The first minutes of the speech prepared for Donald Trump announcing his “1776 Commission” was for me almost impossible to listen to. Trump’s speech lathered on about how a “patriotic education” must teach our students about the “nobility of the American character“ — but character must be taught by example and lived, not proclaimed as inherent in any people.
Next Trump announced our Constitution of 1787 was the culmination of “1,000 years of Western Civilization,” which made me laugh at the thought that the kernel of “Western Civilization” might have roots going back to the year ... 787 !
That said, there are indeed problems with the “1619 Project“ pushed by the liberal
New York Times. Propaganda and indoctrination are twin dangers that educators and the public must learn to better recognize and oppose, in our media especially, but also when necessary in our schools. Neither can be countered by introducing “patriotic education” which is just hagiography of the USA.
The “1619 Project,” headed by
NYT Op-Ed columnist Nicole Hannah-Jones is certainly not “radical left.” Bad history is bad history, and those who early pointed out the errors of the
NYT’s 1619 Project included notable Trotskyist leftists as well as diverse African-American scholars such as ... Princeton historian Nell Painter, leftist Professor Adolph Reed, Columbia's John McWhorter (a liberal centrist) and Brown's George Loury (a moderate conservative). The 1619 Project is rightly being re-organized and rethought.
Many professional liberal and conservative historians, not merely these African-Americans, were quick to point out the
exaggeration of interpretation and shortage and
distortion of facts in the journalistic piece by the non-historian director of the Project. For example notable historian James McPherson, who did much to mold contemporary views of the Civil War with his remarkable book
Battle Cry of Freedom and narration of the PBS special “The Civil War,” quickly opposed the mistakes in the 1619 Project.
My point is the OP is so immersed in the raging culture and political wars he ends portraying Trump as the “adult” in the room, when in fact Trump is probably the least mature or knowledgeable person in the discussion. His comments during the culture wars have been, in my opinion, extremely ignorant and inflammatory, and like much far right criticism he doesn’t stop at criticizing errors but counterposes an, imo, broadly false “Essentialist” view of American history. Seeing this controversy only through the lens of extreme rightwing “intellectuals” on the internet or in the media ... is bound to mislead.
It is certainly true that liberal identity politics and the more general tendency to twist history to better support political partisanship, affects not just the teaching of history and sociology and curriculum at colleges, but also the news media, and ultimately even political policy. Imo, the
New York Times certainly hurt it’s own credibility in this episode.
But it is NOT possible to “do history” correctly if we see it as only reflecting “liberal” vs “conservative,” or “national patriotic” vs. “humanistic universalist,” counterposed perspectives. History is not a hard science and treating “patriotic history” always and everywhere involves examining deeply emotional national
myths.
“Patriotic education” seems to assume that telling the remarkable story of our nation requires that children need be taught more than the facts. That they need be taught that our people are somehow more noble than others, rather than more, for lack of a better word ... blessed. In any case, we are duty bound to remember, amidst all the contradictory myths of “Noble Savages,” heroic frontiersmen, Enlightened slave-owning “Founding Fathers,” that Americans were never all
equally blessed.
Teaching historiography is crucial at the university level. The old hagiography of our Founding Fathers and much “Lost Cause” apologetics rightly disappeared after the Civil Rights Movement and new historical research revealed their inadequacies. I am confident the faddish inadequacies associated with liberal identity politics, and “critical race theory,” will also pass. We must not look backwards and throw out the baby with the bath water. I myself stand with Noam Chomsky in supporting the “Letter to Harper’s Magazine” signed by some 150 scholars and intellectuals, and I do not believe “national patriotic education” is the answer to our problems today, any more than it was the answer to China’s very different problems after the Tiananmen massacre.
Here are some thoughtful articles for those who want to look further at this important dispute:
1776 Honors America’s Diversity in a Way 1619 Does Not
U. professors send letter requesting corrections to 1619 Project
How we think about the term 'enslaved' matters
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate | Harper's Magazine
www.spiked-online.com
