Gary Nash: Responds to criticism by Susan Jacoby

It is puzzling that in her description of the National History Standards controversy in 1994-96, Susan Jacoby relies on the deliberate disinformation campaign mounted at the time by right-wing cultural warriors (Historians and the Dumbing Down of Public Discourse, HNN, 12 May 2008). Having appreciated Jacoby’s book-length contribution to our understanding of American secularism, I am inclined to believe that her deeply distorted account of the standards controversy was written without actually reading the standards in U.S. and World history or perusing History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (1999), which I co-authored with Charlotte Crabtree and Ross Dunn. Instead, her account reads like a version of the fusillades of Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and their ilk more than a decade ago. Perhaps Jacoby’s account can be charged to sloppy research rather than conscioius obfuscation and misrepresentation. Nonetheless, let’s get the record straight so that HNN readers are not misled. Here are some particulars.

Jacoby avers that “many distinguished conservative and liberal historians were appalled” by the National History Standards. Here, she argues by assertion without a shred of proof. I do not know of any liberal historians who expressed such dismay (though some had suggestions for additional material or rephrasing, which was to be expected in documents of this kind) and even conservative historians with reservations were selective in their criticisms. The fact is that the standards were approved overwhelmingly by historians, as well they might, for several hundred were involved in constructing the standards and nearly every historian recognized that the standards were built on the scholarship of this generation.