Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.
I don’t know how bad it really is, but this article about the Texas State School Board’s decision to modify the history curriculum to reflect a more conservative-friendly vision of the past brought to mind Orwell’s quote.
The curriculum will now, apparently:
#Cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century.
#Revise silly notions about the separation of Church & State.
#Emphasize the conservative resurgence of the 80s and 90s.
#Emphasize Black Panther violence as part of the Civil Rights movement and Republican votes in favor of Civil Rights legislation.
#Require studying “unintended consequences of Great Society and affirmative action legislation.
#Rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy.
#Not require teaching that “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”
#Replace references to ‘capitalism’ with ‘free-enterprise system.’
#Add Milton Friedman to economists who should be studied along side Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.
It’s “Who controls the monopoly” in this case…
It’s not the tyranny of the majority or the minority, but the monopoly. If you don’t like stuff like this– or many of the other predictable outcomes of government-run entities with significant monopoly power– you can moan about the outcomes, work to change the outcomes, or better yet, work to add a lot of competition.
What is especially troubling is that textbook publishers want a nationwide adoption of a single text creating a maximum profit margin nationwide. TX has considerable influence because of the huge number of school districts.
Here is a case where the capitalism monoply,renamed ‘free enterprise’ for a better ‘sell’, would make us all ‘true believers’ instead of individualized thinkers.
Oh bosh, eric; it’s precisely the tyranny of the majority, and it’s not solved by the metaphysical conviction that every problem is Your Grocer’s Shelves and every solution is sixteen more flavors of diet soda.
The fact, which must be understood even if it goes unmentioned, is that this isn’t a government squeeze; it’s an economic one. The World’s Worst State Legislature™ has known for decades that it and California control the school textbook industry, and this is just the latest example of feces-flinging. There’s no conceivable model where fifteen-thousand competing schools create five thousand competing book publishers, and, magically, schools that teach History according to the conventions of professional practice. Hell, tell me where it works like that in the non-“monopoly” world.
Tempest in a teapot-sized cesspool, anyway; the teaching of History in public schools is already too abysmal to be worsened. It could be improved, by the simple expedient of eliminating it altogether, but at any rate, any student intending to learn something about the subject would do well to take an elective art or music class, and wait to be taught at a higher level.
DR,
You’re right, in this case, it’s a tyranny of the majority. But other times, we get a tyranny of the minority outcome in the public schools. (See: the impending annual debate over graduation prayers to the Triune God of the Bible; the god of American civil religion; or to no god at all.) So, the larger issue is a tyranny of the monopoly.
The textbook issue is related. Why does the entire state of Texas make decisions about textbooks? Because of the govt’s monopoly power. Break that and the textbook problem takes care of itself. The feces-flinging is an entirely predictable fight for the privileges of monopoly power. Why defend such a system, especially when it results in lower quality and higher costs?
Get rid of the monopoly; get rid of the feces– at least the feces foisted on others. Keep the monopoly; continue to somehow be surprised at such outcomes– and to continue to carp/moan about something we could change.
What else could you expect? We have 375 million different points of view in this country. We all feel ours is correct and/or superior. We’ve come to recognize that schools can be great proselytizers. One side feels others use the schools for ‘their’ propaganda, so they act to insert their own.
My belief is exactly opposite of DRs. The solution *is* to teach multiple points of view. Rather than doing a cram-down on the One Singular Truth, and fighting about it besides to get a More Perfect One Singular Truth, society would be vastly better off by the presentation of multiple points of view, and- get this- encouraging the students to (I know this is radical) think, and to (help me now!) draw their own conclusions.
As a trained teacher of History (American History of the Pre and Colonial Period and sub specialty in the Agrarian Era) as well as being a sociologist, I have always deplored our treatment of history in classrooms. We tend to have the special state history taught sometime in elementary school, before children are old enough to understand most of it is BS. Then we have a world history course that tries to hit all the high points of 10,000 years of history–so it is reduced to tales of the great man and jingoistic slogans. American Gov’t is also simplified, the best teachers using modern examples to teach how our three part govt is supposed to work as compared to how it actually works. Social studies courses are either taught as current events or cultural bullet points. It is no wonder our students have no comprehension of the people of the world or even where most of the world is located.
Texas conservatives have been trying to overhaul the textbooks and take out references to anything other than their white man’s history that glorifies all the myths they learned in school. And we in Indiana will soon start adopting the same standards. mitch and tony love Texas and Florida (something about having their lips stuck to a bush) and conservatives in Indiana who led the pro-charter/voucher/choice movement here looked to Texas first, then to Florida, as their model.
Anyway, we can be assured that future texans will continue to vote for people like the “Hair” and bush and his ilk. Keep em dumb and only tell them your story and they will believe you every time.
I continue to be shocked at the depth of ignorance shown in world history by even those Americans who know more about the subject than their peers.
I had a huge agrument with a guy on a discussion board concerning the role played by the USSR in WWII. Not only did he give them almost no credit, he was backed up in his views by an enormous majority of other posters.
I also work with a man who watches these various conspiracy theories broadcast by the History Channel and believes every one is true rather than conjecture.
BTW, wasn’t Doghouse Riley a character in Chandler’s “The Big Sleep?”
Jefferson feared an uneducated populace acting as electors of the country’s leaders. Conservatives and the religious have always feared the teaching of truth in our schools. To suggest that other cultures are as good as or better, or that other faiths are of the same value, or that our past historians may have bent the truth about our history is profane, in the modern meaning of the word.
Americans, as demonstrated by polls and surveys dating from the 1880’s or there abouts, have never had much of an understanding of our history or world history. A few brief factoids, much of it myth (washington chopping down a cherry tree or throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac) is what most think they know and can relate back in answer. Hatemongers like beck, oreilly, limbaugh, and the other gop leadership (rove, etc) have relied on our historic ignorance to advance their arguments. At the same time, they have been able to denigrate the people who might point out the actual facts or context of actions by calling them elitists and liberals, and we know these elite liberals lie about everything to get their socialist agenda forced onto the american people.
History is not a set of dates and names as taught by our schools–even at the college level. I know few of the important dates people always try to name or get me to name when they say they know alot about history. But I know the flow and place of events and how they have been interpreted for various reasons. History is a story told from a distance by historians who rely on documents, diaries, govt records, and other sources from the time of the event in question to try and piece together what actually happened. And the winners of war/culture always get to tell the story of what happened.
Think about it. What source would you look at 50 years hence to decide if the Iraq military under Saddam had WMD’s and participated in the 9/11 attacks. Look at texas social studies or american history books or look at idiot rove or cheney and their statements and writings and one would think they did. Look at the mainstream media from that time and one would think they did. Look at the chicken%^%$ democrats in congress at that time and their pro votes for war and one would know that they did have WMD’s. But we who lived through it know better. But who will tell our story? What will get included?
Some lone historian will dig up some of our blogs, diaries, letters to the editor, or other sources and realize that our leadership lied to us as a pretext to carry out the war they wanted to wage to show they had big *&^*(. But she will be called a revisionist, an elite liberal, or whatever the gopers of the time use as a hate label.
Can you name your great grandparents on both sides and who their parents were? Who were their siblings? Where did they live and move to or what did they do for work? What was their education? Did they serve in the military and where? When were they born or died and where are they buried? Why are they there? What was their religion? These are basic facts, much of which is recorded in various govt documents, but these are in different agencies across counties and even states or countries. In my case, great grandpa lived from 1850 to the early 1900’s, and some of his records were in the old courthouse in the old county seat in Ohio that burned to the ground, destroying most of the death, birth and marriage records of his time. I got most of my info about him from surviving enlistment, service records and histories of his unit during the civil war. What I learned from family was often without basis in fact :)
History is a fuzzy thing, so we should do our best in the present to record facts, not opinion. IMHO :) :) :)
Akla, I don’t doubt your story about the courthouse burning down, but it reminded me of the time I used to work in a vital records office. Working with amateur genealogists was par for the course, and to listen to them, you’d think every courthouse in every county seat in the U.S.A. had burned down.
On more than one occasion, a genealogist would proclaim that records weren’t available because the courthouse in my county had burned down. At the time, the office I worked in was in a county gov’t annex across the street from the courthouse. I’d simply direct them to look out the picture windows behind them and say, “The courthouse is right there. It’s been standing for over one hundred years.”
My coworkers and I explained to the genealogists that while courthouses have burned down in various places, the reason records are not available is usually because they were not legally required to be preserved until a certain year, such as birth records in Indiana counties not being preserved until the year 1882. Even then, with home births being the norm until about the middle of the last century, many records simply didn’t get recorded. Some counties had a number of “deputy health officers” who recorded births and deaths in their towns and the rural areas surrounding those towns. Sometimes those birth and death records never made it back to the local health dept. when the deputy health officer system was discontinued A birth and death record book from Greens Fork, Indiana had fallen into private hands and was not returned to the local health dept. until the late 1990’s. I agree with you that history can quite literally be lost, but in this case it was found again.
Perhaps not always the courthouses, but the old buildings where the old records were stored. Yeah, sometimes one has to dig for the records and many places had no records until the 1880s. Still, it is fun to look and dig around in the old estate/wills records, marriage, death and birth as well as tax and property records. And a great place is to find the trustee of the cemetaries (in Ohio, these are officials and can be located and they have the records of who is buried where, which often indicate who paid for the grave site, the stone, etc and the dates). Even the unmarked graves that have lost stones or never had one. Or church records, but many of the old churches were wooden and small and have since departed, but sometimes the grave sites are still there. And sometimes some old farmer near by has some stories or records of who had what and where. The best bet is to always have some nice cookies or chocolate kisses along to share with the courthouse clerks. :)
Good memories. Still, bad choices driven by politics instead of truth by policy makers in Texas will spread throughout the US and end up here in Indiana.
#Add Milton Friedman to economists who should be studied along side Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.
I had never thought to look at Karl Marx as an ‘economist’ It points out that how something is categorized is already part of the explanation,without even going beyond the title page…like ‘teachers unions’ as part of ‘American socialism’,as I saw recently on a blog.
Could not help but remember the stories over the years of the Russians rewriting the History of Russia (USSR, etc.) when leaders changed. History becomes what we want others to believe not necessarily the reality of what happened. On the other hand as the saying goes “so much to cover and so little time to do it” becomes a reality point. But the playing up of one philosophy or individual while deliberately omitting other is not history but propaganda and as already stated we have all been exposed to too much of that. Likely there are very few who know and understand the truth of what happened and factors involved with about any event. Sad but true.
To Lou’s point, I don’t remember any of the current complainers saying anything when Marx was included and Friedman was omitted!
Propaganda goes both/many ways…and again, we’re back to the “tyranny of the monopoly”.
Actually, the 19th century theory of Marxism can be a valuable tool as a critique of capitalism as an economic system. Don’t have to be a wild-eyed revolutionary for that.
History is a very subjective concept. More people ought to get a broad perspective of some of the more popular historical theoretical constructs, combined with a healthy dose of critical thinking, instead of factoid survey courses designed to by “learning by rote” lovers.
Knowing a date or two concerning the American Revolution is sterile knowledge that one can Google, if necessary. Learning the “why”, the “how” and what makes it important for us today are the kinds of things that should be taught instead. But then, who seems to want a better informed citizenry?
Eric wrote:
To Lou’s point, I don’t remember any of the current complainers saying anything when Marx was included and Friedman was omitted!
Just to clarify. When I first read that quote I doubted that Karl Marx was ever considered ‘an economist’ by any one well educated in economics. Yet that’s tpyical conservative jargon .But when Marx wrote his manifesto there were great inequities with the robber barons in total control.So it was a case of an extremist solution to better extremist working conditions.And when The Bolshevik revolution did happen conditions were as bad as they ever had been.I’m not saying anything was justified,but there does seem valid cause and effect scenario which was specific to time and place.
Calling a public option for health care reform ‘marxist’ thinking’ shows a total lack of historic perpective. And it’s not that I’m especially well-educated to point this out.It’s depressing over all that’s that the kind of rhetoric we have to ‘take seriously’
It’s like Doghouse pointed out above somewhere and to paraphrase: Not teaching teaching history at all would be a better educational experience. History should be taught only at a higher level.
That actually made sense to me as an insightful observation.
I don’t think I’ve ever come across someone who knew much of anything about Karl Marx around the blogosphere. I certainly don’t, mainly because his work is very peripheral to my own interests. People should at least learn something about Das Kapital, from Google, if nothing else.
Indeed, I would offhand say that Marx pre-dated the “robber barons”, as he published the aforementioned treatise in 1867. And, I would suggest not closely connecting Marx with the Bolsheviks. Lenin and Trotsky went their own way in applying their own variant version of Marxist political economy to the Imperial Russian situation, and besides (the German) Marx had died back in 1883 anyway.
Teaching history is important because if one doesn’t know where one comes from, then it’s difficult to tell where one is, or where one might be going. And, that’s true from the individual to the global community. It’s simply a matter of scale.
Still, what is more important would be the teaching of critical thinking skills. Little, or none of this is done throughout anyone’s educational path. For those who are exposed to those skills, they have a leg up on the rest of us. For those who have never been offered the chance to learn critical thinking skills, I am always reminded of some Career Builder adverts.
I think I heard a brief sketch about Marx himself in high school and a couple of slogan size descriptions of his writings; then read a little of one of his writings in a college philosophy class.
About all I recall from that was that he believed alienating workers from their labor was very bad. I didn’t much understand what he wrote back then and blew off as nonsense what I did understand. Put, I’ve been worrying the notion around in my mind since then, and it makes somewhat more sense to me now and seems less silly.
More on alienation of labor for those who are interested.
To Lou’s point, I don’t remember any of the current complainers saying anything when Marx was included and Friedman was omitted!
Are you suggesting that Marx wasn’t an extremely important historical figure? Because that would be crazy…
He should probably be left out of economic texts, but certainly not history textbooks. But I think that the reverse is true of Milton Friedman.
@Doug – No dialectical materialism?
“Dialectical materialism” is a term I was exposed to, but obviously not very well because right now I can’t think of what it means. Best I can think of is thesis + antithesis = synthesis; and I’m pretty sure that’s Hegel. So, now I’ll go look it up.
Dialectical Materialism (based on Hegel; not bad!)
Sorry, I was confusing history curriculum with some discussion of economics in a history curriculum. As such, Marx is completely appropriate. And Friedman would be a nice complement of Keynes.
Alas, Doug you have proven my point–if wikipedia is viewed as the source of information on history, we are all lost.
Marx was first and formost an economist. Das Kapital was all about how our developing economic systems (circa 1840-50) particularly capitalism, separated the working class (proletariate) from those who controlled the means of production. Instead of the traditional home based industries (weaving, baking, farming etc) wear a family was involved in the decision of what to produce, how to market and the actual production and the means to produce an item was not economically or technologically out of their reach, people were happy and productive. Capitalism, with its emphasis on profit and the maximization of one’s self interest and well being over the good of others, led to the pursuit of efficiencies in production, where in a few owned technologically advanced and expensive machines and materials and decided what would be produced and how to market that product. The workers were just a piece of the production puzzle, the more output from less input you could get the better. It was because of this model, where children and others were forced to work 7 days a week, most often at least 12 hours a day under terribly dangerous working conditions was why unions came into being. And now that companies want to maximize profit again at the expense of workers in the US, they attack unions as the source of the problem.
Oh well, round and round we go. Friedman, what I know of him based on his (and his wife’s) work on school choice, makes far too many invalid assumptions for his model and looks past obvious flaws in his reasoning to placate his for profit masters. IMHO
It’s great when educated people disagree with each other,even if the disagreement seems a nuance in emphasis for the rest of us. I wish political discussion were more like that generally
I’ve long had one issue with what legacy is for an important person who made significant mark in history. Shouldn’t those who interpeted Marx later, for their own ends, be part of Marx’s legacy? . That’s why I have tied Marx with the Bolsheviks in Russia in my mind.
A similar case could be made for Reagans legacy,which has been changing as his followers seek to keep re-inventing his success. What people call Reganomics now is not what it was back in 1988 (when I voted for Republicans).But I mean this as support of Marx’s legacy with revolution and not a discussion on Reagan.
Friedman (like the lesser-known Gary Becker) is amazing for the scope of his contributions to economics– from public policy issues like vouchers and wage/price controls to huge academic work on the Great Depression, money/inflation, and as one of the two economists who (amazingly/prophetically) modeled that (old) Keynesianism must fail– as it did less than a decade later with the “stagflation” of the 1970s.
To the point of our discussion on curricula, as a foil for Keynes, he’s ideal– Keynes’ emphasis on fiscal policy vs. Friedman’s on monetary policy; and Keynes’ on the supposed efficacy of govt intervention in the macro-economy vs. Friedman’s value of freedom and free markets.
IIRC Lou, Leninism and its Stalinist deriviative make for a great critique of Marx’s theories on “communism”. I think Marx failed to comprehend that totalitarianism would not simply go away when supplanted by a communist state. It simply replaced one totalitarian oligarchy with another. Tsar to Stalin. There was a revolution alright. But the result was basically a radical shift in control of the means of production, the military-industrial complex and the organs of the state. Control from the top didn’t disappear, it just changed hands. Hardly idealism at work. Look what happened to a major ideologue of the Party, Trotsky. Outmanuvered by the pragmatic Stalin, exiled, and finally eliminated. So much for the collective.
Akla,
Wikipedia is the equal of legends, the main way we have passed history on for lifetimes. It is a fairly recent development that we have had historians that are considered to be the authority on what really did happen.
I’ll take the ranting of a million monkeys on Wikipedia on one hand and the professional scholars on the other hand and make my own mind up, but I won’t call one superior to the other.
I’m glad to see varangianguard explained in a way that seems accurate to me having been to East Germany and have done home exchanges with former East Germans. What they all have said is that East Germany was a totalitarian state. It was not the economy system that was the problem. And they have consistently said that not being able to travel except to another communist country was what they most resented.So discussing Marxism,Communism as an economic system completely misses the point of what people hated. From 1945 to 1989 East Germany stood in place and was gradually crumbling away.They called their regime ‘socialist’ because that sounded like rule by the people,but it was ruthless dictatorship.Honneger controlled fewer people than Stalin but half of the East Germans were spying on the other half and writing and submitting dossiers to the state.After the wall fell, people found their ‘best friend’ had been writing and submitting their state dossier for years.I know one person who found her friend was actually writing her up for years because she was a teacher. And teachers are supposed to be so harmless! Not in any totalitarian state.
That’s why I get angry when someone against health care reform frivilously criticizes it as ‘socialist’ because what that brings to americans’ minds is totalitarian government,not economics. Is imposed capitalism (like Hitler) worse than imposed socialism like Stalin or Honneger? Seems the same for the general public who lived it.
That’s why history has been rewritten so that Hitler is now a ‘socialist’ in current conservative think tank circles.
I have to agree with you Lou. Most people seem to value their freedom of movement far more than their economic freedom. If Americans were issued a decree to stay within a limit of certain countries, I would expect to see widespread revolt. Keep 40% of their income? Complainers along these lines are subject to ridicule.
You know, the main reason for the Bolshevik/Menshevik split was disagreement over the course of revolution; the Mensheviks held to the orthodox Marxist line that revolution could not succeed until the Russian proletariat had advanced to a state of cultural and political development roughly equivalent to that of Western Europe at the time, and that ultimately the revolution must come about of its own accord; while the Bolsheviks rejected the orthodox Marxist position, and believed that the Russian proletariat’s political consciousness simply could not develop past a certain stage, and that it was the role of the party to push the proletariat into revolution. Given that the Bolsheviks came to be the dominant faction of the party and were able to pursue their particular program, I’m not sure the USSR constitutes a valid critique of orthodox Marxist thinking.
For anyone interested in this, I’d really suggest reading Lenin’s “What Is to Be Done?” and the events leading up to, surrounding, and including the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in Brussels (1903).
Mike Kole posted:
“I have to agree with you Lou. Most people seem to value their freedom of movement far more than their economic freedom”.
It seems to me that most complaints lately about lack of economic freedom comes from freedom taken away by private sector profiteering,both individual and corporate, and lack of federal government protections that would allow more individual freedom.Those guys flipping houses to become millionaires by 30 yrs old,were stealing from me because they werent following the ‘accepted formula for making honest money’,and no one called them on it.
What’s “dishonest” about buying something, and then selling it for more than you bought it for?