Re: State Standards and Critical Thinking in History

[Robert Arosteguy <robmarx1@yahoo.com>]

Awesome.  Can't say it better.

Robert A.

--- George Sheridan <learn@jps.net> wrote:

> The following article seems especially pertinent
> after reading the review 
> in Teachers College Record of Measuring History:
> Cases of State-Level 
> Testing Across the United States, 
> http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=12588
> 
> 
> 
> Florida's Fear of History: New Law Undermines
> Critical Thinking
> by Robert Jensen
> Published on Monday, July 17, 2006 by
> CommonDreams.org
> http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0717-22.htm
> 
> 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.]
> 
> 
> George Sheridan


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