Column: Official History

In two speeches on September 17 Mr. Bush announced his administration's determination to strengthen purportedly, the teaching of American history in elementary, secondary, and higher educational institutions. He did not hide the underlying reason for this call to educational arms, saying right up front that "our children ... are seeing Americans fight for our country," thus "they also must know why their country is worth fighting for."

Aside from the questionable implication that America is already engaged in a hot war for survival, no one could find reasonable doubt that it's a nice thing to have historically informed citizens. The problem with the president's trumpeted educational initiatives--such as an upcoming White House forum to discuss federal "policies" for teaching history--is that the past in the hands of politicians quickly sours into self-serving propaganda. It is no coincidence, obviously, that W's professed love of history has transubstantiated from academic apathy only in the midst of the greatest propagandistic shell game ever mounted by a presidential administration. Somewhere in all those (carefully chosen) history books on Karl Rove's and Lynne Cheney's shelves are imprimaturs aplenty for military incursion in the absence of a national security threat.

Conscripting history into the forces of nationalist propaganda is nothing new in America, of course. The revolutionary founding fathers were no strangers to spinning English parliamentary history; Republicans and Democrats of the early 1860s interpreted differently the historical meaning of virtuous Americanism; William McKinley literally couldn't find the Philippine Islands on the Oval Office globe but readily discerned America's historic mission to conquer them; the nation's only historian-president, Woodrow Wilson, more than passively permitted history's manipulation during the Great War; and so on, and so on. Yet past sins committed against historical probity don't excuse current ones, any more than murderers are excused because murder is nothing new under the sun.

In his prepared remarks the president unintentionally revealed the danger and downright silliness of promoting anything akin to official history in an open society, something he pledged to do "at the federal level." (Resolved: we may now dismiss the once-uncompromising conservative principle that centralized government is naturally oppressive and always wrongheaded--at least when it comes to citizen-reeducation.) Suggesting that he knew better, for example, W disclosed with all due grief that "28 percent of eighth graders do not know the reason why the Civil War was fought."

I've got news for you, Mr. President. Professional historians do not know The Reason why the Civil War was fought. While for decades the overarching issue had been slavery and its expansion into Western territories, dedicated abolitionists were but a minority--and a statistically insignificant one at that. Just one thing is for sure: the events of April 1861 did not erupt because of Abraham Lincoln's determination to abolish the vile institution. That came nearly 2 years later, and only after the decision was politically safe. Is this the "real history" W has in mind? That's doubtful, if for no other reason because it lacks the "moral clarity" he's so fond of. While deference to vague notions of national morality often dictates political rhetoric, in the exploration of history, more often than not, it's a reality-killer.

Mr. Bush also mused that our children should know about, as he put it with authority, "the nearly impossible victory of the Revolutionary War." One doubts that the presidentially ordained version would include colonists' resolute commitment to guerrilla warfare and terrorist tactics in breaking the back of the world's greatest military power, which, in retrospect, severely mitigated the near impossibility of an upstart-American victory. Two-hundred years later in Southeast Asia we relived that lesson in reverse, but that probably should be left unsaid in State-approved textbooks as well. It does so muddle things, don't you know. And, of course, the president wants "our children to know about America's liberation of Europe during World War II." With independent perseverance they may also discover the Russians, among others, had a little something to do with crushing Nazism. But once again moral clarity would be threatened by official acknowledgement. Communism was, in all cases and at all times, immoral and evil, thus its war efforts could not have matched ours.

Some of the president's other historical insights were just as profoundly disturbed, and disturbing--sheer Orwellian oddities he would like the federal government to sponsor in a classroom near you. For instance, America has earned enemies only "because there are people in the world that hate the fact that we love freedom." It's that simple. Forget past imperialist ventures; forget the not infrequent support of corrupt and dictatorial regimes; forget the sanctioning of egregious maldistribution of Third-World wealth for the benefit of U.S.-based corporations. A lot of folks out there simply don't like us because we love freedom. Now there's something any eighth-grade Johnnie can understand. And oh, what a beautiful understanding when called into jingoistic service by the president because a foreign cutthroat who hates freedom once "tried to kill my dad." On the eve of invasion we finally hear the administration's authentic historical justification.

Honest history may not be pretty, but top-down propagandistic history for the sake of feel-good nationalism and chest-pounding militarism is even uglier. Allow this administration--any administration, for that matter--to define the debate over appropriate classroom history and the profession will degenerate as rapidly as stem cell research. Self-respecting academics should treat the White House's history "policy" forum like the furtive dog of an idea it is.

© Copyright 2002 P. M. Carpenter

Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.