What is history? Award winning American author E.L. Doctorow answers:
History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth. History Quotes
Accusations of revisionist history have plagued American politics for as long as I’ve been aware of them. Most of that has come from the right as many criticized text book revisions which took out the stories behind the names and dates students are expected to learn. Now it is the left’s turn to criticize the right as organizations are springing up to put back what was lost.
For the moment, I am not so interested in who is right or wrong although I am sure most here can deduce where my sympathies lie. I am more interested in the motivation behind the continual re-interpretation of historical events and figures.
What is history? The present? A myth? A retelling of names, dates and events? Interestingly, in Middle English the word history was not differentiated from the word story. Old French histoire meant “narrative, account, tale, story” while the Greek historia meant “a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative.” History is a method of inquiry, a narrative account and a story. It is the inquiry of, the narrative of and the story of us.
When we battle over the presentation of history in the schools, we are battling over who we are as a people. When we talk about socialization, we are talking about who gets to decide who we are as a people. What happens when the curriculum becomes so watered down as to become meaningless? It does not give us an opportunity to look to the future, nor to learn other, more “relevant” material. It divorces us from ourselves. leaving us with no clear knowledge of who we are.
And our culture loses its ideals.
Popular culture has become divorced from civilization because we have been separated from who we are. Artists, once the repositories of culture, have scornfully turned their backs on civilization, and redefined art as “pushing the envelope” and “making a statement.” The problem, of course, is that there’s only so far you can push without becoming ludicrous; once you’ve put a crucifix in a beaker of urine or hung a lamp on the wall and called it great, profound art, where else do you go? The very representatives of high art and civilization have scorned it in favor of narcisissm, the social disease that infected us during the “I refuse to ever grow up and be an adult” 60s. Right Wing Nation (Take time to read the entire entry; it is well worth it.)
If we lose touch with who we we are, who will we be in the future?
[tags]education, history, homeschooling[/tags]
Great thinking. You hit the nail on the head with socialization comment. I’m glad you posted your remarks on the HSBA page. If you had not, I might not have known you existed. That would have been a shame. Keep writing. It’s good stuff.
Thank you, skdenfeld! Right Wing Nation shared several thoughts in this one which I thought were very good…I had difficulty finding just one quote.
“The very representatives of high art and civilization have scorned it in favor of narcisissm, the social disease that infected us during the “I refuse to ever grow up and be an adult” 60s.” Actually, this began in the ‘roaring 20s’, as did the sexual revolution. The First World War really set us on our ear.
The distinction between the Old French and Latin definitions is significant; I wonder if the connotations ars really there, because they reflect how history really has two parts: the ’story’ — the facts, the events that happened and their causes and effects, and the ‘knowing’ — how we interpret those events (which is the who-are-we-as-a-people question).
The first college history class I took was American History 101, required for all freshmen. On the first day, the prof held up the textbook and said, “I won’t be making assignments out of this book. You should have covered all this information in your high school history classes, but if you need to review, this is here for you. I will be taking for granted that you know the facts and events in this book. We will be discussing the reasons for these events and how they shaped who we are today.” (One of my friends said this was the most difficult class of her entire college career because, being a Canadian, she actually had to read and study that textbook during the course so she wouldn’t be lost!)
With that in mind, I have been choosing history books for my children very carefully, leaning toward those which simply tell what happened. Especially now, at the grammar stage, I am looking simply to familiarize them with the big picture of *what happened* in the past, who were the Greeks, the Romans, the Pilgrims. We do a lot of *talking* about who was right and wrong according to God’s law and about why people did what they did (and about what ‘politics’ is), but I think that is the place for talking and discussion, not black and white ink, at least while they are young. When they are older they should be able to read critically books which are interpretive and analytical in nature.
I get very annoyed with Christian textbooks for the same reason I get annoyed with revisionist secular ones — because they blur this distinction; they out forth interpretation as fact. We Christians place ourselves in a very precarious position both before the world and before God when we make too many interpretive statements about what was God’s work and will — history itself has made us eat those words quite a few times.
I usually view history as a story and study it as such. I try not to focus on the facts of history, because, well… I don’t remember any of them and knowing facts doesn’t equate to competence. Why I like the story analogy is because it forces me to look at history and find the interesting characters, the setting and the plot.
Unlike fantasy books, the characters are real. I don’t look for one dimensional people who are purely good or purely evil. We look at the culture the person was living in; we consider their worldveiw. Generally, when I studied history in school, we studied an event. But, when you study a story, you need to look at what took place before and after this climax and how this event was resolved. Again, since we are talking about real “stories,” we don’t always find what we consdier a happy ending. Now that Marissa is older and starting to understand her worldview, we talk about how her worldview affects how she interprets history.
Such a great post ~
Rebecca, you make some interesting points. This is a personal observation thing, but I would say that the left is more guilty of stripping away any interpretation of history and leaving it only facts and events than they are in rewriting so much. At least the textbooks I have actually have looked at seem that way…I have only recently had the opportunity to look at older ones and compare. But mostly it is a rather dry narrative void of any excitement, struggle, passion, etc. It is so-and-so did this-and-that on such-and-such a date.
You are right that Christian sources can go a bit overboard. I may delve into how we actually teach history in a later post, but we try to use primary source documents.
If the net sum of our teaching on history yields only facts and dates and leaves the story out, I think we are basically saying that it isn’t important. It makes it dry, unapproachable and irrelevant to today with the inevitable question, “Why do we need to learn this?” And why do we? It really isn’t all that important when the Declaration of Independence was signed, or by whom. It doesn’t matter all that much how many days Washington marched around in the snow and what date which battle occurred. Why is the important part. Only by understanding that can we truly understand what our country was meant to be, what price there is on liberty and recognize the good and bad lessons of our own history.
Who do we trust to tell the story? I have similar concerns to you which is why we do a lot with primary source documents. That is tougher with younger children, but not impossible. We do have a text which we read in between to sort of paste it all together, but the focus is more on the other studies we do.
Thank you for such great thoughts!
Thank you, Julie. I think you basically said what I was trying to say but with fewer words. : )
Now you can be my friend forever. No one… and I mean no one… has ever accused me of being succinct before!
)
I have tried to suppress the memory, so I cannot tell you how many times I was asked to re-work my thesis because it was rather wordy ~
Well, I am honored to win your forever friendship. : ) You tell me I have excellent entries now and again, and that is more than enough to make me feel like a wriggly puppy!