On US exceptionalism, history education vs. indoctrination
In 2011, Republicans in the North Carolina legislature quietly passed a law that required all high school students to take “American History I: The Founding Principles.” This law was designed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a secretive conservative think tank funded by some of the nation’s richest corporations including Koch Industries.
The ideological agenda behind this legislation is now becoming clear. The state Department of Instruction paid $100,000 to the “Bill of Rights Institute” of Arlington, Va., to provide lesson plans for the course. Founded by David H. Koch in 1999, this educational reform outfit offers a historical perspective on the founding of our nation.
The purpose of the BRI lesson plans is to re-create a “consensus history” of America where the Founders, who are depicted as wise and great men, agreed on some general philosophical and ethical principles that have been handed down to us in a collection of sacred texts. This tradition is offered as a guide for students to solve ethical and political dilemmas of today on issues like affirmative action.
In fact, fierce debates and fundamental disagreements were a core part of the founding of our nation. The BRI’s materials focus primarily on illustrating supposedly shared principles, leaving out the actual history that produced these documents.
Worse, the principles are cherry-picked in a way that distorts the founding debates. Only a passing reference is made to Alexander Hamilton, whose vision of a powerful, more centralized national government as secretary of the treasury guided the presidency of George Washington. We learn nothing about the vicious politics of the 1790s that revealed how differently the principles of the Constitution were understood even by those who created it, like Hamilton and James Madison.
Might not the controversy over the establishment of the First National Bank, which helped spark the first political parties, help students better understand both federalism and the U.S. Constitution? Or does the libertarian “Bill of Rights Institute” want to erase this institution from history in the same way Ron Paul used to talk about getting rid of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States?
Like Parson Weems, who invented didactic tales about George Washington for the nation’s youth, the BRI guidelines fabricate an image of the Founders as towering examples of moral virtue. Among the 10 “founding principles” identified by the “Founding Principles Act” is “individual responsibility.”
A dubious inclusion, this phrase was not used in any of the founding documents the course requires. But it is a favorite buzzword in conservative circles today. The BRI module on “individual responsibility” uses Franklin and Washington to demonstrate their rigorous personal ethic of responsibility. Highly selective excerpts from Franklin’s autobiography show his desire to live virtuously, but no mention is ever made of his frequenting of brothels or his son born out-of-wedlock. We are told that Washington’s “great character was respected by all,” and students are given assignments that ask them to explain how he “exemplified individual responsibility in his life, writings, and speeches.” Not surprisingly, students are not given any opportunity to evaluate Washington’s conflicted feelings about slavery or how he reconciled his republican principles with being a slaveholder.
My point is not that students must learn the dirt on the Founders to balance their virtues. Rather, it is essential that history teachers not distort the past by sanitizing it for the purpose of moral didacticism.
The past was just as messy and complex and divided as the present. Two generations of historians have demonstrated how Americans from all stratums of society – women, slaves, Indians, patriots, loyalists, the rich and poor – shaped the founding of the nation. They did not all agree about everything, and the contentious democracy they created began with those founding conflicts.
Our task as historians is to accurately present the many conflicting viewpoints and experiences of Americans and to teach our students how to reach their own conclusions about what those experiences mean today. I teach my students how to think for themselves. I do not feed them predetermined conclusions, and I do not sweep under the rug aspects of history that I dislike. Any high school course on American history must begin with that purpose.
Mark Elliott, Ph.D., teaches history at UNC-Greensboro.
This story was originally published December 13, 2014 at 8:00 PM with the headline "On US exceptionalism, history education vs. indoctrination."