America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century
FitzGerald, Frances
"America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century" In his admirable Jefferson, Albert Jay Nock noted that" there are qualities that outweigh occasional and trivial inaccuracy. A book should be judged on the scale of its major...
...Pope a~ b,,n lhe 7~polng~ of tlot~y...
...The "bibliography in America Revised does not list either of these studies...
...bathe and l.~g:t~mac...
...And "in all the texts since Muzzey's, Henry Clay, .john Calhoun, and Daniel Webster are stick figures deprived of speech...
...In the western hemisphere he inaugurated the Good Neighbor policy...
...m the New Zealand Tahiti " ' h may seem a h l u r d l y pretentious to compar~ thls book with Newman's Idea o / ~ l ntt~uv, but the comparison ts apt Derrick ha= wit and a bnlhant aphorm=c style Eve~ sentry.ca *s packed with thought Has little book could well serve at a manual for tbe reform of C,Itboltr higher edu.catlon today " - - P a u l H. Ballets m the %t=~/(ath~u Re~.te, "'This is a short h~ok But ,[ IS brilliant and easy to read If you know any parents o~ h~gh school or rolkge.stodems...
...Just such a fiasco is Frances FitzGerald's Amerwa Revised...
...Before then, American history was not very widely taught...
...4,t and Reh~,on bell~:to~l len~t,,n o, t nn/hct > The ( unst,~atlor | ilion...
...Bu=tlon in 7~ Dalla~ M,,mn~ .%u L I-1 e l ~ h : $12 i s : #=~r- $r ps ~e~.~ n BEYOND DETENTE: Toward an American Foreign Policy PAUL EIDELBERG far and away the best...
...I save the best till last...
...pie Matter ~ The Pageant ot Oar Redemption %meth:n~ Beauttlul ]o, (ind...
...nd the P~ophttt, I'~t It h~ I'lanne,~ (7 t ,inn,,, .~ta~ed Mute \ ol I of a trlloK', Us Marmn Montgomery "l ht lmpat,tn,, ot Tub h~ George William Ruder 7 h~ ?,enr,2tzr, n~ ,.1 t/~t FaHh/ul //to,t t~,t Ihe l ~te~alu,~ '7 th~ buulh h', M I; Bradford ( ,~ /tat ~ and the ( hu,,h o/Rome hy Christopher Derrick 1 Sherwood Sugden & Company I I 17 E. ["tghth htrcct, l .a Sallc, l l h n ( t l s 61301 TttE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1980 27...
...AI ?ou Vte,e 7 hree Da~* t~tth Mlndl~enty Adto~ #ra~(It(u Fronr Porttaff ot an Dutla~t Hero...
...On the home front he launched a broad program of "relief, recovery, and reform...
...on/ttebo, 7~bt to (;utta,,a > 4 Solid ( hunt oJ ~'ood...
...And when tile United States was drawn into the conflict, he became the architect of victory and of plans for future peace...
...Paumem|m...
...David Saville Muzzey may have been the last of the great stylists...
...Alas, things were to change...
...In D,Jenee v/ ~tagnaaon In /k/ence o] T~,umphalt~m Popula!tan ~r Prop# 1 It's All Done 6~ Af=,rots...
...it does include, however, at least one title that, citing.the originals, gives these figures...
...in ~l,ate~u Rtt'ln...
...and most construe t we...
...Par'ant lot a Dead liturgy...
...Miss FitzGerald is not content, however, to restrict her blunders to the fifties and to some supposed failings in intellectual history...
...What she has read she has used, in Professor Woodward's words though not in his sense, "with telling effect...
...Ne*man...
...In fact, until the Depression, "they gave no information about how these people lived, what they did, or where they came from, much less why they came...
...hlerary er%lc, text..ml ahalyst, and histo, mn What emerge~ are provocative and challenging propositions" - - G e o r l e W. Carey m AatW,tal ReHeu "Bradford =s surety a consummate stylist, the prose wahm th)s beautifully produced book fairly sparkles, is ~raceful...
...all dedicated to a fully Catholic t'ducat,oat "It works...
...Schism...
...American history is not dull any longer...
...Readers who wish a discussion of Common Sense can s t a r t with Wirth's Development of America (1944) and Beard's Making of American Civilization (1944...
...Quart Frernurrunt Gente...
...yet mu~ular The scholarship Is tape, cable '" : --D.R...
...Such a diversity naturally accompanies the wrangling, both within and without the educationist establishment, of those whom Miss FitzGerald calls the ,neo-progressives, the fundamentalists, and the mandarins...
...Of course, if its inaccuracies are abundant and egregious, a book stands condemned...
...n an eas~ style, remin,s(ent of that of his hmous Oxford tutor IC S l.x'~ss I '" - - R o l ~ r t Emmet Mo~t in Ae~" f,uord "'The occasion for E~ca#t/rom ~ r was a vis*t to 'rhnmas Aqumas College The school is s,gniGc~nt b e c a u s e , was the first tang=bin mdlcatton of a Catholic educatmnal reformation It was followed m close suecessmn by Magdalen...
...Harvard Unlver~ity '" Euaf~flom Scrptu~ has my vote for Book of the Yeafl "' - - R a n Kenltedy...
...Skeptical readers might go past his index entries under "Labor" to wonder at his humane discussions of the Pullman strike (not referred to under "Labor") and of Teddy Roosevelt's "great respect for the men who go down into the mines, or drive the locomotive across the plains of the West...
...I.~be,atton and the (;olpr T,I Feed the Hunf,~ .%sumptmn l)a~ m ( atholu Poland...
...Tkt Fatt~ .~/ l :Jr L~tueqy and th, ( r 7he Hoed "(.athoh," Resutreetwn...
...Clare BootEe Lure " I n dist~ctm K w!th ~urgh.'al pr~cmon the r ~ t u r r of our cuwrent [o~=gn pohcy and the reasons for ats development Dr Eldr spells out wtth frightenmg clarity just how dangerously bad it really is...
...Of these latter two, I have space for only a few examples...
...Imted Be fhv l$ o,ld...
...Thus, she either overlooks or overcomes two of the most often cited studies on 19thcentury school history: one that found that at least 100 American-history textbooks were published in 255 editions from 1815 to 1861, and the other that American history was offered in 175 of 235 secondaryschool catalogues, chosen from 23 states, issued between 1820 and 1860...
...Their texts represented the immigrants as "nothing more than a problem...
...recommend th,s h~ok to them If you are such a parent, read it prayerfully And act upon II '" - - C h a r i e r E. Rice In Fatth and Rea~o, the author demonstrates _9 remarkab~ capaoty to present his strongly held views in the most uncompromising fashion, whde sparing his ~ader the tox~ of arrogance or pon...
...Growing up in the fifties, Miss FitzGerald genuflected before the authority and solidity of her American-history textbooks: "They were weighty volumes...
...The unity and complacency of the Eisenhower years gave way to the dissension and turmoil of the sixties and seventies...
...Reviewing America Revised in the New York Review of Books, C. Vann Woodward congratuJated Miss FitzGerald for plowing through the textbooks--' 'hundreds of them . . . . that endless shelf of textbooks...
...Tbe same books that "follow no pattern of orthodoxy," that in their diversity span a goo.d part of the political spectrum, "differ from one another not much more than one year's crop of Detroit sedans...
...The (,o,M F.a,th...
...Indeed, its fund of the unsupported and the insupportable will likely remain unsurpassed until Garry Wills publishes a sequel to his Inventing A memca...
...The current textbooks that "have achieved dullness" are also "polymorphous-perverse...
...for the pedagogues were not about to snooze while the political lobbyists were whooping it up at school-board meetings and in the corridors of publishing houses...
...Gone, too, are the days when texts were exclusively narratives...
...I)o Pea...
...Ile,es~ and a %e~t (;uatd RenectlnS: [h~tvr~ T,,)nbee...
...prepaid [] .k DYNAMICS OF WORLD HISTORY by CHRISTOPHER DAWSON E&ted by John,~ Mullo)' "'(.hrlstopher Dawson ,s I~'rhap~ the most thoughdul...
...She writes that "American-history texts gained general currency in the schools only in the eighteen-nineties...
...Why Bother About Rehemn ' "Mr Derrick Is a ho[(' man v. ho writes charmmgIy "" --Russell K i r k m Aatwnal Rtl~r D 2S~ ~Res: $4 9S prepaid 17 CITIZEN OF ROME: Reflections from the Life of a Roman Catholic FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN Reacting: /lun~ur~ .~peutt I, The,r a 7hto/ogy oJ hutlllul" "[,,hnl(s aria 7otahta,tam~m...
...Un,ted States Strategic Institute rl clerk...
...indeed, over the past half century the texts "have achieved dullness...
...Their dullness follows in larger part, though, from their silences, especially in intellectual history: "it is not only radical or currently unfashionable ideas that the texts leave out--it is all ideas, including those of their heroes...
...luminatmg "" --Harry Elmer Barnes i n The Ametuan Hl=~o,:ca/ Re~;eu...
...According to the texts of this decade, "imperialism is a European affair: 'we' have a Monroe Doctrine and a Good Neighbor Policy...
...crmque of listener I have read - - T h e Hon...
...For example, the texts usually mention Tom Paine's influential Common Sense "without ever discussing what it says...
...Detroit Board of Education to drop a text that favorably depicted slavery...
...Even the Puritans, who made up "that most ideological of communities," get sugared over: The texts portray them "without ever saying what they believed in...
...5t fhoma~ Aquma~ .4 E / O U Rejectlng: Ilan...
...7he Rule~ o/ the (;ate...
...Readers of, among other texts, Bourne and Benton's History of the United States (1913), Hart's New Amertcan History (1921), and Beard and Bagley's History of the American People (1928) should wince at FitzGerald's preposterous slander...
...it is a sensuous experience...
...A Parting a/ Fncnds Reporting: 7he J tsmn t,/ ( ~mto~her Datr~on...
...It turns out, however, that Miss FitzGerald's bibliography lists only about 150 texts (counting all editions...
...The Hnu, h late 7he t/ok, I* )'OU ln, a,natw~al Pal,u,, Remembering: Cut, tan flue/helena ~r ,ttdt ~anl~h Bartwur 7he ~tan tin,, lr to t l , Own Punt,a...
...But even the half-asleep reader of America Revised should soon despair of the liberties that Miss FitzGerald takes...
...America began to turn her attention overseas in search of political and economic advantages...
...If Texans fbr Anlerica could persuade textbook publishers to delete references to Pete Seeget and Langston Hughes, the NAACP could go one better and get the Alan J. Eade lives in Baltimore, Maryland...
...and how es~ennal at is that ~ be changed before iI is too late Cautionary nole One does not cur[ Up with this book, Ot'R' wrestles with it It makt'~ Ijreat demands on the read, r - - b u t it repays him many t i r n ~ (~er In this rewewers opmmn, it is a virtuoso performance " --Vice Admiral Ruthvtn E. Libby, USN (Ret...
...Is d:ffwl,]t tO think ol ary ~rlzer who has made so lal~)rlous and scrupulou~ an attempt a~ Dawson to understand the widest ~arwty of social ph~nomend wslhout deflaturink ihem in terms of something other than they are His exIra(;rd;nary rar.ge o/!earmng :s seen xn two essays here on ~L AtJ~U*dlne and (;dR*on which m their percipience and richness of reference are l thmk...
...and It ztnts), The .Cuandal u/Pa,t~cula,:t...
...A book so stocked with categorical statements should put the reador on alert...
...tira:atton The book is simply brdhantly written...
...When World War II broke out, he- led the nation from isolation to an understanding of the issues involved...
...Because the same texts have titles such as The Story of America and The Story of Our Republic, they imply that students "must identify with everything that has ever happened in American history...
...this is Miss FitzGerald ridiculing a report published by the National Council for the Social Studies: [The report] makes the utterly dogmatic asserrion that "the egalitarian aim of abolishing social classes appears to be unrealistic . . . . The American pattern of social classification with a considerable social mobility offers the best discernible way of sharing power iD the interest of justice...
...I n his admirable Jefferson, Albert J a y Nock noted that " t h e r e are qualities that outweigh occasional and trivial inaccuracy . . . . [A] book should be judged on the scale of its major qualities...
...Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view [essentially that of the National Association of Manufacturers], current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy...
...According to the texts of the forties, the right to vote is "the foundation stone of democracy": "They lsay] that in spite of the fact that this right exists in the Soviet Union and provides no real impediment to the rule of the Communist Party bureaucrats...
...Of course, none of this precludes America Revised from being considered for various national or international awards...
...Ranging from the moderate left to the moderate right, the texts of the past 20 years have taken account of the howling of increasingly numerous and ...varied citizens' groups and special interests...
...and Christendom Colleges...
...Especially on the labor movement he draws a blank: In his pioneering Amemcan History (1911), he makes only "one mention of what he calls 'the laboring class.' " But Muzzey gives more space to labor than Miss 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1980 FitzGerald implies...
...says Derr=ck of the kmd of education offered by these ~hools, and -~ do~ hi= book It works, and tt makes sense "" - - K a r l Keatlng in T~ I mre~s~& BoWman JOY WITHOUT A CAUSE: Selected Essays of Christopher Derrick 19~0 and the "Ballad o/ the H'hHr /In,It" A I$orld ,,/ I%pt and l)eh~ht...
...The latest texts "run from the traditional history sermons, through a middle ground of narrative texts with inquiry-style questions and of inquiry texts with long stretches of .narrative, to the most rigorous of case-study books...
...and the Modern .~lnn Bet,a~al q/ the West...
...Newer groups, representing aggrieved Mexican-Americans, American Indians, Asian-Americans, and so on, joined older organizations, such as the NAACP and B'.nai B'rith, in a stampede to set up committees that would scrutinize texts for ethnic or religious" bias and flay the guilt}, publishers...
...Bobylumn~ ~*fedt/all0n ( athni:,llm It Right- -50 Why Chan~e It ~ In I)tJtnse o/ ~=n...
...Carman, Kimmel, and Walker's Historic Currents in Changing America (1942) begins its unit "Imperialism and Reform" with these words: "During the two decades before the [First] World War the United States became an imperial power . . . . A policy of imperialism, although, always vigorously criticized, was maintained without much modification for about three decades...
...Approaching the "imperturbable" fifties, Miss FitzGerald stops off in the forties to frolic in fantasy...
...and the school texts, "the lightning rods of American society," have dutifully r e f l e c t e d these changes...
...Co~'s .~r (.:!v ( :t~ o/.~,~hl I~'lhe Draa~t Hellene o~ IIoetu ~ Redeeming: Hh~ / Am a d~m Rejoicing: 7he .td~,acLt u] D'mt 0 ls2 ~n.r $$ 9S pre~ 0 A BETTER GUIDE THAN REASON: Studies in the American Revolution M. E. BRADFORD w,th an Int,nd~ twn b!,Jeffrey Hart ""]'he publication of Professor Brad[ord's essays m a single volume represents something of a milestone In contempotar~ conservative thought "' --Samuel T. Francis m 7he / n.,e,.tr B~otman "Bradford's angle of vmon Is umque and so challengmg that it ~,,dl doubtless stir controversy even among (onser~atlves Hul whatever the reader s con( l u , l o n , he can hardly tad to b~ impres~cl by Ibis subtl~, ( rafted and trench,mtiy argued volume "" - - M . $~nton Fvan$ in Aat;oe~l Re,'leu "M E Bradford has produced an excelJent book on the rr~anink o~ the Arn~lcan polmcal trad,=on an mvatuable antidote to the modern de~ent into secularism and statism " --John P. East m .%u O*lord Re.ca Bradford brmRs to bear a umque combmation of zkdls and perlp~twes, prm*.ipally those of the pohttcal theorm...
...ESCAPE FROM SCEPTICISM: Liberal Education as if Truth Mattered CHRISTOPHER DERRICK "'1 found Euap*/tom .~eptu*~m a perceptwe, w~tty and engag]n~ account of the presenl troubled condmon of hberal educat,on l)errwk'~ book offers a disturbmg ,nd,ctrra-m of today's colleges and un=ve~ittes, the fancied dweHm~-placet of v.;sdom, for their [allure to provide young people with any reasoned defense agamst the prevalem sceptt<ism of the age or any encoura.gemem to stand agamst it " --Nathan M. Pu=r President Emeritut...
...Even feminists made inroads: By the mid-seventies, an in-house manual for Holt, Rinehart & Winston included such gems as "Avoid 'the founding fathers,' use 'the founders' "; and Houghton Mifflin was advising its editors against using "the fatherland" and feminine pronouns for boats...
...Yet, the pedagogical battles have not prevented the post-fifties texts from resembling in their dullness most of their predecessors from the thirties on...
...nothing can save it, not even a dustjacket blurb by .John Kenneth Galbraith...
...The first two texts from this period that I looked into give the lie to such nonsense...
...And Wirth's Development of America begins its chapter "An Imperialistic Foreign Policy" this way: "A series of developments during the last half of the nineteenth c e n t u r y . . . brought the rise of imperialism as the dominant factor in our foreign policy...
...119 ~aqes $7 q~ ~re~lld r'l Forthcoming: ( ~ummer (~ /all o/ l';80) /bet...
...but his "weak point as a historian--his blind spot, in fact-was economic and social history...
...What is more, the texts were ideologically "implacable, seamless . . . . For them the country never changed in any important way: its values and its political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution...
...And in Willis and Ruth West's American People (1943), students probably learned more than they cared to about the beliefs of the Puritans...
...America Revised lists badly not only from its load of errors and of distortions but also from its cargo of contradictions and of fatuities...
...the best studies of their subleers ,n l-:nghsh "" - - M a r t i n Wight m 7he (/b~r,r {[.ondlm...
...Muzzey's colleagues of the second and third decades of the century fare no better by Miss FitzGerald...
...129...
...stimulating, and sugge~t~*e htstorlan of the (~athohc lalth ~ho tn this rentu~ has devoted htmselt to Ihe general h~story nf t l ~ l l l / a i l o n He i~ more dn~n to earth and convmcmg than Spengler or roynbee Th=s is a book which Ro thoughtful h,storlan can safety ignore and ,t is as tffnr as it ts =t...
...They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors...
...But given how rambling and disjointed it is and that it lacks both a table of contents and index, the book may find itself in a strange category, competing with the flowers of"creative writing...
...D,ath o/the A~t o/ 4.ul~ q...
...Clay, Calhoun, and Webster come to life in many texts, not the least of which is Faulkner and Kepner's America: Its History and People (1942...
...and 1 cannot convince myself that she has read them all...
...Miss FitzGerald, too, can be hard on her heroes...
...In any event, even 150 falls far short of what Miss FitzGerald would have needed to support her staggering generalizations...
...Her portrait of the texts of the fifties as unfailingly right-wing is absurd and apparently ignores such books as Canfield and Wilder's Making of Modern America (1958), which tops off its chapter on the New Deal with these approving words: When Roosevelt was elected to the Presidency in 1932, his courage was a tonic to a disheartened people...
...They have achieved it in part, at least for those texts published since 1960, by aping the abstractions and the impersonality of the social sciences...
Vol. 13 • May 1980 • No. 5
