Textbook Bias

 In his 1952 autobiography “Witness”, Whittaker Chambers confessed to his betrayal of his country, and recounted how his student days prepared the way for his later behavior.  Chambers says, “no member of the Columbia faculty ever consciously guided me toward communism.  It was liberalism (the 20th century variety) I was about to encounter..., liberalism (both in the honest meaning of the word and in its current sense as a cover-name for socialism) that was about to work on my immature and patchwork beliefs”...Columbia did not teach me communism.  It taught me despair...it was a feeling of despair, not always explicit and seldom definite, but running like a theme through any view of life that was not merely practically ambitious.  It was the sense of historical sundown, the sense that man had reached one of the great jumping-off places  --- or what was worse, a place where it was impossible to jump because it was the end”...into this vacuum, sprang something which was waiting just around the corner  -- something what at first I had no way of identifying, but which I presently learned was Marxism”.

While no one on the Columbia faculty may have “taught” Chambers communism, the same cannot be said for the faculties of American colleges today. They are the inheritors of the anti-American, pro-Marxist intellectual doctrine of the 1920s.

This situation became more pronounced and vocal as the campus radicals of the late 1960s finished graduate school and entered academia.  In the words of Professor Jay Parini of Middlebury College in Vermont:

“After the Vietnam War, a lot of us didn’t just crawl back into our literary cubicles; we stepped into academic positions. With the war over, our visibility was lost, and it seemed for a while—to the unobservant—that we had disappeared. Now we have tenure, and the work of reshaping the universities has begun in earnest. “

Annette Kolodny, a former 60s radical at Berkeley, is now professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona at Tucson.  She makes no bones about how she views her position:

"I see my scholarship as an extension of my political activism."

And, Andrew Ross, formerly on the faculty at Princeton and now a professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU, once stated:

"I teach in the Ivy League in order to have direct access to the minds of the children of the ruling class.”

In their 2006 work entitled A Profile of American College Faculty: Political Beliefs and Behavior, Gary Tobin and Aryeh K. Weinberg found that:

“Faculty hold a certain number of beliefs that are pervasive, but not monolithic. They include:

• Criticism of many American foreign and domestic policies.

• Propensity to blame America for world problems.

• A tendency to strongly support international institutions such as the United Nations.

• Strong opposition to American unilateralism.

• Criticism of big business.

• Skepticism about capitalism’s ability to help address poverty in developing nations.”

The authors go on to state: “The majority of faculty are liberal and Democratic, and therefore the full spectrum of beliefs and political behavior of the American public is underrepresented on campus.”

What of those professors who write the history texts that are used in our colleges and universities, as well as in the public schools?  Do they share Dr. Kolodny’s ideology and activism?  Or, has the revisionist approach to history become so prevalent that misrepresenting history is simply the only way to avoid ostracism and censure by one’s peers? 

In this respect, I don’t see any great “conspiracy” in the sense of a central committee putting out memos directing how history will be revised.  Current revisionism is more diffused.  It is more the case of individual professors deciding how they can contribute to undermining the traditional consensus of America as a “beacon of liberty”.  They believe, along with such leading intellectuals as Noam Chomsky, Francis Fox Piven, William Ayers, and Bernadine Dohrn that the only reason Marxism has never succeeded is that the right people weren’t in charge.

Of course, revisionism can make a valid contribution to the historical record if it is used to revise previously stated facts based on new scholarship.  Historians have been editing recorded history since the days of ancient Greek and Roman scholars, such as Plutarch and Tacitus.

Revisionist history flows from one of three major perspectives:

1.  A Social or Theoretical perspective to re-examine the past through different lenses

2.  A Fact-checking perspective to correct the record of past events

3.  And, finally, a Negative perspective that views revisionism as an intentional effort to falsify or skew past events for specific motives

Scholarly works often use the first perspective and the author will alert the reader to this in the Forward or Introduction.

However, in the particular case of texts chosen for high school and college freshman/ sophomore survey courses, many times the authors don’t update their work in later editions when new scholarship would lead them to follow the 2nd revisionist perspective of Fact-checking.

Instead, text authors completely ignore more recent scholarship and stick with the same half-truths edition after edition.  This cannot be inadvertent.  The scholarship is there and, in many cases, has been available for many years.  What other conclusion can there be than that they simply choose not to present a more balanced and accurate view?  

These authors fully understand that young students know so little that they are completely unaware of how they are being used to internalize the basic message of hostility toward their own country.  The subtle, underlying message is “See what a bad country America is.  Aren’t you ashamed to be an American?  Now, let’s “steer” you to a more worthwhile ideology.”

The pedagogical methods used in the public schools actually discourage students from questioning the "revealed wisdom" being espoused by both the text and their teacher.  If they argue, they are quickly put in their place.  In many cases, this is because the teachers themselves don't have the requisite historical knowledge to answers the students' questions, even if the students knew what questions to ask. 

This is especially true in Texas where the majority of the history teachers are coaches.  Their major course of study in college was Physical Education.  The common practice is to hire them as a coach and stick them in the history classroom. I would submit that even they aren’t aware of the flaws in the textbook.  If they are aware, they are still more concerned with X’s and O’s. This is intended as a criticism of the system rather than of the individuals themselves.  They are simply concentrating on their primary job.

The purpose of this blog is to expose concrete examples of this misuse of history in hopes that parents will more fully understand the way in which their children are being indoctrinated rather than educated. 

The specific texts I will use are those with which I am most familiar:

The American Nation: A History of the United States by Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty

Give Me Liberty: An American History by Eric Foner

American Government and Politics Today 2008-2009 by Steffen W. Schmidt, Mack C. Shelley, and Barbara A. Bardes

Hereinafter, these will be referred to as Garraty, Foner, and Schmidt.

A part of my basic methodology will be to use a book entitled Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historic Thought by David Hackett Fischer, Harper Torchbooks, 1970.  I was introduced to this book in a graduate Historiography seminar.

As its subtitle states, Fischer is searching for logic, rather than presenting history through an emotional or ideological prism.  According to Fischer:

"An event is understood as any past happening.  A fact is a true descriptive statement about past events. To explain is merely to make plain, clear, or understandable some problems about past events, so that resultant knowledge will be useful in dealing with future problems". 

He then points out that "A good deal of relevant and important work has recently been done, not by logicians or historians, but by epistemologists."

In this context, “a fallacy is not merely an error itself but a way of falling into error. It consists in false reasoning, often from true factual premises, so that false conclusions are generated.”

Using the 3^rd revisionist perspective mentioned, the historian not only provides selected facts, but also editorializes through use of carefully selected terminology or language.  This school of historiography attempts to force all historical thought into an idealist or moralistic model. Students are steered toward moral conclusions that have already been made by the author.

This is not the province of the historian, unless such purpose is fully stated in the Forward or Introduction of the work.  The texts mentioned above do not provide the student with any such warning.  Either the material is presented as completely factual or the author suggests to the student how he or she should "feel" about it, or both.

In my introductory lectures, I warn my students that a historian, like any other researcher, has a vested interest in answering his/her own questions.  Their job and reputation are at stake.  Their work, if it is to be published, must be peer reviewed.  When the reviewers themselves subscribe to the same ideological biases, the result becomes a foregone conclusion.

If my students learn nothing else, they begin learning to read and think critically and with a degree of skepticism.  This is the only way in which outmoded ideas and beliefs are changed.

In his book Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900, (University of Illinois Press, 1971), John Haller writes:

“The period from Darwin to Mendel was one whose theories on race, both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’, accepted only variations on the implicit assumption of racial inferiority.  Those who argued equality of the races – either biological or legal – effectively lost credence within the reigning science and social science paradigm.  This paradigm not only determined the relative value of the races but also helped to delineate social categories and justify the century’s efforts at social engineering” 

What if there had been no skeptics to question the “accepted science” of the day?

As Lincoln said, the ideals and values of America, "set up a standard maxim for a free society, which would be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augment­ing the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.  The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration of Independence not for that, but for future use".

Despite the obvious fact of imperfect attainment, no other country on Earth intentionally established anything resembling the ideals of America.  Most countries don't even attempt to try.  Those that do have done so as a direct result of either our example or our force of arms.  The miserable living conditions of citizens in countries that espouse Marxism, or any other collectivist ideology, are ample proof of the superiority of the ideal of individual liberty.

I welcome reasoned and rational comment and debate.  However, I also fully expect the use of Argumentum ad Hominem, as that seems to be the only way in which many today can argue.  They know their argument has no merit, so they resort to name calling or attacking someone’s character or belief. 

A demand that authors inform, rather than proselytize, should be a common objective.  It is hoped that this will ultimately reach and be of use to both parents and students.