'our version of history will prove we were right!'
El_Kabong
Posts: 4,141
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0717-22.htm
Florida's Fear of History: New Law Undermines Critical Thinking
by Robert Jensen
One way to measure the fears of people in power is by the intensity of their quest for certainty and control over knowledge.
By that standard, the members of the Florida Legislature marked themselves as the folks most terrified of history in the United States when last month they took bold action to become the first state to outlaw historical interpretation in public schools. In other words, Florida has officially replaced the study of history with the imposition of dogma and effectively outlawed critical thinking.
Although U.S. students are typically taught a sanitized version of history in which the inherent superiority and benevolence of the United States is rarely challenged, the social and political changes unleashed in the 1960s have opened up some space for a more honest accounting of our past. But even these few small steps taken by some teachers toward collective critical self-reflection are too much for many Americans to bear.
So, as part of an education bill signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida has declared that “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed.” That factual history, the law states, shall be viewed as “knowable, teachable, and testable.”
Florida’s lawmakers are not only prescribing a specific view of US history that must be taught (my favorite among the specific commands in the law is the one about instructing students on “the nature and importance of free enterprise to the United States economy”), but are trying to legislate out of existence any ideas to the contrary. They are not just saying that their history is the best history, but that it is beyond interpretation. In fact, the law attempts to suppress discussion of the very idea that history is interpretation.
The fundamental fallacy of the law is in the underlying assumption that “factual” and “constructed” are mutually exclusive in the study of history. There certainly are many facts about history that are widely, and sometimes even unanimously, agreed upon. But how we arrange those facts into a narrative to describe and explain history is clearly a construction, an interpretation. That’s the task of historians -- to assess factual assertions about the past, weave them together in a coherent narrative, and construct an explanation of how and why things happened.
For example, it’s a fact that Europeans began coming in significant numbers to North America in the 17th century. Were they peaceful settlers or aggressive invaders? That’s interpretation, a construction of the facts into a narrative with an argument for one particular way to understand those facts.
It’s also a fact that once those Europeans came, the indigenous people died in large numbers. Was that an act of genocide? Whatever one’s answer, it will be an interpretation, a construction of the facts to support or reject that conclusion.
In contemporary history, has U.S. intervention in the Middle East been aimed at supporting democracy or controlling the region’s crucial energy resources? Would anyone in a free society want students to be taught that there is only one way to construct an answer to that question?
Speaking of contemporary history, what about the fact that before the 2000 presidential election, Florida’s Republican secretary of state removed 57,700 names from the voter rolls, supposedly because they were convicted felons and not eligible to vote. It’s a fact that at least 90 percent were not criminals -- but were African American. It’s a fact that black people vote overwhelmingly Democratic. What conclusion will historians construct from those facts about how and why that happened?
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=217&row=2
In other words, history is always constructed, no matter how much Florida’s elected representatives might resist the notion. The real question is: How effectively can one defend one’s construction? If Florida legislators felt the need to write a law to eliminate the possibility of that question even being asked, perhaps it says something about their faith in their own view and ability to defend it.
One of the bedrock claims of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment -- two movements that, to date, have not been repealed by the Florida Legislature -- is that no interpretation or theory is beyond challenge. The evidence and logic on which all knowledge claims are based must be transparent, open to examination. We must be able to understand and critique the basis for any particular construction of knowledge, which requires that we understand how knowledge is constructed.
Except in Florida.
But as tempting as it is to ridicule, we should not spend too much time poking fun at this one state, because the law represents a yearning one can find across the United States. Americans look out at a wider world in which more and more people reject the idea of the United States as always right, always better, always moral. As the gap between how Americans see themselves and how the world sees us grows, the instinct for many is to eliminate intellectual challenges at home: “We can’t control what the rest of the world thinks, but we can make sure our kids aren’t exposed to such nonsense.”
The irony is that such a law is precisely what one would expect in a totalitarian society, where governments claim the right to declare certain things to be true, no matter what the debates over evidence and interpretation. The preferred adjective in the United States for this is “Stalinist,” a system to which U.S. policymakers were opposed during the Cold War. At least, that’s what I learned in history class.
People assume that these kinds of buffoonish actions are rooted in the arrogance and ignorance of Americans, and there certainly are excesses of both in the United States.
But the Florida law -- and the more widespread political mindset it reflects -- also has its roots in fear. A track record of relatively successful domination around the world seems to have produced in Americans a fear of any lessening of that dominance. Although U.S. military power is unparalleled in world history, we can’t completely dictate the shape of the world or the course of events. Rather than examining the complexity of the world and expanding the scope of one’s inquiry, the instinct of some is to narrow the inquiry and assert as much control as possible to avoid difficult and potentially painful challenges to orthodoxy.
Is history “knowable, teachable, and testable?" Certainly people can work hard to know -- to develop interpretations of processes and events in history and to understand competing interpretations. We can teach about those views. And students can be tested on their understanding of conflicting constructions of history.
But the real test is whether Americans can come to terms with not only the grand triumphs but also the profound failures of our history. At stake in that test is not just a grade in a class, but our collective future.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. He is the author of "The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege" and "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity" (both from City Lights Books). Email to: rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
Florida's Fear of History: New Law Undermines Critical Thinking
by Robert Jensen
One way to measure the fears of people in power is by the intensity of their quest for certainty and control over knowledge.
By that standard, the members of the Florida Legislature marked themselves as the folks most terrified of history in the United States when last month they took bold action to become the first state to outlaw historical interpretation in public schools. In other words, Florida has officially replaced the study of history with the imposition of dogma and effectively outlawed critical thinking.
Although U.S. students are typically taught a sanitized version of history in which the inherent superiority and benevolence of the United States is rarely challenged, the social and political changes unleashed in the 1960s have opened up some space for a more honest accounting of our past. But even these few small steps taken by some teachers toward collective critical self-reflection are too much for many Americans to bear.
So, as part of an education bill signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida has declared that “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed.” That factual history, the law states, shall be viewed as “knowable, teachable, and testable.”
Florida’s lawmakers are not only prescribing a specific view of US history that must be taught (my favorite among the specific commands in the law is the one about instructing students on “the nature and importance of free enterprise to the United States economy”), but are trying to legislate out of existence any ideas to the contrary. They are not just saying that their history is the best history, but that it is beyond interpretation. In fact, the law attempts to suppress discussion of the very idea that history is interpretation.
The fundamental fallacy of the law is in the underlying assumption that “factual” and “constructed” are mutually exclusive in the study of history. There certainly are many facts about history that are widely, and sometimes even unanimously, agreed upon. But how we arrange those facts into a narrative to describe and explain history is clearly a construction, an interpretation. That’s the task of historians -- to assess factual assertions about the past, weave them together in a coherent narrative, and construct an explanation of how and why things happened.
For example, it’s a fact that Europeans began coming in significant numbers to North America in the 17th century. Were they peaceful settlers or aggressive invaders? That’s interpretation, a construction of the facts into a narrative with an argument for one particular way to understand those facts.
It’s also a fact that once those Europeans came, the indigenous people died in large numbers. Was that an act of genocide? Whatever one’s answer, it will be an interpretation, a construction of the facts to support or reject that conclusion.
In contemporary history, has U.S. intervention in the Middle East been aimed at supporting democracy or controlling the region’s crucial energy resources? Would anyone in a free society want students to be taught that there is only one way to construct an answer to that question?
Speaking of contemporary history, what about the fact that before the 2000 presidential election, Florida’s Republican secretary of state removed 57,700 names from the voter rolls, supposedly because they were convicted felons and not eligible to vote. It’s a fact that at least 90 percent were not criminals -- but were African American. It’s a fact that black people vote overwhelmingly Democratic. What conclusion will historians construct from those facts about how and why that happened?
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=217&row=2
In other words, history is always constructed, no matter how much Florida’s elected representatives might resist the notion. The real question is: How effectively can one defend one’s construction? If Florida legislators felt the need to write a law to eliminate the possibility of that question even being asked, perhaps it says something about their faith in their own view and ability to defend it.
One of the bedrock claims of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment -- two movements that, to date, have not been repealed by the Florida Legislature -- is that no interpretation or theory is beyond challenge. The evidence and logic on which all knowledge claims are based must be transparent, open to examination. We must be able to understand and critique the basis for any particular construction of knowledge, which requires that we understand how knowledge is constructed.
Except in Florida.
But as tempting as it is to ridicule, we should not spend too much time poking fun at this one state, because the law represents a yearning one can find across the United States. Americans look out at a wider world in which more and more people reject the idea of the United States as always right, always better, always moral. As the gap between how Americans see themselves and how the world sees us grows, the instinct for many is to eliminate intellectual challenges at home: “We can’t control what the rest of the world thinks, but we can make sure our kids aren’t exposed to such nonsense.”
The irony is that such a law is precisely what one would expect in a totalitarian society, where governments claim the right to declare certain things to be true, no matter what the debates over evidence and interpretation. The preferred adjective in the United States for this is “Stalinist,” a system to which U.S. policymakers were opposed during the Cold War. At least, that’s what I learned in history class.
People assume that these kinds of buffoonish actions are rooted in the arrogance and ignorance of Americans, and there certainly are excesses of both in the United States.
But the Florida law -- and the more widespread political mindset it reflects -- also has its roots in fear. A track record of relatively successful domination around the world seems to have produced in Americans a fear of any lessening of that dominance. Although U.S. military power is unparalleled in world history, we can’t completely dictate the shape of the world or the course of events. Rather than examining the complexity of the world and expanding the scope of one’s inquiry, the instinct of some is to narrow the inquiry and assert as much control as possible to avoid difficult and potentially painful challenges to orthodoxy.
Is history “knowable, teachable, and testable?" Certainly people can work hard to know -- to develop interpretations of processes and events in history and to understand competing interpretations. We can teach about those views. And students can be tested on their understanding of conflicting constructions of history.
But the real test is whether Americans can come to terms with not only the grand triumphs but also the profound failures of our history. At stake in that test is not just a grade in a class, but our collective future.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. He is the author of "The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege" and "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity" (both from City Lights Books). Email to: rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
standin above the crowd
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
You, you've been taught
Whipped into shape, now they got you in line
Stand behind the stripes
There will be order, so give up your mind
i think this is fucking bullshit, and i would teach in florida just to break this law
i am SHOCKED at what has happened in this country since 2001...i cannot believe the american public doesnt care (majority)...maybe it is just that they are too busy giving a fuck about some asshole celebrity scandal or that their neighbor just got a lexus?
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
"it’s a fact that Europeans began coming in significant numbers to North America in the 17th century"
"it’s also a fact that once those Europeans came, the indigenous people died in large numbers"
Those things are certainly "knowable, teachable, and testable".
The only specific I can find is when he takes issue with this:
"the nature and importance of free enterprise to the United States economy"
which I find odd. Perhaps I'm misreading, but how can one discuss the history of the United States economy without discussing that which played such a large part in the positives and negatives of its development? The United States economy, for most of its history, was defined by free enterprise. Not discussing it would be like not discussing slavery in the context of a discussion of the United States economy.
Certainly it would be foolish to force teachers to make no mention of the socialistic movements of the early part of the last century or of modern labor movements. Does this law prohibit such discussions?
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/laws/06laws/ch_2006-074.pdf
Page 22-23
In other florida news:"In god we trust" became the official state motto. Thanxs jeb.
Gracias. Reading it now.
Yikes.
"The history of the United States, including the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement to the present. American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable, and
shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the univer-sal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence."
I'm not sure how awful this is. I take issue with the "based largely" language at the end, but I don't see how this precludes critical thought. Can anyone come up with a concept in US history that this mandate precludes?
I actually have greater issues with this one:
"The arguments in support of adopting our republican form of gov-ernment, as they are embodied in the most important of the Federalist Papers."
which seems to preclude arguments against adopting our republican form of government.
Wow... Just, wow...
I am a History major at Washington State University currently and have plans to someday teach high school... but honestly is this anything really new? Think back to HS did you ever learn the "dark" side of US history? I know I didnt... but now at WSU I have access to many resources and the ability to form my own conclusions about history...(something everyone should do) My personal world history is unique unto me.(Most important moment in the development/survival of western civilization? To me we go all the way back to 480 BC and the Spartan led victory at Thermopylae) The study of history is so perverted in public school that it no longer even resembles what it really is. History in HS is about what day did this happen, and "why" did it happen... according to so and so. Too be honest im a history major and still hate "dates" to death, as do most teachers. The study of history should be about taking "facts" the things we do know for sure, looking at them from all sides involved, and seeing how the actions/feelings of both sides effect the outcome, then seeing how time progresses to the next event. History is a living ever changing creature. The attempts to simplify the worlds history down to a couple hundred years and say the rest no longer has effect is insane! The world has been shaped since pre-history by; War, Religion, Power, Greed, Food, and Land. While American's like to think that since we dont learn it, it never happened, most of the rest of the world disagrees.
How does this prevent teachers from presenting the "dark side" of American history? Is it not a fact that millions of American Indians were killed? Is it not a fact that millions of people were enslaved here? It is not a fact that questionable behavior underlies many events in our history?
I'm asking you if you think this law would preclude those facts from being taught.
Hehe...yes. I understand that. I take issue that our schools will only teach:
"The arguments in support of adopting our republican form of gov-ernment, as they are embodied in the most important of the Federalist Papers."
while ignoring arguments against a republican form (or any form, for that matter) of government. While the section on history seems to require no prostelytizing, this one does.
Yes. The one that actually allows me to choose.
The fundamentals of all should be taught in a civics-style class, IMO.
You gotta remember"re"public schools are designed to make the youth "good" members of the society they are a part of. The general masses are expected to be cogs in the machine, and educated as such. Thats the way its been for a very long time... its the way it works...The ape shit insane state of Floridia just thinks they need to make it law...odds are not many teachers would have taught it anyway. Public schools are not meant to insight revolution...should they be? Maybe... just remember... you are not required to attend public schools...
And please dont attack me about this, I dont like it, but I do "understand" it. As I said...History is about "Power" among other things...
it should say...
"In Diebold we trust"
Kids in Florida are not taught about slavery or the death of Native Americans???
Public schools, if they have any justifiable purpose, should be used to present general facts on a broad base of topics. A public school that is used to indoctrinate children into various cultural conclusions (be they revolutionary or otherwise) is no longer "public".
That's quite fair. I agree.
Are there major facts being omitted? I really know nothing about the curriculum in that state.