Column: Finally, a reckoning on how we teach American history
Next week the world’s largest history organization is hosting a congressional briefing in Washington to share its findings from a two-year study that looked at, among other areas, the teaching methods of the country’s educators.
It’s not going to be pretty.
Opinion Columnist
LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports and navigating life in America.
The American Historical Assn. is calling the report “the most comprehensive study of secondary U.S. history education undertaken in the 21st century.” It identifies the events of 2020 as the impetus for this review, calling the year one of “contentious debate over history education” that has “generated outrage, wild claims, and a growing sense of alarm in homes and communities across the country.”
There have always been people who were both Black and queer. Prejudice has tried to hide them. Hollywood can correct that.
The pandemic that hit in early 2020 was devastating, and the presidential election at the end of 2020 was consequential to say the least. But history may very well show that the events of that year that reshaped America most were the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.
Much of the country didn’t even know about Juneteenth or the Tulsa massacre until protests sparked by these three killings forced this nation to have deeper conversations about race relations and our past. Collective ignorance has held us back. The reason we can’t have an earnest conversation about reparations is that too many Americans don’t know the history of this country. The real history. Not the kind that fed Baby Boomers the stories about “Christopher Columbus discovering America” or George Washington who “cannot tell a lie.”
With democracy in crisis, we all need what too many eighth-graders (and adults) are missing — proficiency in American history and civics.
From legislative reactions against the 1619 Project to the conservative effort to play down slavery as the cause for the Civil War, far too often history lessons have been edited to protect white comfort, to the detriment of this nation’s progress. In a lot of ways, it’s why we’re still talking so much about race. It’s not that racism will never die; it’s that we have a knack for keeping the lies alive, which means the fight for candor has to continue as well.
Of course, there are those who prefer the lies. They romanticize past moments in America as “the good ol’ days,” hence the “again” etched on those red baseball caps. To them, it’s all a game and history is written by the winners. But we’re all in this together. They can’t see the flaw in rooting against their own teammates. Some on the right are so committed to their fantasies about America’s past that the truth feels like treason.
Pulling out of that 20-year war was a return to the original American approach: George Washington’s doctrine of non-intervention.
Let’s hope the historical association’s study — “Mapping the Landscape of Secondary U.S. History Education” — and the subsequent congressional briefing will be an important step in helping elected officials and educators pinpoint how to change this limiting way of thinking.
All 50 states were represented through legislative review, more than 200 teacher/administrator interviews and the 3,000 reviewed surveys from middle and high school teachers. It’s refreshing to see experts weighing in with data, as opposed to the rash of unqualified book banners using (probably baseless) anecdotes to scare school boards.
My generation is the last that will hear about the Holocaust from survivors like my grandfather. Without their accounts, will the horror fade away?
The American Historical Assn. is a nonpartisan organization, so there is a glimmer of hope its work won’t be dismissed by conservatives who don’t agree with the findings. If the country can find a way to bridge the gap in thinking about how to teach history, then perhaps the generations that inherit this land won’t be saddled by our ignorance — willful and otherwise.
Earlier this week, during her sit-down interview with members of the National Assn. of Black Journalists, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked about reparations for descendants of the enslaved and whether she would create a commission to study it or support one in Congress. Her friend, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, championed the latter for decades, noting the reparations call for the enslaved came after Civil Liberties Act of 1987 provided reparations to Japanese Americans affected by World War II prison camps. Avoiding conversations about ugly moments — such as the reparations President Lincoln gave enslavers in 1862, and the 40 acres and a mule his successor took away from the formerly enslaved in 1865 — doesn’t make the repercussions of history go away.
“We need to speak truth about the generational impact of our history,” she said. “And we need to speak truth about it in a way that’s about driving solutions.”
That’s mostly not what’s happening. Consider this: Depending on the format, Plato’s “Republic” usually runs about 400 pages. Written around 380 BCE, the text has survived many global calamities, but it can’t overcome the fact that it’s boring — at least by today’s standards. Of course, “The Republic” was never intended to be light fare, and it surely exceeded any initial expectations by becoming so significant to Western philosophy and the formation of government over more than 2,000 years.
So, imagine my surprise when I saw it among the titles offered by a book summary app promising the ideas of “The Republic” could be all mine in 15 minutes or less. I used to listen to a chapter of an audiobook while I walked the dogs. Now, I can “read” Plato’s masterwork in two poop bags or less. I imagine by the end of the year, I could “read” half of Los Angeles Central Library if I didn’t care about such niceties as details or context. If I didn’t care about learning.
Aside from the culture wars, and maybe in part because of them, this is what’s happened to history in general — compressed down to bullet points, so we sort of get the gist of it. Like cramming for a quiz instead of learning the material. That’s why when race relations in America are tested, we keep failing.
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