munism or the military-industrial complex.There may be no such thing as Truth-with-a-capital-T about complicated historical phe-nomena. But there is such a thing as discernibleFalsehood. And the above is an example-with acapital F.

THE Standards came into existence be-cause of the widespread realization

that young people are largely ignorant of history.Now that the project has borne fruit, it is clearthat people had different ideas as to what stu-dents are ignorant of. A parent of the older gen-eration may be shocked that students do notknow our first President. A professor from the60's generation may be shocked that students donot "know" that the U.S. was at least equally atfault for the cold war. An avatar of the "new his-tory" may be shocked that students do not knowSusan B. Anthony, and would rather discuss MTV.The co-director of the Standards project, GaryB. Nash of UCLA, says his benign purpose was toliberate pupils from the "prison of facts" thatmake history "boring." But facts are not impris-oning: they are al l we have to liberateus from thetyranny of deception and opinion, our own aswell as others'. Liberals used to believe that; it isterrifying to learn they no longer do. And as forhistory being boring, the fault for that lies, al-ways, with the teacher. How can you possibly makethe French Revolution boring?

Let us be honest. These Standards are too de-manding for most college surveys. They are offen-sive to all who value the exceptional achievementsof the American experiment. They will even failto advance the cause of the politically correct,and that is because they aim to debunk historicalmyths that have not been imparted to this gen-eration in the first place. Ghetto blacks and Val-ley girls are not going to have their consciousnessraised. They will simply imbibe (or ignore) a newmyth concocted by a new "over-thirty" elite.

What is more, the Standards' droning critiqueof white, middle-class American men may pro-voke an intellectual backlash as earnest (if not asviolent) as the student revolts of the 60's. Theauthors of the Standards may not realize this be-

cause (I suspect) they are still aiming their ar-rows at their own parents and teachers from the50's and 60's. But they are hitting the kids of to-day between the eyes.Those kids are bleeding. I see it every semesterin my Ivy League classrooms. Graduate studentswho are ignorant of the bare skeleton of the his-torical narrative. Honor students who cannotwrite grammatical English. Average students whocannot write, do not read, and will not think. Orare intimidated. Or handicapped by self-hatred,self-righteousness, second-hand anger, or cyni-cism. The youth of Athens, corrupted.My plea to high-school teachers is this: forgetthe politics-forget your politics. Just make sureyour graduates can read and write, know somegeography, and know when the Civil War hap-pened. For if they do, then college professors willhave something to build on. As it is now, we spendmuch of our time conveying basic facts, correct-ing writing, and debunking the reverse myths sowidely taught in high schools: "No, Mr. Slackoff,we did not drop the atomic bomb onJapan ratherthan Germany because we were racist. The firstatomic test did not occur until two months afterGermany surrendered. Meanwhile, do you knowwhat a dangling participle is?"The battle of Standards is part of a larger war:Donald Kagan's fight for Western Civ at Yale; theEnola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian; thepoliticization of the American Historical Associa-tion which voted in 1982 to condemn the Reagandefense build-up on the learned conclusion thatit would provoke nuclear war. In light of thismelee, the notion that nationally-mandated Stan-dards are wise is mad. I agree with Hanna Gray,president-emeritus of the University of Chicago,when she writes that "certification" of a version ofhistory is "contrary to every principle that shouldanimate the free discussion of 'knowledge."' Butshe ducks one point. Children will be exposed toone textbook, one teacher. They will have stan-dards imposed on them. So the question remains:who chooses?I have no instrumental solution. But I do knowthat none will work unless educators remembertheir calling, which is not to impart attitudes, feel-ings, or even convictions, but knowledge and wis-dom. These are hard to acquire, harder still toimpart. But they are what breed success, and suc-cess is what breeds self-esteem. That is why thelate Carl Becker, whose high-school text firsthooked me on history, and a liberal at a timewhen liberals still honored liberty, dedicated hisotherwise "Eurocentric" Modern History

TO ALL. TEACHERSOF WHATEVER RACE OR COUNTRY

OF WHATEVER PERSUASIONWHO WITH SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE

HAVE ENDEAVORED TO INCREASE KNOWLEDGEAND PROMOTE WISDOM IN THE WORLD.

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Whose History. Whose Standards