“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlWhy Students Think There Are Two Kinds of American HistoryTony WatersCalifornia State University, Chico

STUDENTS IN MY UNDERGRADUATE Sociology andSocial Science classes often tell me that the “history” they learned in high schools was different than the “history” they learned in ouruniversity classes. They often claim that what they learned in K-12 was “wrong” and that they did not learn the “real” history until they got to college. They usually focus on the fact that K-12 history is typically taught from a triumphal “grand sweep” perspective emphasizing places and dates, and the glories of the past ingeneral. They contrast this with a college curriculum that they say emphasizes that there were great injustices in the past. Students often feel as if they have to choose between oneversion, or the other.

Often my students’ history preferences are basedon their pre-existing political views about the role of the state in ordering society. Those on the right choose to believe in the “glorious past” version of K-12, and those from the left focus on the “persistence of oppression” version

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmloften emphasized by college courses in history and education departments. The “glorious past” version of history has in its corner the millions of K-12 textbooks distributed to schools around the country. The persistence of oppression school uses a different “clandestine”history of which the most popular right now seems to be James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. This book is a systematic debunking of K-12 American history texts and is often read enthusiasticallyby students claiming that they now understand “real” American history.

I think though that the dichotomy between right and wrong history, right or left political views, or real and fake history is all false. Infact, there are two histories being taught, eachof which is reasonable and important in the reproduction of society. The K-12 version is about affirming the logical basis for our being a people with a past and, by implication, a present. This version is inherently patriotic and positive. In the case of the United States, this optimistic story explains why today’s values of democracy, capitalism, equal opportunity, and individual liberty are an important basis for a just society. This story is important because Americans need to agree that there is a plausible and logical

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlexplanation for why today’s institutions are thebest possible. But in these patriotic and optimistic views there is a limitation. The problem is that the optimism of the story told in K-12 is never consistent with what is observed in the present. This is where the role of college history comes in. College history emphasizes not only optimism and patriotism but also ambiguity and conflict. Learning this history is important because it is part of a broader contingent story, part of which will eventually be used to explain to children of thefuture a logical basis for their present. What agood college level history course does is draw the student into the wider conversation about the problems of the past. It does this in order that future citizens will have the intellectual tools to explain a present that has yet to emerge.

The Problem of a Plausible Past

There is a problem, however, with maintaining a patriotic story for our children. The story needs to be plausible with respect to both what significant adults remember of the past, what ishappening in the present, and the dreams a society has for a future. These three things of course never quite match, but they at least needto be consistent enough to avoid too much dissonance. When there is too much dissonance,

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlthe old story becomes “wrong,” and a new “more accurate” story emerges, creating a new version which is still optimistic and patriotic.

Let me use a recent story from the United Statesduring the 1950s and 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement confronted a country which claimed to value democracy, equal opportunity, and individual liberty. But this claim highlighted an obvious dissonance which was the disenfranchisement of African-Americans who had fought for these values in World War II. Historybooks of the 1950s reflected an older version ofAmerican history which dealt poorly with questions of race, and focused on previous concerns about the need to reconcile whites split by the fratricide of the Civil War. These histories told a triumphal story of how English colonists established the Massachusetts Bay and Virginia colonies, conducted a successful revoltand gained independence from an English king whodenied them basic political rights. They then fought a terrible Civil War focused by a need topreserve the union, and incidentally abolish slavery. In order to make plausible the story that the war “saved the union,” memories of the intense hatred created by that war needed to be downplayed and the patriotism of whites from thesouth and north celebrated. The story then continued by noting that the united country

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlsuccessfully fought World Wars I and II in defense of democracy and liberty. This history took little note of millions of African-Americans, a situation which was difficult to reconcile with the participation of black units in World War II. Nor could it explain the increasingly large presence of segregated African-American communities in northern and southern cities where public facilities were separate and unequal.

In response, the story told of “we the Americans” changed in the history textbooks. Ourorigins were traced to peoples and places besides England, including African slaves. Beginning in the 1970s, the role that slavery and race played in the origins of the Civil War was re-emphasized, and it was no longer primarily a war to preserve the union. FrederickDouglass was added to the glorious story of the Civil War, and Robert E. Lee’s role declined in a country no longer focused on reconciliation ofnortherners and southerners, but in reconciling blacks and whites. By the 1980s, the assassinated Martin Luther King was elevated to a glorious role in the country’s struggle for freedom. In short, the story remained a gloriousand plausible one, but over a period of 30 to 40years even the heroes changed.

And guess what? In fifty years, how we teach

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlhistory at the K-12 level will change again. Thestory of the Civil War told in the history textbooks of 2055 will not be the same as that told in 2005, or 1955. The story told in the K-12 textbooks of 2055 will reflect a new story, which will be presented to children as being thetruth about an honorable past. Almost inevitably, today’s textbooks will be criticizedfor having omitted issues which do not seem important today. But again, this is where college classes should come in. College classes are part of the contingent “running conversation” from which this future vision of the past will emerge. In contrast, K-12 is aboutthe consensus reached in that conversation, at least at the point in time when state boards of education approved textbooks for distribution. The approved textbooks will always present an optimistic and patriotic expression of the political context the boards of education reflect. That which is still contested will not be legitimated politically, and will be left outof the K-12 canon known as “the content standards.”

This brings me back to the issue of what historians in our universities do, and why what they teach is so often different from what is taught in K-12. Universities produce the contingent history of tomorrow. The grab bag

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlthat their classes dip into will become the stories and analyses that will explain events inan unknowable future. But only a very few will actually be used in future K-12 books. For example, the reason why Islam is a new emphasis of the American social studies curriculum, and not Shintoism or Hinduism, has to do with broader political and military issues which emerged after September 11, 2001. There will probably be a stronger emphasis on Islam in future K-12 textbooks because the story of Islamis important in 2005 for explaining to our children the present actions of the United States, while the stories of Shintoism and Hinduism are not. The emphasis on Islam has everything to do with the story America is trying to tell itself, and little to do with therelative importance of Islam, Hinduism, or Shintoism as world religions.

Max Weber on Ethnic Groups: How Nations Think about Their History

The sociologist Max Weber discussed how groups use history to define themselves as having a common identity in ethnicity, nationality, or citizenship. Weber wrote that such status groupsare made up of “communities” of people who sharethe common “honor” of a particular identity. In the case of ethnic and national groups, this honor comes through a plausible belief in common

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlancestry. Note that this common form of “honor” needs to be one of “belief” not actual verifiable genetic fact. So long as there is a belief in common origin, and it is credible and creditable, it is enough for the group to verify who belongs and who does not. It has to be credible in the sense that habits, looks, dress, food, likes, etc., are consistent with common practice. It has to be creditable in the sense thatthe group needs to have an explanation of why their unique sense of dignity is important, irrespective of objective conditions. This is K-12 history at its best: credible, creditable, and expressing the dignity of nationalism and patriotism. K-12 history ultimately is the definition of a nation or ethnic group both to itself and to the world about why it is unique.

All groups, whether of low or high status, believe themselves to be creditable, and tell stories about why their own group is better thanothers. However, there is a problem of how to goabout doing this credibly. Status groups, when compared to others, are either positively or negatively privileged. The story they tell aboutthemselves—their his- tory—must credibly explainwhy things are the way they are. Positively privileged groups need to explain to others why their privileges are natural and normal. Negatively privileged groups need to explain how

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlprivileges are denied them, despite their own basic goodness. In other words, ethnic groups need to explain to themselves and others why their status is creditable, in a credible fashion.

Weber writes that positively privileged status groups focus on their own general “excellence.” Their kingdom is “of this world.” Positively privileged groups control the government which in the modern world also controls the school curriculum. They live for the present and need to identify a great past that logically leads upto that present. Weber explains that part of theprivileged status is a fear of “decay from inside” by a present generation. They believe that they themselves, and especially the young, are incapable of living up to the moral standards established by “the greatest generation,” or subversion by groups jealous of their privileges. Quite often dominant groups describe how their education or skills have madethem inappropriate for lower status tasks, that is the “dirty work” of society which is reservedfor the subordinate groups.

Nevertheless, subordinate groups also have a sense of excellence and dignity. For them, thereis a glorious future lying beyond the present, whether it is of this life, or a later life. There is often in such groups a belief that theyhave a providential mission from God, and that a

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlmessiah figure will appear to shine a light on their hidden excellence. It is generally believed that this light will naturally lead to the overthrow of their undeserving oppressors. When this happens, their true honor will become obvious to a world which has previously defined them as pariahs.

Put bluntly, positively privileged groups have nostalgia for the past, and are likely to “celebrate” it through telling and retelling of their history. Subordinated groups dream of future deliverance, and speak little of a discreditable past. During the Civil War, the nostalgia for the past was expressed in songs like “Dixie” which glorified the past that dominant Southern planters sought to preserve. At the same time, subordinated slaves expressed themselves through songs of deliverance, like “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and even the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which expressed a belief in a future salvation.

Credibility, Creditability,and Thoroughbred Anthropological Types

Whether a status group is positively or negatively privileged in a particular society, they also generate what Weber calls a “thoroughbred

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlanthropological type.” These are the stereotypesthat ethnic and national groups use to define themselves, as well as the others with whom theyhave contact. These definitions include beliefs about characteristic food preferences, dress, music, and professions. These likes and dislikesare asserted through song, ritual, stories, and history texts. For modern dominant groups, such self-definition may become encoded in law, and the story expressed through K-12 texts.

The anthropological thoroughbreds developed by dominant and subor- dinate groups are patterned.The dominant group sees itself as being smart, benevolent, and unable to do unskilled labor, while subordinate groups are lazy, and fit only for menial tasks. The dominant group generally believes that the subordinate people are satisfied in their position. This view is often expressed in the United States today in dominantviews about immigrants from poor Third World countries. It is believed that immigrants will take low-status jobs in farm-work/gardening/restaurants, and that they are still happy to be here because life in the home country was so miserable. Complementing such folk anthropology is the belief that the native born are incapable of working in farm-work/gardening/restaurants because the pay is too low, and the youth too decadent to work as

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlhard as required.

But the anthropological thoroughbreds developed by subordinate groups also fit a pattern. The stories they tell tend to describe themselves asbeing clever and indispensable, while the dominant group is rich, cruel, and easily fooled. The Br’er Rabbit stories developed by African-Americans during the days of slavery area good example of such stories. Subordinate groups also often believe that were it not for the skills and insights of themselves, the system of the dominant group would collapse. Slaves in the American South typically all shared this view, irrespective of the fact that their status in the larger society was low. Today, building custodians, and farm workers will assert that the larger market system they serve would collapse without them. Note that this view is both credible and creditable. It isthrough such stereotypes, if you will, that the conversation about how a group defines its own characteristics and those of others is sustained.

Most important for this essay, dominant groups have the further ad- vantage that a formal history, such as that introduced in K-12, establishes stereotypes as historical fact. But the running conversations of the subordinate groups are also important. For it is out of this

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlunofficial “clandestine” conversation that the rationalizations needed to explain future shiftsin power, prestige and honor will emerge.

History, Mass Modern Society, and Textbooks

Textbooks are an important means by which mass modern societies affirm and recreate an explanation of where a nation is today. Millionsof glossy paged copies are produced to teach K-12 students the dominant explanation of why society is the way it is. Meanwhile, the storiesof subordinate groups tend to be passed along clandestinely through allegorical myths, music, gossip, and art. New ideas emerging out of subordinated media are often unnoticed by the dominant culture. Music is a powerful means for passing along clandestine values in modern society. Powerful clandestine forces emerging during the last 40 years or so were first expressed in rap, soul, and folk music. Much of the now-dominant conservative movement had its origins in allegorical myths about welfare, capitalism, affirmative action, race, abortion, taxation policy, and government bureaucracy. These stories were told clandestinely in little-noticed publications, business schools, and radio stations which gained currency in the 1960s and 1970s.

College classrooms, where individual professors

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlhave broad power to assign books, are a place where clandestine ideas are expressed and testedfor their plausibility. For what it is worth, the clandestine ideas of the right tend to be expressed in business and economics departments.Clandestine ideas of the left are often found inhistory and education Departments. The advantageof the college classroom is that these ideas canbe shaped and interpreted in ways that make sense in the context of different plausible futures.

The Problem of Historical Change: Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving

No dominant group started out being in charge. What is more, no dominant group will remain dominant forever. And if you look carefully, youcan see the fingerprints of subordination in thehistories that dominant groups tell about themselves. This is because every dominant groupmust at some time outwit someone else, permitting the group to achieve its rightful place in the sun. In other words, there must be a foil in the story, a messiah figure, and a theme of triumph against odds. This story is rooted in a past which is plausible, creditable,and credible to a dominant group. A good way to do this, is to legitimate an event which is beyond the lived memories of people within the society. This is why dominant groups tell

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlstories of a distant, rather than recent past. Perhaps it is even why so many K-12 history classes never seem to reach the end of the book where the recent past is discussed. Glorious stories of a hundred years ago are less likely to be challenged by the memories of the living.

A good way to illustrate this is by looking at how the American Thanksgiving went from being a one-off minor celebration by fewer than fifty English religious heretics dependent on Indian largesse, to a description of a glorious past for a nation of two hundred ninety-four million people. The Thanksgiving story, as is told in our K-12 history textbooks, is the story of a small band of church dissenters—Pilgrims—upset with the theological practices of the Church of England. They first went to Holland, and later to Massachusetts. They settled at Plymouth in the forests of Massachusetts near Cape Cod in 1620. After democratically deciding to govern themselves with written laws (The Mayflower Com-pact) these rational modern human beings established themselves on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Their first winter in New England was devastating, and many of the Pilgrims perished. A messiah figure eventually appeared in the person of Squanto, an Indian whospoke English and introduced them to the Indiansof the area. The Puritans worked with these

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlIndians to establish farms which the following season provided an abundant harvest. After the harvest was in, the Pilgrims invited their new Indian friends to a feast of uniquely American food like turkey, venison, and maize. And the story often concludes that today’s uniquely positive American values like the rule of law, freedom of religion, cultural diversity, farming, and hard work are logically celebrated by acknowledging the role Pilgrims and Indians played in developing the new society.

The problem that the grouchy critical historiansat the universities are likely to point to is that it didn’t quite happen that way. To start with, Spaniards, French, and even English had long preceded the Pilgrims in America. Indeed, if there was a “first food” it was cod liver oilfrom the fisherman who boiled the massive codfish caught along Cape Cod. And as for friendship and tolerance, the Pilgrims were the antecedents for seventy years of Puritan theological despotism which included the persecution of Quakers, the military annihilation of Squanto’s heirs in King Philip’sWar, and culminated in the Salem Witch Trials in1691. Indeed, it was only an autocratic act by that great social liberal, the King of England, that finally revoked the democratic Puritan Charter, replacing it with a staid Royal Charter

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlwhich finally protected religious liberty from the excesses of the Pilgrims’ successors.

Nevertheless, despite these uncomfortable truths, we continue to use the Pilgrims as exemplars of virtue in our textbooks. Virtually all Americans celebrate Thanksgiving and honor both the Pilgrims and the Indians. As I will conclude below, this is probably a good idea. Given the nature of American society today, including the importance of religion, cultural diversity and the rule of law, the Pilgrim storycontinues to resonate well. But, I suspect that it is no coincidence that the second Thanksgiving was not held until about 1820, longafter the excesses of the Puritans had faded from immediate memory. There was also of course a need, as Weber pointed out, for the new country to define itself as unique from others in terms of food likes, dress, and social customs. Thanksgiving has proved to be an excellent ritual to assert this “American exceptionalism.”

And so, hundreds of millions are exposed to Thanksgiving through the shared experience of donning Indian or Puritan costumes as second graders, eating American turkey at Thanksgiving dinner, and, of course, reading about the story in millions of American history textbooks. By performing these rituals, and insisting that our

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlsecond graders dress up as Pilgrims or Indians (even those living in Polynesian Hawaii), we make an important statement about what values are important to us as a nation today, not just in the past.

Choosing a Plausible Past, Present, and Future

So what happened to the nasty side of the Massachusetts’ Puritans? Aren’t we their heirs, too? In a positivistic sense we are; and in the college history curriculum it is generally taught that events like the Salem witch trials are a natural outgrowth of religious extremism. Indeed the reason we talk about the Salem witch trials today is that intellectuals of the 1950s effectively resuscitated these events to make a clandestine point about witch trials being important as literary metaphor, that is, trials without heroes or honor. No one in the story of the Salem witch trials is creditable given contemporary values. The powerful prosecutors who condemned the witches to death are not people to be emulated. The judges who relaxed rules of evidence to permit ready convictions are not creditable. And none of the victims leftclandestine diaries, notes, or stories which would provide a credible example of how good could overcome evil. 1 There are no heroes, so there is no creditable history. The Salem witch trials may be instructive for would-be

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlprosecutors and judges to study in law schools, but they are of dubious value for K-12 books seeking to create an optimistic patriotism.

And this is why Loewen’s book Lies my Teacher Told Mewill never become part of a state board of education’s content standards for K-12. Loewen’sbook points out that there is much to be discredited about American history. Heroes were in fact clods, and racism, not only pursuit of freedom and liberty, is a dominant theme in American history. Which is of course the reason that it cannot be used as a textbook in K-12, where the dominant society needs to convince itschildren that an American identity is honorable,and that the dominance of the state is a naturalconsequence of a glorious past.

Lies My Teacher Had Better Teach Me

This brings me full circle to answering the original question that my students first asked about the two types of history, that taught in K-12, and that learned in the university. The history we tell in K-12 is always tied to a needto justify the present. Implicitly, and most importantly, the story is about what “we” as a group believe our future should be. Through whatis chosen to include in the history taught to our children, the government is helping childrento discuss more than the problems of the past.

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlChildren are taught about how the problems of the present are discussed, and what future should be hoped for. In a modern society where the dominant group is inherently in charge of the state, this means that textbooks will alwaystell a creditable story which glorifies the past, and justifies the present. There will always be an assumption that today’s youth do not quite measure up to their honored predecessors. This is what my students called the “wrong” history when they got to my class. But rather than being right or wrong, it is whatmodern states need to do to persist. History taught to the masses is always glorious, and always justifies the present.

But, while a glorious past may be important for the present, it is inadequate for a future wherethe unforeseen will need to be explained. Interpretations of future events will be contested, as power shifts occur, and new problems are dealt with. In the 1960s the UnitedStates was fortunate that a generation of historians prepared a “clandestine history” about Fredrick Douglass and others who have become recognized since as contributing creditably and credibly to a present focused on a need to reconcile racial differences. Other clandestine histories are being written today, most of which will never be heard of beyond a

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmllimited group of specialized scholars, or perhaps by undergraduates in a sociology, anthropology, or history class. But, necessarilya few will address the unforeseen circumstances of the future, and be used by someone to assert a claim of legitimacy for the people we will become. This will become the future’s K-12 history at its best: credible, creditable, and expressing the dignity of nationalism and patriotism.

Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Spread on Nationalism, 2nd edition. New York: Verso Press.

Barth, Fredrik,editor (1969). “Introduction” to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Origins of Cultural Difference. Boston: Little Brown.

Blumer, Herbert (1958). “Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position.” Pacific Sociological Review. v. 1: 3-8.

Loewen, James (1996). Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Waters, Tony and Kim LeBlanc (2005). “Refugees and Education: Mass Public School- ing without a Nation-State. Comparative Education Review 49(2): 129-147.

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“Why Students Think that there are Two Kinds of History.” History Teacher. 39(1), see http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/waters.htmlWeber, Max (1948) “Class, Status, Party,” pp. 180-194 in From Max Weber. New York: Free Press.

Notes1. Which is not of course to say that there could not have been any; after all without the voice provided by Anne Frank’s diaries, her capture, deportation and death would have had as little to say to us as the victims of the Salem Witch Trials, as without the diary she would have been as anonymous as the victims of Salem.

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