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The Politics of Teaching History

a sermon by Alonzo Smith

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, September 4, 2005

About a decade ago, a set of national standards for the teaching of history in the public schools was drawn up under the leadership of Gary Nash, of the history department of UCLA. Over the past generation, the study of history has changed dramatically, reflecting the significant increase in the number of academic historians who are women and/or people of color. In addition, significant changes in social and cultural attitudes during the past have significantly influenced the way we look at the past. Most people who last took a history course in 1965 would be surprised by reading a history textbook published in 2005. The traditional “Great Men of Western Civilization” view has given way to a perspective that is more diverse and vibrant in seeking to involve students in activities outside of the classroom.

But many traditionalists have felt uncomfortable with these changes, alleging that they cause students to devalue fundamental institutions and values such as patriotism, family life, and religious faith. Although some of these traditionalists are secular academics, such as the National Association of Scholars, many are fundamentalist Christians, who seek to impose their particular theological beliefs on public education.

In some states such as Kansas, these controversies have focused on the teaching of the Darwinian theory of evolution, while in others they have focused on the teaching of the social sciences and the humanities. Recently, a controversy erupted in Minnesota, a state normally associated with enlightened, progressive social views. This controversy was reported in the November, 2004 issue of the OAH Newsletter, a publication of the Organization of American Historians, the second largest history association in the United States.

In 2003 there was general agreement that Minnesota’s curricular guidelines for the teaching of history were in need of revamping. The state Department of Education(DOE), headed by commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke, appointed a group to accomplish this task, but the results provoked a firestorm of controversy, particularly among professional historians, and African American and Native American community leaders. These groups, led by professors Sara Evans and Lisa Norling of the University of Minnesota’s history department, expressed concerns that the new guidelines included factual errors, disorganized and confused interpretations, and the omission of significant roles for ethnic minorities and women. Commissioner Yecke responded with charges that the group was promoting a “hate America” agenda. Eventually, many of the most controversial changes were eliminated, although some still remain. Cheri Yecke did not receive reconfirmation of her appointment from the state Senate, and then decided to run for the U.S. Congress. This year, she withdrew her candidacy after she was appointed to the Florida state education commission by Governor Jeb Bush.

According to Evans and Norling, one of the things they learned from this controversy was that in the public area, it was different from the debates in academia. In recent years, there have been a number of scholarly debates over various “revisionist” interpretations of history, reflecting the usual shades of the political spectrum. But they found that in this public debate, there was a particular religious dimension;

“We learned that our opponents…not only endorsed Western Civilization and E.D. Hirsch’s “Core Knowledge” approach – which we expected – but they also advocated a highly specific, fundamentalist Christian version of the past as the unfolding of God’s plan for the world and for the United States as God’s chosen nation. In perhaps the most single revealing example, a seventh grade Government and Citizenship standard required students to ‘recognize the significance of the Founders’ four references to God in the Declaration of Independence’ – because, as one committee member explained to the others, the Declaration’s description of God as the Supreme Judge, as the creator of nature’s laws, and the provider of the protection of Divine Providence, [had created the doctrine of the separation of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial]. In fact, this was not ‘history’ as we recognize and practice it, at all. Terms, like the Declaration of Independence’s “sacred honor,” “self-evident truths,” and “national sovereignty” turned out to have resonances we had not imagined, rendering any discussion of the current state of historical knowledge irrelevant.

“We now understand that the conflict in Minnesota over U.S. history, world history, and the historical basis for Government and Citizenship curricular standards pitted myth and icon against history, a very particular sort of belief and faith against academic inquiry.”

Elizabeth Youmans, in “The Case for American Christian History,” supports the view that American history should be taught with an explicitly Christian bias. The United States, she claims, is the only nation in history ever to establish a government and a Constitution based on the principles of Christian liberty derived from the Bible. She traces today’s educational crisis straight back to one individual; Horace Mann, the famed nineteenth century educational reformer. Instead of the hero of American democratic education that many of us have been taught to believe, she charges that he “paved the way for a state financed, state directed, and ultimately a state controlled education program superseding local control through the demand for ‘standardization’ of school structures, textbooks, curriculum, and teacher training and certification,” and ultimately, “psychological atheism”.

There are a number of websites that promote Christian history textbooks, and home schooling from a Christian perspective. Some of them cover world history, in which Biblical stories are presented as objective factual information. America’s Providential History, by Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell, covers the colonial era to the Civil War. It’s advertisement claims that it “presents clear evidence of God’s providential hand of America from the days of the earliest explorers and settlers through the Civil War.” It includes the creationist theory, because, “The history of America cannot be studied as an isolated event,” but rather as part of God’s plan for a world in which the United States is the leader. Some of these texts cover state and local, as well as world and U.S., history. One series claims to show the teacher how to follow the history guidelines of each of the fifty states.

The publishers of this “Helping Hand” educational series for state history outline their views in a doctrinal statement: “We believe in the Triune God, Who eternally exists in the persons of the Father, the Son(Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. We believe in Jesus Christ, the God-Man, one person with two natures…” The statement goes on to declare a belief in all of the details of Jesus life as recounted in the Bible, and says that those who refuse to accept these beliefs will be doomed to “eternal damnation in a literal lake of fire.”

Reverend Steve Wilkins, in “A Christian Perspective of History,” expresses the same views, and blasts contemporary academic historians. He says that “This rule of God over history is absolute.” Most contemporary historians, he alleges, hate the Bible and Christianity, and they systematically denigrate faithful Christians, and promote nonbelievers. Modern history books are filled with gross distortions and the minds of our children are being corrupted. It is the task of theology and biblical preaching to rectify these distortions.

Thus, the Christian view of history encompasses the earliest times to the present. The slow evolution of humanity and the development of cultures and civilizations over many millennia, taught in a standard world history course, is replaced by the story of Adam and Eve. The development of civilizations in the Middle East, India, China and the Americas are simply omitted in favor of reading the Bible. Medieval and modern history are recounted in the form of biblical prophecies, as interpreted from a radical conservative Christian perspective. The United States of America in this view is especially chosen by God to lead the world. The framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are seen as men of faith who produced documents based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Issues like slavery and mistreatment of Native American peoples are either minimized or ignored.

In some southern religious schools slavery is taught from a neo-Confederate perspective in which master-slave relationships were paternalistic and not inhumane, and where slavery, though unjust, was not as bad as the exploitation of white workers in the North. The role of the United States in winning the Second World War is exaggerated, and the role of the Soviet Union is usually ignored. And the present rise of the U.S.A. to worldwide hegemony is viewed with uncritical approval, as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Many educators argue that the No Child Left Behind policies of the U.S. Department of Education, will set standards that many public schools will find it impossible to comply with, and be forced to close. There are many militant conservative religious institutions that have well-developed educational programs, and are ready and eager to take their place.

Very few people will disagree that public education in the United States today faces some very serious problems. But both the secular and the religious conservatives are proposing solutions that really run counter to American values of democratic education, as they have been traditionally understood in this country. Pluralism, tolerance, and free inquiry have been the hallmarks of modern social values. There is no reason why these ideals of cultural and intellectual freedom necessarily have to undermine love of country, commitment to family values, and belief in spiritual and moral values. In the words of one writer, “The reform process must be done with a healing spirit, not one that is tainted with a simplistic ‘government is bad’ mentality, angry politics…and moral and intellectual absolutism.”

Finally a recent article in the Fall 2005 issue of UU World can help to shed light on this issue; “It is trying time and the anger of the Christian Right is understandable…But though we must defend ourselves against the misdirected rage of the Christian Right, we lose if we simply oppose our anger to theirs…We need to love our enemies and to bless those who curse us with anger.[this is a form of strength]…Armed with that power, we can win these culture wars.”

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