Prompt #2: Based on evidence presented in this week’s readings, how much of a role do you think textbooks, schools, and educators play in Americans’ sense of history and the past? If Americans have a distorted or selective view of the past, are teachers and schools the primary culprits? Or are there other causes that you can point to?
By looking at Loewen’s article and the examples presented, I think it’s very clear that education has a hand in what exactly American students remember about historical figures. There was so much more to Keller’s and Wilson’s stories, big chunks that just get left out of texts, and so some kids never hear about. Personally, while I’d heard some things about Keller being a socialist before, just because of my own readings, I had no clue about the darker side to Wilson. I’d never had the opportunity to learn about that. So yes, textbooks play a role in what students are able to learn about, especially if these are students that aren’t going outside of class for learning opportunities.
But the “primary culprits” are not those we normally associate with education.
In Stephanie Simon’s article about the Texas Board of Education, it is presented to us the idea of changing textbooks and curriculum in order to have a focus that some specific reviewers believe is better than the one at present. Some of them are perfectly reasonable requests from people that are knowledgeable in the subject area– for example:
“Reviewer Jesús F. de la Teja, a former state historian, calls for adding names such as Juan de Oñate, who led the Spanish expedition that settled New Mexico and José Antonio Navarro, a proponent of Texas independence. He also recommends a deeper study of Texas history.”
One would assume that in Texas, we should know about Hispanic figures, since they are so tied into our culture and history, and as a former state historian, that Teja has a good idea of what students should learn about their state.
On the other hand, we have men like the Reverend Marshall, “who preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God’s judgments on the nation’s sexual immorality”, who are insisting that we essentially censor historical figures like Anne Hutchinson and Thurgood Marshall, in favor of teaching more about “revival movements” and “that America’s founding principles are biblical”.
There is quite a bit wrong with that image (education is supposed to be secular, like the government), but what matters most is that these people are fighting for what they believe, and that is what they believe kids need to be taught. Whether or not our education plays a role in who we grow up to admire, these people think that it does, and they’re willing to fight for it, which shows that, as a whole, in our society, it does matter to us what “Legendary Americans” we are taught. Any distortion or selectivity we have in what we retain is embedded in the society we are a part of, not specifically because of teachers or schools.