HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.Ambrose Bierce

We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.Gerda Lerner

When I was in graduate school, I was an historian. My “area” was early modern Europe, specifically the cultural wars within a largely Christan Italy that led to Anti-Semitism, the witch trials, the persecution of sodomites, and, after the fall of Constantinople, the terror of the “Turk.”

History, for me, cannot be redemptive. That is, I can’t reach into the past and resurrect someone–even if I somehow prove that an injustice was done to this particular person, my actions are not redemptive. That person is long-dead. I’ve done nothing to save them, and, perhaps worse for me, as an historian, I’ve imposed my interpretation of their lives onto them.

History is always an act of interpretation. There’s an African proverb that says: Until the lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.

While my political understanding of the world would make me one of those who would attempt to write the history of the lion, I recognize my part in imposing my interpretation onto events that I was no part of.

Everything I’ve said so far presupposes the free access to documents–the “facts” if you will–that allow acts of interpretation to take place. Based on that, we teach our children history in their school curriculum.

In the US, there is a constant emphasis on particular stories–Columbus, the Pilgrims, the Revolution, the Pioneers, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Now. And there’s usually one way of teaching it. How all of these events somehow present a forward march that got us to this place where we are a glorious nation.
Just as curriculum fights are breaking out over the teaching of evolution and which books children should be allowed to read, as an historian, I’ve witnessed numerous fights, some large and some small, about the way history gets taught. I’ve never forgotten an experience in Seattle where a friend was teaching history in a Seattle high school and decided, as part of the series on Viet Nam, to show the movie Platoon. Because of its “R” rating, permission from parents was needed. One mother called my friend and yelled at her, demanded to know why she was showing such a thing. My friend responded that she was trying to teach the kids how to think critically about American history. The parent yelled that she “didn’t want my kid thinking critically about American history.”

It goes without saying that critical thinking is not about criticism, although that may certainly arise. It’s about not accepting a story at face value and looking for the various shades and layers of meaning within it.

My oldest daughter, in 7th grade, was essentially taught a “critical” approach to American history. On Columbus Day, she asked me why we were celebrating a holiday in honour of a man who had enslaved Indians. We wound up having a fantastic discussion about looking at someone’s actions in all their complexity–the good and the bad, the brave and the cruel.

Many, many people in this country are afraid of such teachings. Today, I read an article in the
Guardian that shows that these fights are taking all over the world. Some excerpts:

Mr Collins revealed that he had asked the historian Andrew Roberts to draw up a list of key facts about British history that all children would have to learn by the time they left school. There were too many “yawning gaps” in teenagers’ basic historical knowledge, he warned. The Daily Telegraph concurred and was quick to offer its readers a guide to the British past, complete with headings such as “The Anglo-Saxons: The Germans become English” and “The Globe Goes Pink – The Victorians”.

By happy coincidence, at the same time as Mr Collins was drawing up his Whiggish chronology, the Japanese ministry of education was sending its own official version of the past to the printers. And it was the resulting textbooks – with their studious omission of Japan’s wartime atrocities – that sparked rioting in Beijing and the ongoing diplomatic showdown with China.

Meanwhile, in India, schools and universities were just emerging from five years of equally virulent historical propaganda. From the moment of its election in 1999, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) had attempted a wholesale “saffronisation” of the country’s past. For a political movement which had connived at the Gujarat massacres saw little wrong in removing credible scholarship from the teaching of history. Armed thugs attacked university lecturers, prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee warned foreign authors not “to play with our national pride”, and references to India’s multi-ethnic, multireligious past were systematically excised from school curriculums. On its return to power in 2004, one of the first acts of the Congress party was to sack the official in charge of the BJP’s textbooks.

For in US classrooms a highly prescriptive syllabus, of the type Collins proposed, offers students an uncritical, uplifting story of the triumph of American liberty. Citizenship and history are seamlessly meshed into a simple-minded morality play designed to nurture blind patriotism. The textbook titles tend to give the game away: The American Way, Land of Promise, Rise of the American Nation, and The Challenge of Freedom are among the more subtle choices. And, as James W Loewen has pointed out, the consequence of this unerringly patriotic tale of US heroes and epochs is that African-American, Native-American and Latino students all tend to perform exceptionally poorly at high-school history.

The Brits have attempted to discard their old “whiggish” history in favour of one that incorporates the “sweep” of British history, including the contributions of its fairly new ethnic minorities, and how its role as imperialist nation has had an impact on the world. A history that while not perfect, at least attempts to pay attention to the complexity of the things that Britain has done–the good and the bad.

For even if we might not fully value our approach to history education, other countries certainly do. The Council of Europe is currently nurturing history teaching in post-Soviet and eastern European nations. In countries where nationalism and ethnic strife is ever present, the developing British tradition of non-prescriptive, critical enquiry is regarded as especially valuable. For the terrible consequences of state-sanctioned national narratives – with their attendant myths of victimhood, ethnic cohesion or divine mission – were there for all to see on the streets of Srebrenica.

Many have advocated that the British curriculum return to its legacy of royalty and heroism. Tristram Hunt, the author of the article, offers this caveat, which seems relevant this week as we struggle with issues of inclusiveness:

But before we return to King Alfred, Lord Clive and Horatio Nelson we should remember that the teaching of drum-and-trumpet stories of Britain’s past changed for a reason. We are no longer the mono-ethnic, male-dominated, hierarchical world of 50 years ago. As society changes, so does its relationship with the past. Whitehall-woven grand narratives of our struggle for freedom will neither engage more students in the studying of history nor serve our public sphere well. As a man with time on his hands, Tim Collins can now bury himself in the great works of history – and discover that chronology and criticism go best hand in hand.

How do we teach history in this country? And for me, more importantly, how do we say “no” to schoolboards across the country that, emboldened by communities that wish to return the Bible to the curriculum and ban the teaching of evolution?