Sunday, April 24, 2011
The Texas post
I'm of the opinion that most fights over history textbooks aren't really dramatic battles over the Truth, as often portrayed in newspapers, but rather more mundane squabbles over what exactly gets squeezed into the book. In other words, it's a fight over emphasis, not facts. For example, many people were outraged that the new Texas textbooks mentioned that there actually were some Soviet spies in various branches of the government in the 1950's, which to critics seemed a defense of McCarthyism. But again, the facts here aren't in serious dispute: Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs really were spies, but Joe McCarthy was also an opportunistic liar and drunk. Liberals and conservatives pick and choose which facts to include in the story in order for it to have the "right" moral.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
An Intro to The Texas Textbook Fight
In March 2010 the Texas Board of Education voted 10-5 along party lines to institute a number of revisions to the state's history textbooks. A small list of the changes from the NYT:
-"......a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
- "a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
-".......textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported. “Republicans need a little credit for that,” ( A Republican board member) said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”
-"students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation."
-"an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism"
-"Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States."
These changes have not gone over well to say the least. For a typical outraged response check out this HuffingtonPost slide show:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/13/texas-textbook-massacre-u_n_498003.html#s73765&title=Thomas_Jefferson_Whos
I'll write some gigantic essay giving my opinion next week, but in the meantime, what do you, the viewer, think about these changes?
-"......a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
- "a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
-".......textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported. “Republicans need a little credit for that,” ( A Republican board member) said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”
-"students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation."
-"an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism"
-"Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States."
These changes have not gone over well to say the least. For a typical outraged response check out this HuffingtonPost slide show:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/13/texas-textbook-massacre-u_n_498003.html#s73765&title=Thomas_Jefferson_Whos
I'll write some gigantic essay giving my opinion next week, but in the meantime, what do you, the viewer, think about these changes?
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The purpose of history class
In the debate over what subjects to cover in history classes you often hear one side loudly accusing the other of trying to deviously insert their politics into history, which is supposed to be reserved for cold, hard facts. The assumption here is that the real purpose of teaching kids history is to make them wiser people, to give them an understanding of human nature and how they came to be where they are.
Those are indeed very good reasons to study history, but this line of thinking seems disconnected from the reality of how history traditionally has been taught. History as traditionally taught is always supposed to have a lesson; you don't learn about the immigration debate of the early 20th century for its own sake, you're supposed to draw some kind of conclusion about present day events from it. This is the way things have always been and the only change is in what kinds of conclusions are to be drawn. Historically the lessons have been the same in every country everywhere: history proves our country is uniquely great, our soldiers struggled valiantly and gave their lives so that our country could be free, etc. Wars and battles are heavily emphasized and national sins like slavery are downplayed (everybody was doing it at the time......). This is the version of history that conservatives love; it reaffirms good old fashioned values like patriotism and loyalty and encourages young people to fight for their country when called. It also gets justly criticized by liberals for engaging in national myth-making and completely ignoring the viewpoints of non-white Americans.
In an attempt to atone for these biases in the traditional history class we've seen a complete reversal in the last 30 years or so. The new purpose of teaching history is to combat racism and promote tolerance of ethnic and religious minorities. Military history has been nearly eliminated and a much heavier emphasis has been placed on previously neglected topics like slavery, immigration, and segregation. This effort has been extremely successful: in 2008 researchers asked high school students to name the 10 most famous people in American history who were not President. The four most popular choices were:
1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%
2. Rosa Parks: 60%
3. Harriet Tubman: 44%
4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-02-03-most-famous-americans_N.htm?csp=34
But, why can't we have the best of both worlds? Why can't we teach kids about the Battle of Midway and the interment of Japanese-Americans? It'd be great, we could promote patriotism and yet also instill tolerance in children! Unfortunately, I think this idea is misguided for at least two reasons. First of all, history is a big subject and in a year long class most teachers can only go into detail about a handful of events. It may be possible for some history buffs to rush through 400 years of American history in 9 months, but the average history teacher is only somewhat knowledgeable about the subject and is usually dependent on a textbook for instruction. When history textbooks put an emphasis on the internment of Japanese-Americans, the Battle of Midway is usually left out of class altogether. Secondly, and this is much more controversial, I think that is difficult to simultaneously promote patriotism and tolerance, that the two ideas are fundamentally in conflict with each other. Patriotism is at heart a belief in the greatness (superiority) of your group, and this idea doesn't mesh well with the idea that all cultures and ethnic groups are equal. But that's really a subject for another blog post.
Those are indeed very good reasons to study history, but this line of thinking seems disconnected from the reality of how history traditionally has been taught. History as traditionally taught is always supposed to have a lesson; you don't learn about the immigration debate of the early 20th century for its own sake, you're supposed to draw some kind of conclusion about present day events from it. This is the way things have always been and the only change is in what kinds of conclusions are to be drawn. Historically the lessons have been the same in every country everywhere: history proves our country is uniquely great, our soldiers struggled valiantly and gave their lives so that our country could be free, etc. Wars and battles are heavily emphasized and national sins like slavery are downplayed (everybody was doing it at the time......). This is the version of history that conservatives love; it reaffirms good old fashioned values like patriotism and loyalty and encourages young people to fight for their country when called. It also gets justly criticized by liberals for engaging in national myth-making and completely ignoring the viewpoints of non-white Americans.
In an attempt to atone for these biases in the traditional history class we've seen a complete reversal in the last 30 years or so. The new purpose of teaching history is to combat racism and promote tolerance of ethnic and religious minorities. Military history has been nearly eliminated and a much heavier emphasis has been placed on previously neglected topics like slavery, immigration, and segregation. This effort has been extremely successful: in 2008 researchers asked high school students to name the 10 most famous people in American history who were not President. The four most popular choices were:
1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%
2. Rosa Parks: 60%
3. Harriet Tubman: 44%
4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-02-03-most-famous-americans_N.htm?csp=34
But, why can't we have the best of both worlds? Why can't we teach kids about the Battle of Midway and the interment of Japanese-Americans? It'd be great, we could promote patriotism and yet also instill tolerance in children! Unfortunately, I think this idea is misguided for at least two reasons. First of all, history is a big subject and in a year long class most teachers can only go into detail about a handful of events. It may be possible for some history buffs to rush through 400 years of American history in 9 months, but the average history teacher is only somewhat knowledgeable about the subject and is usually dependent on a textbook for instruction. When history textbooks put an emphasis on the internment of Japanese-Americans, the Battle of Midway is usually left out of class altogether. Secondly, and this is much more controversial, I think that is difficult to simultaneously promote patriotism and tolerance, that the two ideas are fundamentally in conflict with each other. Patriotism is at heart a belief in the greatness (superiority) of your group, and this idea doesn't mesh well with the idea that all cultures and ethnic groups are equal. But that's really a subject for another blog post.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
E.D. Hirsch
E.D. Hirsch is a professor of English literature at the University of Virginia that's gotten a lot of attention over the past 25 years or so for his work on what he calls "cultural literacy" in education. Hirsch's basic claim is that authors of fiction or non-fiction almost always assume their readers have a large amount of basic background knowledge of history and literature; basic facts which are rarely explicitly taught to them in school. An author of an advanced text will often assume his reader is familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, Achilles' Heel, or the Midas Touch. Even a reader with advanced knowledge of grammar and vocabulary can find such texts difficult to understand. I remember laughing when I took the ACT reading exam for the first time and discovered that I would be tested on a passage about Navajo code talkers during World War 2. The test was supposed to measure my reading comprehension but the large amount of embedded knowledge I had about the subject let me breeze through it in no time.
Since the 90's Hirsch has worked full time on education reform and has produced an extremely detailed set of guidelines proscribing what subjects need to be taught in which grades:
http://www.coreknowledge.org/mimik/mimik_uploads/documents/480/CKFSequence_Rev.pdf
Needless to say, this is all very controversial. Education professors generally hate it, saying that it treats students as mere receptacles for facts and that it fails to build critical thinking skills. Other critics claim Hirsch's program is Euro centric and that it forces minority students to conform to the culture of the majority.
As you've probably guessed, I'm pretty strongly in Hirsch's camp. I think the two most common criticisms against his proposals are flawed: I could go on endlessly about why teaching critical thinking skills is a massive red herring but in a nutshell: 60 percent of 18 to 24 year old Americans cannot locate Iraq on a map, 57 percent of 17 year olds did not know the Civil War occurred between 1850 and 1900. I felt like crying in 11th grade when a girl, a very good student, asked me if World War II started when we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. I cannot believe that students with such an extreme ignorance of essential facts can be taught to think critically about a subject. Critical thinking is great, but it's something to be taught after students obtain basic knowledge about history and culture.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf
http://www.suite101.com/content/us-students-get-a-d-in-history-a46071
Secondly, although it's definitely true that Hirsch's curriculum has a European focus, that isn't necessarily a problem for minority groups. Hirsch is simply building his curriculum around the cultural knowledge demanded by American writers of all races. I haven't done the study, but I'd bet that if you surveyed the writing of famous African-American authors you'd find far, far more references to Biblical stories and Greco-Roman history than to African folktales or the history of the Songhai empire.
Since the 90's Hirsch has worked full time on education reform and has produced an extremely detailed set of guidelines proscribing what subjects need to be taught in which grades:
http://www.coreknowledge.org/mimik/mimik_uploads/documents/480/CKFSequence_Rev.pdf
Needless to say, this is all very controversial. Education professors generally hate it, saying that it treats students as mere receptacles for facts and that it fails to build critical thinking skills. Other critics claim Hirsch's program is Euro centric and that it forces minority students to conform to the culture of the majority.
As you've probably guessed, I'm pretty strongly in Hirsch's camp. I think the two most common criticisms against his proposals are flawed: I could go on endlessly about why teaching critical thinking skills is a massive red herring but in a nutshell: 60 percent of 18 to 24 year old Americans cannot locate Iraq on a map, 57 percent of 17 year olds did not know the Civil War occurred between 1850 and 1900. I felt like crying in 11th grade when a girl, a very good student, asked me if World War II started when we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. I cannot believe that students with such an extreme ignorance of essential facts can be taught to think critically about a subject. Critical thinking is great, but it's something to be taught after students obtain basic knowledge about history and culture.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf
http://www.suite101.com/content/us-students-get-a-d-in-history-a46071
Secondly, although it's definitely true that Hirsch's curriculum has a European focus, that isn't necessarily a problem for minority groups. Hirsch is simply building his curriculum around the cultural knowledge demanded by American writers of all races. I haven't done the study, but I'd bet that if you surveyed the writing of famous African-American authors you'd find far, far more references to Biblical stories and Greco-Roman history than to African folktales or the history of the Songhai empire.
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