The following is a book review I wrote for a class on the History of Education. The book (as you’ll soon learn) is the story of how the National History Standards came to be. There was a loose format to be followed, but I think the general idea works anyway. Footnotes are excluded.

~

History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past is the story of the political, social, and academic battle that led to the creation of the National History Standards. The listed authors are historians and educators Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross Dunn. However, it seems clear that much of the book is actually penned by Nash. He is the most eminent of the three, and probably the most central figure in the political battles that surrounded the creation of the standards. John Fonte, an aide to Lynne Cheney at the time of the “History Wars,” writes in his review of the book:

Professor Nash, an advocate of the new social history since the 1960’s, the organizer of the Angela Davis defense committee in the 1970’s, and a major influence on high-school curricula and textbooks during the past decade, is undoubtedly the principal author of History on Trial.

Fonte’s boss, Mrs. Cheney was a chief critic of the standards before and after they were published, and often plays the antagonist in Nash’s story.

It is Mrs. Cheney’s October 20, 1994 op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal that provides Nash with much of his ammunition. The national reaction to Cheney’s ominously titled, “The End of History,” is how Nash and company begin chapter one. They extensively quote and then rebuff Mrs. Cheney’s claims. They note that she often cites “teaching examples instead of the standards themselves.” (Nash 4) Cheney, incidentally is the former chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a job she seemingly qualified for by marrying Dick Cheney, a Representative from Wyoming who became the Secretary of Defense during the History Wars.

Not alone in her role as the “enemy,” Cheney’s allies in the fight include conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and former Senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole. Nash uses public comments from both men, almost always to demonstrate their ignorance of either the standards themselves or of history in general.

Dole’s speech to the American Legion on Labor Day, 1995, is a typical example of both Dole’s ideas and Nash’s rebuttals:

The purpose of the National History Standards seems not to teach our children certain essential facts about our history, but to denigrate America’s story while sanitizing and glorifying other cultures. (245)

These comments echoed much of the conservative attack on the standards. Nash writes in response to Dole:

That the Lutheran Education Association, the National Catholic Education Association, the Native American Heritage Commission, and over two dozen other not-very-radical groups had supported these standards was probably unknown to the Legionnaires. But Dole, indulging in a ritualized recitation of charges suitable for preelection speeches to a sympathetic audience, did not tell them. Instead he claimed that the educators who perpetrated the history standards were the ‘intellectual elites who seem embarrassed by America.’ The ‘embarrassed by America’ crowd came, in fact, from nearly every state, from towns large and small, from places unlikely to harbor teachers bent on attacking American values and encouraging students ‘to disparage American and disown the ideas and traditions of the West.’ (245)

Attacks similar to Dole’s are what seem to inspire the writing of this book itself. In fact, Nash writes most passionately in the chapter titled “The Right Wing Assault.”

Nash revisits the fallout from Cheney’s original op-ed at the beginning of “The Right Wing Assault.” He notes there were letters in the WSJ within days under the headline “The History Thieves.” These letters, and others that would follow, often compared the new US History Standards to those that might have been developed by the Nazi’s, Bolsheviks, or the Soviet empire. One particularly pointed epistle noted:

We learn [from Cheney’s article] that their ‘standards’ are nothing more than a cynical ploy to indoctrinate children with their own hatred of America, to steal the American birthright from the children of our country, to teach our children to feel guilt over their own heritage…Are we prepared to allow the haters of America to dictate how American history will be taught to our children? (189)

Nash replies to this and other letters a few pages later:

Had [the writers of the attacks] consulted the documents themselves, [they] would have found that a major standard in historical thinking specifically called for students to ‘identify who was involved, what happened, where it happened, what events led to these developments, and what consequences or outcomes followed,’ in short, to base historical study firmly on rules of evidence. (191)

The call for national history standards came about for two reasons. First, Nash says that “…in the 1980’s, there seemed to be an ‘appalling disconnect’ between Americans and there own history. This forced K-12 and university professors to work together to prevent students from graduating high school knowing more than ‘gross superficialities’ about the past.” (270) Second, was President George H. W. Bush’s 1989 declaration that the US must establish educational standards in a number of subjects, including history. Bill Clinton, then the chairman of the National Governor’s Council was an active participant in helping to achieve these goals. Once becoming president, Mr. Clinton would continue this work. Lynne Cheney, then with the NEH was one of a number of people calling for internationally competitive high stakes exams. With all of this as the background, a number of interest groups, including the National Council on Educational Standards and Testing, the National Council for History in the Schools, and others began working on the standards, a process that took over five years.

The authors note that clashes over teaching history are hardly unprecedented. John Adams wrote after the American Revolution that:

The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other… the essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electric rod smote the earth and outsprang George Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod and henceforth these two conducted all the policy negotiations, legislatures, and war. (17-18)

Nash also discusses history controversies in the US throughout the 19th and into the 20th Centuries. David Muzzey, a controversial textbook writer in the 1920’s is profiled, as is Harold Rugg, an education reformer during the Great Depression. Both of these men faced great opposition to their views in terms of history education and interpretation. Nash notes that many of the views of these two early reformers are, in fact, accepted and taught in today’s classrooms. They are portrayed as men ahead of their time. Though he doesn’t explicitly say it, Nash clearly compares the work of himself and others on the National History Standards to the work of these educators.

Much of this book reads like a political thriller, with each side, the conservative pundits and the liberal historians, reacting to each other’s maneuvers. It is certainly a partisan version of events, but Nash and company use fairly compelling evidence to show their point of view. Because so much of the press coverage of the standards at the time of their release was so negative, it is easy to see why Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn felt the need to defend their work. The book is certainly informative, though at times the minutia of every move by both sides feels tedious. Overall, it is certainly a worthwhile read, especially for those who actually have to teach the standards. It is remarkable to know that there was not consensus, even amongst the giants of history academia as to how, what, and maybe most importantly why topics should be covered in American history classes (both US and World histories). These debates have certainly not ended, and History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past proves a worthy foundation for anyone engaging in these discussions.