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.