Some people decry the fact that history professors do not sufficiently praise America. Instead, the argument goes, college history professors spend their time trying to drag America down by focusing on the dark spots of American history--slavery, the conquest of Native Americans, the ill-treatment of minority groups--rather than celebrating the great stuff, like the gradual expansion of liberty, equality, and democracy in the modern world's first great republic.
There was a huge outrage from conservative culture warriors in 1994 when a former professor of mine at UCLA, Gary Nash, Director of the National Center for History in the Schools, introduced national "standards" for what K-12 students should learn about American history. The standards were part of a collaborative effort among teachers and scholars across the country, but conservative commentators like Lynn Cheney, former director of the National Endowment of the Humanities and wife of Dick Cheney, suggested that American history was being hijacked by a liberal, politically correct professoriate who painted a "grim and gloomy" portrait of US history. By giving disproportionate attention to slaves, women, Native Americans, and Civil Rights activists, Cheney argued that the new standards slighted great historical figures like George Washington and Robert E. Lee. She complained that the standards did not provide American children with heroes: "I think our kids need heroes. I think that they need models of greatness to help them aspire. I think they need heroes so that they can become heroes themselves."
The controversy over what to teach our children about US history continues, with conservatives consistently making the claim that most history texts and teachers like to bash America rather than build it up. In 2010, the same year the Texas school board became embroiled in an ideological struggle over which founders and which "facts" to emphasize--conservative evangelicals wanted less Thomas Jefferson and more John Calvin--Glenn Beck endorsed a conservative-leaning US history textbook called "A Patriot's History of the United States," which billed itself as an antidote to the apologetic critical histories of America: "For at least thirty years, high school and college students have been taught to be embarrassed by American history. Required readings have become skewed toward a relentless focus on our country’s darkest moments, from slavery to McCarthyism. As a result, many history books devote more space to Harriet Tubman than to Abraham Lincoln; more to My Lai than to the American Revolution; more to the internment of Japanese Americans than to the liberation of Europe in World War II."
All of this begs the question: What is the goal of teaching (or writing) history? Is history about "celebrating" or "critiquing"?
Without a doubt, the goal of history, as it developed in the nineteenth century, was clearly about celebrating national values and advancing a narrative of national greatness and exceptionalism.
History, as taught in schools and written in textbooks, was an outgrowth of nationalism and nation-state building. School curriculum, national holidays, national monuments and memorials all aligned around an explicitly nationalist message.
The goal of history was not scientific--to objectively analyze causes, consequences, and facts--but rather moralistic: it was intended to teach and celebrate national values and to create a sense of national unity. Students in the US learned history from their McGuffy readers, which contained, among the speeches by great men and poems about great men, Parson Weems' story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree: "George," said his father, "do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden? " This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself: and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-conquering truth, he bravely cried out, "I can't tell a lie, Pa; you know I can't tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet." "Run to my arms, you dearest boy," cried his father in transports, "run to my arms; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son is more worth than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold."
It's great stuff, but it's not really history per se. For one, modern historians, trained in the scientific method, claim that it likely never happened. But the story of the cherry tree was not included in the McGuffy reader because it was scientific history (or even verifiable, as far as we know), but because it conveyed a moral lesson that reflected well on our national character. The message: our Founding Fathers, like our nation, were moral exemplars who were beyond criticism.
I grapple with these issues every single quarter--every single week. I encourage students to be "critical." In doing so, I am often pushing against their inclinations, their politics, their values. Moreover, I have a great love of my own country--of its values, political system, and culture. I'm certainly not out to bash a country that I love, simply for the sake of bashing.
Why should we be critical? Why can't we simply praise our civilization?
I offer a couple answers. The first is that we ARE celebrating our culture--especially our freedom of speech and thought--when we look at the past clearly, openly, and critically. In this country, when we criticize our leaders and our past, we ARE being patriotic. As Americans, it's our right, and I would argue our duty, to engage in good faith criticism of ourselves and our country. It's something that does not happen in countries like China, without grave consequences.
The other argument is an explicitly moral one: how can we improve ourselves unless we subject ourselves to criticism. This is an argument that students understand implicitly when applied to their own lives--that subjecting oneself to criticism and interrogation is the first step towards moral uplift. Humility, and a willingness to recognize one's flaws (one's "sins" depending on your particular worldview) are seen in most religious systems as a prerequisite to spiritual enlightenment, or at least the first step towards moral self-improvement.
So it only makes sense to apply the same principle to the nation. If we seek to improve as a nation, we must be honest about our flaws. We must be willing to subject ourselves to good faith criticism in the interests of making ourselves better.
In rereading a section of WEB DuBois's "Souls of Black Folk" for a class last week, I came across a wonderful passage that launched me into this train of thought (along with the fact that on the same day I was grading a document analysis assignment where too many students were uncritically praising the Truman Doctrine without also subjecting it to more "critical" analysis). In the passage, DuBois admonishes "black men to judge the South discriminatingly." "The present generation of Southerners," says DuBois, "are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it."
He then urges his nineteenth-century readers to jettison their stereotypes and preconceptions and see the South in all its complexity, the good and the bad: "The South is not 'solid'; it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is to-day perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good."
Then comes the line that really made an impression--the one that provides a positive rationale for why even patriots must engage in good-faith criticism of their country: "Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs,--needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development."
WEB DuBois was fair minded and "discriminating." As a black man in the late nineteenth-century, he could have easily indicted all whites as racist. But he didn't. The South was not "solid" or monolithic. It was complex. His analysis encourages us to throw away our biases and use our minds.
As I finish this--on Saturday night, January 21--Newt Gingrich has just won the South Carolina Republican primary. He is giving a speech to his supporters who are chanting "USA, USA, USA, USA!"
I'm guessing they wouldn't like my message: that Americans should take a "critical perspective" on their own past. I’m guessing I would be accused of being one of those liberal history professors who don't love America.
He has just said something along the lines of "We look to our Founding Fathers" for inspiration, while Obama looks to left-wing critics of America. Gingrinch makes Obama sound like one of those history professors, mentioned above, who are accused of wanting to drag America down.
So here we go again: to be "critical" is to be unpatriotic; to chant "USA, USA, USA" is to be patriotic.
My goal: for all of us to be more fair-minded and more discriminating; for us to look, and think hard, before we leap to conclusions. If I am partisan I hope I am a partisan on the side of critical thinking. (Personal note: I happen to be a real critic of political parties, which were not, by the way, mentioned in the Constitution….but that's another story.)
