Whose history, anyway?

There’s a bit of give-and-take going on between Joseph Marshall and The Anchoress on the subject of secondary education in general and the learning of history in particular. I think I’ll stick my nose where it’s not wanted and give my two cents on the subject?

Before you can deal intelligently with the question of what junior and high school students should know about history and how they should approach it you should consider several questions. First, why study history at all? Second, what should a junior high or high school student be equipped with when they arrive? Finally, what should they leave with?

Every human being needs to be part of the tribe into which he or she was born. This is as true today as it was 10,000 years ago. It’s part of the hard-wiring of the human animal. An important step in becoming a member of the tribe is being inculcated into the tribe’s mythology—the stories and legends that the tribe uses to make sense of the world, to bind them together, and to distinguish themselves from other tribes.

Young people just don’t seem to be learning the myths and legends anymore. It’s an unpopular idea these days but I think that by the time kids gets to junior high they should know that Washington chopped down the cherry tree and threw a silver dollar across the Rapahannock, that Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity, that the framers of the Constitution were good, wise men who put together the greatest document of governance the world has ever known, that Honest Abe kept the Union together and freed the slaves, that Franklin Roosevelt was a great president who saved the country during the Great Depression of the 1930’s and World War II, and all of the hundreds of other myths that our American secular religion has used to bind us together.

Once they’re on the threshold of adulthood (and junior high and high school students aren’t infants any more—they’re young adults) they should be inducted into the Mysteries. Washington had slaves. Ben Franklin was possibly the greatest self-promoter in the history of the world. Abraham Lincoln was a politician. The actions that FDR took probably prolonged the Depression. And so on.

This shouldn’t be done to shake their faith but to enrich their understanding. And the greatest Mystery they should learn is that everybody has an ax to grind. History is not a science—it is a vendetta.

They should learn to rely more on primary (or at least good secondary) sources. Rather than reading a pre-fab history book they should be reading the Federalist (and Anti-Federalist) Papers, the Constitution, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Washington’s will, Lincoln’s writings and speeches. Young adults shouldn’t need someone to tell them what to believe. But they do need some guidance in identifying the difference between what people actually thought and did and believed 200 years ago and what people today think about what people thought and did and believed 200 years ago.

That brings us to what a high school student should take away from studying history. I think those young adults should first be able to distinguish between opinions and facts. Then they should be able to draw inferences from facts. Finally, they should have at least some idea of where to find facts.

There are really only two reasons to study history: abstract curiosity and to gain more understanding of the present. The problem with that second reason is that we don’t all experience the same present. For some people the present is full of injustice and cruelty. When I look around me at the actual people that I see, that’s not the present that I experience. I see a present of people working hard to have better lives and doing the best that they can and caring about each other. Now I don’t think that one or the other view should be taught to young adults either explicitly or by implication. But I do think they should be encouraged to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions.