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

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A Meaningful Report from the Trenches of the "Culture Wars"
History On Trial: Innacurate
History on Trial
The Historical Context of the Recent History Debates
A classroom teacher analyzes the ongoing history war.

History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past
Gary Nash , Charlotte Crabtree , and Ross Dunn
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679767509
Release Date: 2000-04-18

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The authors of History On Trial never would have imagined that they'd get caught up in a highly partisan national controversy. In 1992 they were enlisted by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to draw up standards for the teaching of history in America's schools. And in 1994, before their work was even published, it came under blistering attack from the political right. In History on Trial the professors argue that their work was hideously distorted and turned into a shockingly nasty political issue by agitators such as Rush Limbaugh and Lynne Cheney (who had been director of the NEH when the project to create curriculum guidelines was begun). In presenting their story, Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn may go into too much detail for a general reader, but that is perhaps a necessary byproduct of fully presenting their case.

Book Description

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION

"A deeply informed, balanced, and compelling book." --Los Angeles Times

In History on Trial, authors Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn examine the controversy and criticism over how our nation's history should be taught, culminating in the debate about National History Standards. The book chronicles a media war spearheaded by conservatives from National Endowment for the Humanities veteran Lynne Cheney to Rush Limbaugh, posing questions with regard to history as it relates to national identity. What, the authors ask, is our objective in teaching history to children? Is the role of schools, textbooks, and museums to instill patriotism? Do we revise and reinterpret the past to tell stories that reflect present-day values? If so, who should articulate these values? Wonderfully clear, timely in its intentions, History on Trial provides a thoughtful account of the ways in which Americans have, since the beginning of the Republic, perceived and argued about our past.

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A Meaningful Report from the Trenches of the "Culture Wars".......2006-07-31

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.

History On Trial: Innacurate.......2006-06-15

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.

History on Trial.......2005-08-06

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

The Historical Context of the Recent History Debates.......2000-10-24

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.

A classroom teacher analyzes the ongoing history war........1999-11-16

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.

The problem of democratic history.(political correctness in teaching history): An article from: New Criterion

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The problem of democratic history.(political correctness in teaching history): An article from: New Criterion
Keith Windschuttle
Manufacturer: Foundation for Cultural Review
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on June 1, 1998. The length of the article is 4156 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: "History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past," by Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, describe the experiences of the three authors when they reevaluated the teaching of history in the US for a program sponsored by the Bush administration. Their approach unfortunately dismisses the truth of the traditional great events in US history and concentrates on the minor currents defined by the politics of multiculturalism and women's studies. All voices should be heard, but in their proper context.

Citation Details
Title: The problem of democratic history.(political correctness in teaching history)
Author: Keith Windschuttle
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 1998
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 16 Issue: 10 Page: 22(1)

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