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History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past

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Begun in 1989 as a bi-partisan initiative to enhance the teaching of K-12 history to America's students, the authors of this book--Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn--along with many others, prepared a set of guidelines and teaching examples that would guide instructors in the preparation of their classes. "History on Trial" is largely about the effort to prepare the guidelines and the furor that they caused in the mid-1990s, although there is a discussion in the early part of the book about the "culture wars" in general in the latter twentieth century.

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and aided by the Department of Education, the effort to develop these National Standards at UCLA's National Center for History in the Schools derailed in 1994 because of a conservative attack that characterized the effort as "hijacked" by political correctness and the agenda of the American Left. Led by Lynne Cheney, former head of the NEH, and aided by conservative commentators ranging from Rush Limbaugh to William Bennett to Charles Krauthammer, conservatives criticized the work of a large community of historians and teachers who developed these voluntary standards. They questioned the effort to challenge students to consider new ways of seeing the past, they criticized the reexamination of traditional interpretations, they abhorred a more multicultural and questioning approach to delving into history. It was during this era that "revisionist history" first entered the lexicon as a term of derision, as if understanding of the past could never be altered in any way.

The opening salvo of this debate began in October 1994 in the pages of the "Wall Street Journal" when Lynne Cheney ambushed Nash and the others involved in the writing of the history standards. She questioned mostly, as did other critics, the teaching examples packaged with the standards. The standards themselves were relatively non-controversial and quite rigorous statements of what students should know at a given point in their education. Representative of the right's criticisms, Krauthammer wrote, "The whole document strains to promote the achievements and highlight the victimization of the country's preferred minorities, while straining equally to degrade the achievements and highlight the flaws of the white males who ran the country for its first two centuries" (pp. 189-90). As evidence, the critics mined the teaching examples for relative mentions of people and events (Speckled Snake, a Cherokee warrior, or Mercy Otis Warren, or any number of other non-traditional figures in American history texts), for challenges to students to reconsider traditional understandings (for example, questions about the relative place of Columbus in American history, as a vanguard of progress or conquest), as a statement of misplaced emphasis (shifting more toward world history rather than stressing Western Civilization).

For more than a year the onslaught continued, with Nash, et al., answering the challenges. This book details the debate, offers rebuttals by the advocates of the standards, admits some errors both in substance and in strategy to answering the critics, and discusses the revisions of the standards that eventually led to the jettisoning of the teaching examples and other changes. Most important, and this has been repeated many times in the culture wars, the facts of the controversy got lost in the media blasts. Never mind that many of the criticisms were groundless, few people actually read the standards. Even Congress got into the act, passing a resolution condemning the standards even though they were completely voluntary and not a part of any official educational requirement.

What I found most interesting about "History on Trial" was the fierceness of the debate. Nash, et al., suggested, and I agree, that this was the case because of the need to redefine national identity and a concern that the bulwarks of traditional conceptions may be crumbling. This has recast historical inquiry as an intellectual battleground where the casualties are no longer theories about the past that matter mostly to historians but the overall "weltanschauung" of society in a post-modern, multicultural, anti-hierarchical age. The fundamental philosophical thrust of modern society has been a blurring of the line between fact and fiction, between realism and poetry, between the unrecoverable past and our memory of it. This raising of the inexact character of historical "truth," as well as its relationship to myth and memory and the reality of the dim and unrecoverable past, has foreshadowed deep fissures in the landscape of identity and what it means to be American. Truth, it seems, has differed from time to time and place to place with reckless abandon and enormous variety. Choice between them is present everywhere both in the past and the present; my truth dissolves into your myth and your truth into my myth almost as soon as it is articulated. We see this reinforced everywhere about us today, and mostly we shake our heads and misunderstand the versions of truth espoused by various groups about themselves and about those excluded from their fellowship.

The desperation of competing claims on the past are played out very publicly, and not without rancor, in such large-scale settings as the debate over the national history standards. "History on Trial" is a very fine discussion of this debate, of course written from the perspective of the authors of the standards. I have read the standards in their various versions over the years, and I believe they are remarkably comprehensive and valuable, so I have my own positive perspective on this matter beyond reading "History on Trial." I would very much like to read a history of the debate written by Lynne Cheney or other critics of the standards. It would add to the offerings in the marketplace of ideas, a marketplace that I still believe has an important role in modern America despite those who would seek to limit its discourse.

Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn have written a fascinating book that looks at the problems which occur when politics and the teaching history clash, as they inevitably will. The specific event described is the fight over the National History Standards which were established to give states and local school boards voluntary guidelines. The idea blew up when Lynne Cheney wrote an op-ed piece damning the standards. All three authors were involved in the project and bring their personal views and insights to the book in a helpful way.

The most interesting aspect of the book is both the historical and international aspects applied to the history wars. It allows the reader to put this recent battle into a more helpful historical perspective as many examples from the past are presented. The examples from the other countries are also useful in giving a global approach to the issues. This is how it should be for a book that covers the battles over what should be taught to children concerning U.S. and world history. A good book that shows the problems that begin when politicians get involved in the teaching of history.

The dedication reads simply, "This book is dedicated to the nation's history teachers". Being a member of such an oft-maligned group, this reviewer could not fail to read every word of History on Trial with critical interest. Nash and company give a fascinating overview of the debates that have raged regarding the teaching of America's history and continue to torment our national conscience today. As a history of history alone the book would be worthwhile. The primary controversy explored involves the uproar that arose over publication of the national history standards. These had been developed by the National Center for History in the Schools, established and funded by the NEH, headed by Lynne Cheney from 1986-1992. While some of the writing does seem a defense of the embattled authors being assaulted by right-wing conservatives, both critics and defenders of the NCHS are quoted liberally. In fact, it is noted that there were few defenders in the early days of the attacks. The reader is allowed to make up his/her own mind. The initiative to develop standards came at a time when many were charging that our nation's schools were failing. George Bush had developed the Goals 2000 plan and education committees, governors, state legislatures, and local education boards began to seek solutions. The problems were not with the idea of setting standards, but with a perceived emphasis on social history and historical interpretation skills at the expense of rote memorization of traditional names, dates, and events. The US history standards were the most viciously attacked. Critics did not want teachers to discuss failures or faults with the system. They preferred glorification of national heroes (adult, white males) and national institutions. In World History, critics objected to what they considered excessive inclusion of contributions from Asian, African and Latin American nations to the detriment of the traditional Western Civilization emphasis. Surprisingly, the standards received little criticism at the elementary and middle school level. Critics included Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Lynne Cheney (once an ardent supporter) and Lamar Alexander. The attacks were leveled largely not at the standards themselves, but at sample lesson plans that accompanied them. Many critics did not seem to have read the standards. Having been a participant in the implementation of these controversial standards in a secondary public school US History classroom, using materials that had been developed by the NCHS, this reviewer can assert that the war is ongoing. However, the very conflict-laden nature of the teaching of history is one of the characteristics that keeps it so vital and interesting. For hope, all readers should look forward to the final chapter, "Lessons from the History Wars". This should be required reading for all potential history teachers now in college classrooms.

This is the kind of book I'd like to have written - the kind of book that would really clarify a lot of public debate, not to mention academic work done in the discipline of history, if it were widely read. It does three things at once: meticulously defend the proposed U.S. National History Standards against their often savage right-wing opponents; make the case that history teaching is an important forum for the working out of cultural anxieties; and provide a chronicle of debates over historical meanings and teachings since the founding of the Republic, and earlier. A really well-written and important work, both for history students and teachers and for the interested public (of which, readers will realize, we are all a part).

In the early 1990s, a Federal project for developing non binding standards for historical studies in US schools met with fierce conservative opposition. "History on Trial", by three of the historians involved in the creation of the standards, is a defense of the standards and a counter punch against the "Right Wing Assault" on them. Along the way the authors offer a confused discussion of the epistemological and ideological issues surrounding the establishment of school historical programs, a dull and mostly irrelevant history of the treatment of history in US school, and a far too detailed account of the "History Wars".

The general discussion of historical epistemology is incoherent, with some statement that sounds amazingly relativist alongside with statements which seems to completely underestimate the difficulty and subjectivity involved in historical representations; the authors rhetorically ask "how does controversy over Albert Einstein's quantum theory in physics differ from controversy over reinterpretation of Columbus's character?" (p.23)

Leave aside the fact that Einstein didn't have a quantum theory - the analogy is still weak. Science, with occasional exceptions, is non political - the great majority of scientists don't have anything invested in any particular answer for any physical question - something which is hardly true for historians. Furthermore, although historical interpretations are occasionally rendered unsupportable by evidence, they usually aren't. What happens in the best of historical controversies, such as the one between "intentionalist" and "functionalist" interpretations of the holocaust, is that supporters of the various schools criticize each other and improve their accounts, without changing their basic orientation. Thus a modern "intentionalist" interpretation is better then a 1960s era "intentionalist" interpretation, but not better then a current "functionalist" interpretation, and visa versa. But an "Einsteinian" interpretation of the motions of planets is clearly superior to a "Newtonian" one. (See Omer Bartov's Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories for a good discussion of the intentionalist/functionalist debate).

Most of chapters 2-5 are a history of US Historians and US school history. Much of this material is presented better elsewhere (Peter Novick's brilliant That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Ideas in Context) is particularly recommended). The authors describe a kind of modern day passion play -relatively progressive historians try to add ambiguity and complexity to the Historical curriculum. They are then assaulted by completely irrational jingoistic conservatives, whose prime strategy is cherry picking and quoting out of context. A brief controversy ensues, then dies out a few years later.

This is irrelevant to the debate about the historical standards of the 1990s - just because critics of previous generations of Americans historians were unreasonable, it doesn't follow that current critics are. This is typical of the authors' methods: they routinely present only extremist and unreasonable critics of the historical standards, the past and present Rush Limbaughs. In one case, they even stoop so low as to engage in ad hominem attacks, describing a critic as "one of the convicted Watergate conspirators" (p. 76).

The authors are correct that post 1960s history is considerably more varied than earlier historical accounts. They salute it as inclusive rather then exclusive history. Be that is it may, they fail to recognize the significant difference between history as a body of knowledge and history as a school subject. There are considerably more historians working today than in the 1950s; therefore, the expansion of women's history, black history, economic history, etc, does not necessarily come at the expense of "traditional" history. But in schools there are only so many hours dedicated to history. In a zero-sum game, exclusion is the other side of inclusion.

After dedicating one chapter to international History wars (in which, by the way, they offend in ways they otherwise criticize, including an excessive focus on England and merely token representation of non Western countries), the rest of the book is dedicated to the politics, developments, and reactions to the standards. The account is tedious, including many details of political squabbling, and an excessive amount of quotations by fans of the program.

I found it particularly troubling that no discussion of the actual learning experience was offered; if the standards reflected insights from psychological studies of students or from institutional economics about the incentives of teachers, the authors neglected to mention it. Nor do they mention any attempt at asking students what they wanted to learn, assessing the effectiveness of various existing programs, or meditating about the effect of the standards on the capacity to monitor children's knowledge. When the authors get to a sentence commencing with "Research has shown" (p.273) they offer no citation of this "research", let alone a literature review.

Critics are again represented almost uniformly as ignorant or malicious, their views are hardly ever taken seriously. One might have expected that conservative alternatives would have been discussed in details, and their shortcomings pointed out. Instead, the authors dismiss such alternatives out of hand (p. 220).

As for the standards themselves, without reading them it is impossible to judge, but from the defense offered in the book, as well as from the excerpts reproduced here, they don't seem to be far from the American mainstream. If the America that made James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" the best selling history of the US Civil War is our reference, then the standards seem adequate expression of the people's objectives. The authors have convinced me that the standards suffered from politicized spin to depict them as "radical", "anti-American", or "relativist" - which they are not.

On the other hand, there is at least a significant minority of Americans with radically different views. There are Americans, after all, who think that Harry Potter is a warlock destined to rot in hell. Amazon offers a book claiming, I kid you not, to offer "credible voices" from "both sides" of the "Harry Potter Debate" What's a Christian to Do with Harry Potter?. Given the fragmentation of America, how likely is it that any standard would satisfy all citizens? After reading "History on Trial", the standards seem to me reasonably professional and fair. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about this book.

A great resource for undergraduate and graduate students at my university in classes for scholars becoming professional educators. Would highly recommend to causal readers, also.

Prof Dave

Nash, Gary, History on Trial, Culture War and The Teachings of the Past. Nash, obsessed with race, class, and gender concerns and grieving over the severe beating taken by the National History Standards writes this book telling why the critics, he stigmatizes as "right wing extremists", were wrong. We are not told how this is squared with the acknowledged fact that the Standards were sufficiently deficient to require revision. The book is slow reading and the constant application of the thumb screw, the rack , and the carving knife to the facts is distracting as well as embarrassing. Omissions are revealing, e.g., Nash neglects to tell us that the Council for Basic Education (CBE), which was formed to review the original version of the Standards, was not exactly an impartial "referee." Nash, the primary director of the Standards project, was given veto power over the composition of the two CBE review panels, and he used it to keep serious critics, such as John Patrick Diggins of CUNY, off the panel. In this book Nash continually displays his animosity to the Great Satans of America, i.e. patriotic organizations such as the DAR, SAR, VFW, and the American Legion. It is an anti-intellectual book written by a leading postmodern who follows an "off with their heads" approach to anyone not who does not pay homage to his rigid orthodoxy of politically correct views on race, class, and gender matters. B. Rice Aston Fieldwood Houston, TX

The author's state that Historians did not do anything for the schools from around 1956 to 1986. This is not so, The Historians through the American Historical Association did a number of projects for the schools such as the Service Center for Teachers of History, The History Education Project as well as a number of other innovations. What Nash and the others are saying is that no national committee was in action. The historians attempted to have programs to help the teachers not set policy which seems to be the intent of the national standards. Anyone interested in the historians attempts to aid the schools by improving instruction and not formulating policy should read my doctoral dissertation:Clio's Disciples, Historians, Social Studies Educators and the Schools- 1956 to 1986.

I had to read this book for a graduate level course. Not only is it one sided, it contains WAY too much drama. Everything is either ultra, extreme or hateful.

Added to this whole mix is the use of words that are not necessary. Does research have to be "blooming"? This book is just plain silly.

And to the authors'--run-on sentences do not make you look better.

History On Trial examines a period of time in the mid to late 1990s where political agendas raged over how to teach the subject of history in American classrooms. For the most part this book presents it's arguments from an extremely left-wing, politically correct viewpoint which I quickly grew tired of. History On Trial is also amazingly innacurate when it comes to simple facts, which calls into question how accurate the book is overall. For example only six pages into History On Trial the reader will come across this amazingly erroneous question:

"Were the Smithsonian Institution's curators and consulting historians really "hijacking history," practicing "political correctness," and demonstrating "anti-Americanism," when they planned an exhibit on Enola Gay, the B-52 that dropped the first atom bomb on Japan a half century ago?"

Not only is this entirely over dramatic writing it's also totally comical. The authors apparently are unwilling or unable to perform the most basic research. The Enola Gay was a Boeing B-29, produced late in World War II. The B-52 bomber was also manufactured by Boeing (they at least got the company right) but it was not in military service until 1954 nine years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. Wow. What a sloppy job the authors did writing this one.

If you are particularly left-leaning in your political views and don't care about accurate presentation of facts you'll probably love this book. For everyone else my recommendation is don't waste your time with it.