Not a small number of state representatives around the country have found political hay to be made from opposition to the recently altered AP US History Exam. My own home state has recently dodged the bullet aimed at shutting down AP history classes over the issue. Lynn Cheney, who touts herself as an arbiter of proper history, has weighed in with an essay in the Wall Street Journal republished on the AEI website.
Cheney, along with so many of the others who have attacked the AP History Program, attempts her analysis suffering from a severe deficit in understanding. She does not understand the practice and function of education in 21st century America. She does not understand the processes and art of History as an academic discipline. She does not understand the function and development of the AP Exam, the manner in which the criteria for the new exam has been provided to teachers responsible for teaching it or how, in fact, it is actually being taught. Finally, her extremely narrow process for inspiring young people to admire our nation and emulate its heroes diminishes the very freedoms on which this country is based by believing the nation can only be held together by spun sugar propaganda instead of hard and sometimes uncomfortable truth.
A discussion about the teaching of history should probably start with a discussion of the history of teaching. For most of human history, the educational process served only two, perhaps two and a half purposes: 1) prepare a young person for adult productivity (and thus prehistoric fathers taught sons to hunt, mothers taught daughters to gather crops and cook - with civilization and specialization of labor young people worked in apprenticeships, leatherworking for cobblers, stone cutting for masonry, martial arts for warriors, or clerical studies and theology to act as scribes, priests, etc.). 2) At around the time specialized education for personal productivity started, a new division of education was created for a ruling class – an educational experience designed to give understanding of a variety of skills so that the leader would understand better the work done by those underneath in the hierarchy. 2.5) At least some of the “ruling class education” would be directed at arts, each of which carried out by masters of specific crafts, but ultimately commissioned by rulers.
Little systematically changed about this arrangement for thousands of years until, in the west at least, the Renaissance created a tiny middle class (which would later explode during the Industrial Revolution). Until that point, the education one received was largely an accident of birth. A boy learned his father’s trade whether it was a carpenter or a king. Potentially a master craftsman, most especially goldsmiths who transformed into the banking class, might develop enough capital to flaunt a relatively fancy house and lifestyle. As a point of pride, he could provide his son with a nobleman’s education. So we have tutors not just for the royal family but also for “low born” with money. Invention of the printing press made it possible for people of far less than royal means to learn to read and write. Universities developed to fill the need of this new merchant class. Their education mirrored the royal pattern with three disciplines dominating: natural science (a catch all for what we call math, physics, biology, etc.), rhetoric (writing reading, speaking, language studies), and theology (which was suffused throughout all the other studies).
The next significant step came with the Reformation when the clergy was no longer trusted to be the sole interpreters of God’s word. Bibles could be owned by those of relatively modest means such that literacy grew, primarily as a function of religious obligation, and could often be learned though the predecessor of modern home schooling. The practice of home schooling was particularly important for religious dissidents and became part of early colonial American culture especially in those colonies that were founded as result of religious persecution (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania). Early in the history of the Massachusetts colony, the legislature passed the Old Deluder Act, requiring each local community to create a school, the first of public schools available to all regardless of income, in order to make sure the populace could resist the temptations of Satan through personal exposure and inspiration directly from the Word of God.
After the American Revolution, homeschooling took on a political function added to its social one, training citizens of a new nation in their responsibilities to the Republic. The term “Republican Motherhood” became the goal of every woman of means (property ownership was a requisite for political participation) to teach her sons as much as she could of the three subjects areas so that they might better fulfill their roles as leaders of the community. Mothers would also teach their daughters, but primarily so these daughters could, in turn, become tutors to their sons once married. Literacy among all classes was pretty common, and a person could become well-read without college. However, books still cost money – typically only those of a certain class could afford to aspire to higher education formal or otherwise.
Three forces, political, economic, and social, contributed to produce the next significant step in educational history. Beginning in the 1820s, America experienced a birth of democratic zeal, a belief in the inherent value of each individual, a consequence of which was that property ownership would be abolished as a requirement for voting. By the 1850s, every adult white male was eligible to vote. Political participation was heralded as a civic responsibility celebrated in popular culture.
The Industrial Revolution created labor demands unusual to society previously. It was not enough for all people to be apprenticed to a trade. The job market was changing as old jobs became obsolete and new jobs were being created on a regular basis. A literate society was now not only needed to have a functioning democracy, but also to have laborers who could adjust to changing needs of the job market. One other change in labor occurred. Instead of being craftsmen who saw a project from the beginning and sold the final good whole to the customer, many laborers were given small parts of a job to complete and then hand off to the next worker for a subsequent step and so on. Instead of working in a shop largely under their own volition as a master craftsman, laborers toiled in factories with sometimes repetitive tasks and long hours imposed by a boss. Instead of seeing the finished product and taking pride in the accomplishment, a job was now, “just a job,” a way to make it until the next sunrise.
The third important factor became the first great wave of non-English immigrants, predominantly Irish Catholics and German Protestant and Catholics. This presented a challenge to the society as a whole – how to assimilate these undesirable foreigners with their strange dress, speech, and beliefs into the American society.
The solution used to answer all three challenges could be found in a new reform movement, Public Education – free schooling to all people paid for by the government. It was no coincidence that this movement was most prominent in the Northeast where the tradition of civic engagement was the strongest, the overwhelming majority of factories were located and to which the vast majority of immigrants arrived. Looking at the curriculum, particularly the McGuffey’s Readers, one can readily see the need to socialize all children into narrow and predominantly Anglocentric, Protestant American values. The other function of public schooling can be identified in its structure, what has come to be known as the “Factory School,” in which students are expected to complete products in the form of papers of memorized facts, math problems, etc. They are rewarded for neatness and timeliness as well as for blind obedience to the tasks set before them regardless of how menial. This was considered an excellent way of preparing young people for the drudgery of their future factory based vocations and thereby making them productive citizens.
With few minor alterations, the Factory School System persisted unchanged though the 1970s. The culture and values continued to focus in public education on a kind of social and political indoctrination to a particular model. The common metaphor of America was that it is a “Melting Pot.” That metaphor suggests that all ingredients melt into a singular and homogeneous concoction. Those in charge of the society and its now ubiquitous public education cooperated to assure the flavor is one that is Eurocentric, pro-status quo, compliant, White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant in flavor.
Two factors dramatically altered the nature of higher education. The first is the GI Bill which made a college degree available to people of all economic and cultural backgrounds for the first time. The student bodies on college campuses began to look more like American. Secondly, those who came of age in the 1960s were exposed by cultural osmosis to an alternate perspective – Vietnam, The Black Civil Rights Movement, The New Feminism Movement, The American Indian Movement, The Migrant Farm Workers Movement, The Gay Rights Movement all had been founded by the end of the decade. People connected to these movements and then to higher education or professional history studies questioned, “How did I get here? Is there anyone who made America who looked like me?” So long as the power structure was predominantly WASP, and if not Protestant, still completely white and male, teaching children in public school and adults on college campuses to conform to that ideal could be considered justifiable. Be like “this” and you can have a shot at success. The idea that the history of America involved a few other people than five dozen white guys gradually became an inappropriate model for a society in which women and people of color were becoming increasingly important and powerful. Other models of success were suddenly not only possible but necessary.
Anyone who learned history before 1970, received very Amerocentric lessons. A typical high school requirement was one year (or more in some states) of US History, one year of World History taught with a highly Eurocentric focus, and probably around one half to a full year on Civics or American Government. The subject matter was directed almost exclusively to political and military struggles. Memorizing facts – names, dates, laws, battles, treaties, events – became your path to test success.
Of course, the canon of American History was not populated solely by white males. There were some bit players who might make a cameo appearance in typical history texts:
Female: Phyllis Wheatley, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Betsy Ross, Molly Pitcher, Harriett Beecher Stowe, Eleanor Roosevelt.
Black: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Crispus Attucks, and Phyllis Wheatley. Interestingly, the latter three have claims to fame unrelated to racial conflict and whose race is often unacknowledged in old textbooks when their names do arise.
Native Americans: Montezuma, Metacom (aka Prince Phillip), Tecumseh, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, all identified in context of perceived treachery or military defeat.
Hispanics: (none native to the US) Santa Anna, Pancho Villa, Jose Marti’, Fidel Castro, all of whom have created some type of problem for US policy.
Muslims: The Barbary Pirates, no specific names are likely nor is their religion.
Asian: Emilio Aguinaldo, Emperor Hirohito, Todeki Tojo, Mao Zedong. Again, no American citizens and all “troublemakers.”
Gay: James Buchannan, but not identified as such.
All the characters examined in US History were parts of a morality play worthy of Medieval Europe or 1950s television – everyone was held as a hero to be admired and emulated or as worthy only of derision or, at best, pity – The McGuffey Readers writ large on the canvas of Human History. As a rule the characters in the painting could not be allowed to have darkness and light, to have nuance, to make mistakes as well as act heroically, to engage in actions deplorable by modern standards while valuable to the well-being of the country. Likewise, there was no consideration of how ordinary people actually lived their lives. Unless a person held high office in some form, he or she generally remained mere shadows smudged obscurely in the background, if present at all.
In the 1970s, academics started in earnest exploring the lives of ordinary people – social history became a popular topic for Ph.D. dissertations and published historical papers. In the 1980s and 90s the lives and struggles of ordinary laborers on farms and in factories, immigrants of all periods and from all continents, slave, freed and freeborn African Americans, Exodusters, cowboys and vaqueros, native Americans, Japanese internees, Mexican deportees, braceros, and zootsuiters began to find small mentions in college textbooks as the scholarship became available. Into the 21st century, college texts expanded the coverage of such formerly “out” groups including the one least represented in all historical literature until the last forty years, women. How odd it might seem to a visitor from another planet that, although women make up slightly more than half the population of Earth, they have rated such short coverage in books that purport to reveal the history of all humanity.
What Cheney remembers about history is anachronistic to the needs of a modern education. As white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant becomes a smaller percentage of the population, teachers and textbook writers have realized that, in order to engage students, History has to have more than a white face. As females rise in importance in society, role models in history need to reflect more than a masculine paradigm. In addition, to the changing of History studies, public education has changed as well. The Factory school still holds sway – there is still too much memorization of facts. However, when you can carry the entire database of human knowledge in your pocket, memorizing information becomes far less important than learning how to process the information available. Educators are gradually becoming aware of the need for a shift in pedagogical approach. Education in general is in the process of becoming drastically different than when most people over 30 attended classes, as public schooling emerges slowly from its 19th century roots to drag itself into the 21st century.
Here is where the AP History story begins. AP History, as with any AP course, is intended to reflect the kind of learning expected at a college level. At the very minimum, this means the pace of information processing is faster than “on-level” high school courses requiring more reading by volume, geared toward a college level of text, original documents written for audiences of a different time and skill level (and therefore often highly sophisticated – The Federalist Papers were written largely for an audience of educated elite of the 1870- the yeoman farmer might have enough literacy to read them, but he was not the primary target, much less a 21st century high school student), and at best reflects a much more sophisticated approach to analysis than on-level classes – there is an expectation that change over time, cause and effect, comparisons across and within time periods, etc. can be done by the student without every detail spoon fed to the student in a teacher lecture. The AP History Exam has always been directed at these goals. In bringing itself into the 21st century, the College Board is attempting to rely less on massive memorization of facts and more on analysis of information presented within the test. Example: The old exam featured 80 multiple choice questions mostly directed at memory recall, plus three long form essays, also with a premium on providing information from memory. The new test features fewer multiple choice questions, in some of which basic memory recall is useful, but mostly directed at analyzing data and documents and placing them in historical context with appropriate analysis. Short answer questions utilize similar stimuli for written analysis, and two long form essays reward memory recall but at a lower level of value in favor of more specific analytical functions. This is definitely a more 21st century examination of college level ability.
Cheney makes at least two significant errors in her approach to understanding the AP History curriculum material. The first is that she does not realize that a requisite to teach a class in AP US History requires the instructor to use a college level text as the main source of information and analysis. Try to find a college text on US History which does not include the names or facts she lists as “missing.” You will be unsuccessful. Secondly she is confused about what is meant by “curriculum.” In many states with high stakes testing generally known as Criterion Referenced Exams, a set of data is put forth to study. In 19th century fashion, teachers and students are required to know an endless set of facts for the exam. In such cases, teachers teach to the test, students learn the facts and are passed along the system for successfully negotiating the rote requirements. Because the AP US History Exam is attempting to focus on analysis and processing information, the first of the three AP History courses to do so (soon to be followed by similar reworkings in World History and European History), a laundry list of basic facts that must be learned is no longer required. What is provided to the teachers of the newly revamped course are general guidelines of the topics and periods to cover, essential questions to address, and suggestions on how the required specific skills might be taught. A lot of the decisions on which specific topics are taught are left up to the individual teacher. When Cheney and other critics of the new material see the absence of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, etc., they assume these guidelines are the limit of the subject. Instead of viewing the AP Curriculum as a hard list of facts to be memorized, one should read the AP material as a set of ideas or models for possible components of classroom activity. If one of the topics expected to be covered is “How did the republican ideals of the revolutionary affect the political culture after independence?” as one example, is it possible to address this issue without discussing the role of Washington, Madison, Franklin, and Jefferson? Every history teacher understands which ideas left out of the suggestions are still crucial components of a proper study of the period. Another essential question in the AP guidelines includes “How did the Civil War struggle shape Americans’ belief about racial equality, democracy, and national destiny?” Is it even possible to address this issue with no reference to Abraham Lincoln? No teacher can imagine a scenario in which Lincoln’s views are left out of that discussion. Critics of the new exam clearly have an extremely low opinion of the intellect of those teaching the course.
Cheney believes there is only one method of making students “believe” in America: America is “exceptional’ in all respects. – We are the good guys – Our leaders are always right. She and her like possess a very low opinion not only of teachers but also of the intellectual capacity of young people, not to mention their capability of detecting BS. She and they do not respect the capacity of young people to understand a more sophisticated and nuanced view of the world.
The study of history acts as a mirror. We use mirrors to highlight that about us we wish to admire and identify that which we hope to correct. One can try to indoctrinate students into a love of ones country in a high school classroom. We can aim for blind obedience to a single norm of behavior as did the McGuffey Readers and history texts up through the latter 20th century. However, how realistic is it to have as heroes, people who never did anything wrong? How can we, as imperfect creatures ourselves, aspire to greatness if we assume perfection is the only path to leadership? Thomas Jefferson wrote a most amazing founding document arguing persuasively on the nature of liberty for all men, but also owned slaves. James K. Polk increased the territorial holdings of the US by 50%, but part of his method of achieving this accomplishment involved lying the American public into war. Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation but did not believe blacks to be the equal of whites. Woodrow Wilson was an idealist who led the Allies to victory in World War I, a reformer who made life easier for workers and for consumers, but was a vehement racist whose favorite film was “Birth of a Nation,” a paean to Ku Klux Klan vigilantism. John Kennedy navigated a world-saving strategy to extricate the US and USSR from the Cuban Missile Crisis, but his womanizing ways placed him in a liaison with an East German spy and the mistress of a known mafia don. Martin Luther King won a Nobel Prize for his leadership of the Civil Rights Movement but was unfaithful to his wife and probably plagiarized part of his doctoral dissertation. Ronald Reagan gave the American people a sense of hope after the despair of the 1970s, and was at least partly responsible for ushering an end to the Cold War, but actively deceived the American public about the consequences of his economic policies, and our massive debt today can be attributed to an economic philosophy he popularized, deceptions included.
Heroes are real people. They are not posters cut-outs of superhuman beings. Their achievements give us inspiration, but their foibles give us hope that we, in all our own failings, can believe in their inspiration to change our world for the better.
Truth, publicly discussed, is a central tenet of democracy. As the saying goes, “sunshine is the best disinfectant.” Yes, there are some ugly parts of our past. But in every case of hatred, there are those who love. For every case of bigotry, there are people who embrace strangers. For every incident of selfishness, there are acts of sacrifice. For all of our foolishness, there is wisdom. The greatest national wisdom, perhaps, is this, "Democracy is aspirational even when it is not operational." From the moment of signing the Declaration of Independence, our nation has trod a slow, sometimes awkward journey toward an inclusive and democratic society. Two steps forward, one step back at times, but inexorably toward respect for all people. Our current education system that prizes the value of people from all walks of life is merely a reflection of that trend.
A crucial requirement for that journey is incisive, sometimes painful self-examination. In all the rhetoric about the meaning of American Exceptionalism, nothing is more exceptional than this.