American History: Whose Past Is It - Research Paper Example

There was widespread recognition of the need to address what came to be known as the ‘crisis of historical education.’ Originally recognized as a problem by and for historians themselves in the 1970s, in the 1980s there was increasing public acknowledgment of, and a sense that something had to be done about, the fragmentation and marginalization of historical studies in schools and the accumulating evidence from tests and surveys that the nations young people were growing ever more ignorant of American and world history. The idea of National Standards seemed to offer a way of composing a coherent narrative of American development and of establishing clear expectations of the historical knowledge to be acquired by students.”1 The idea of developing standards in all subjects of K-12 grade picked up pace in 1990 when the then Bush administration launched the National Education Goals aimed at inter alia, “a new standard for an educated citizenry, one suitable for the next century….America can meet this challenge if our society is dedicated to a renaissance in education.”2 These goals were determined in realization of the findings that the standard of education in the United States was not at par with other nations where students coming out of universities were more knowledgeable, better trained and creative. The National Education Goals initiative gave itself a time period of ten years, that is, by year 2000 when students in America will deal with their subjects in a more competent manner in that they will be more creative and better able to apply their mind to learning. The subjects students would learn with this new approach included English, mathematics, science, geography and more importantly history. The reasons behind setting these goals was nothing but preparing students for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in a modern economy. The 1983 report, A Nation at Risk also warned of a rapid decline in American students academic achievements. But the truth, says Kevin Kosar in his new book Failing Grades, is that mediocrity "is not rising: it has been high for at least three decades."3 This chapter will look into the process of setting standards for the history subjects for students Kindergarten through Grade 12 and the notion of inclusion (and exclusion) in the American story with particular reference to the African-Americans. While the philosophy of what can safely be called rewriting the American history is that it does not necessarily have to be a narrative of extraordinary people and events but the ordinary people and ordinary events were as much important. Although the National History Standards initiative had bipartisan support and the process adopted a participatory approach, the right-wing decided to take a snipe at the mention of certain people and events such as the Ku Klux Klan and McCarthyism and inclusion of African-Americans. The objection was also on presenting America’s African heritage at the cost of down-grading the European heritage. The National Centre for History at the University of California Los Angeles was mandated with the task for formulating the National History Standards under the guidance of the National Council for History Standards composed of twenty-nine members and headed by the directors of the National Center for History in the Schools which is based at UCLA. The funding for this project was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education. It is important to mention here that the National Endowment for the Humanities was chaired by Lynne Cheney who has a clear leaning towards the right of the American political spectrum. Teachers and scholars from all over the country participated in the creation of the books, and over thirty professional organizations held meetings for focus groups to vet the various drafts through which the standards passed. Serving as a nexus for all this creative and reviewing activity was the National Council for History Standards. Concerned about the controversy Joyce Appleby raised her voice in an article pointing out the participatory process. She said: The National Council for History Standards acted as both a sounding board and gatekeeper for the developing of the standards. Meeting several times a year, members got together frequently enough to be well informed of their progress, yet far enough away from the day-to-day workings of the contributing groups to require formal presentations at each of its meetings. This had two advantages: it insured a good deal more council oversight than rubber stamping; and it provided the creators of the standards with regular occasions for casting into formal presentations exactly what they were doing at the time.4 Applyby went on to add thus: As you would expect, a group composed of pre-collegiate teachers, history professors, and professional administrators had many diverging points of view to present. Deciding on the proper periodization consumed much of the councils time, as well it might when questions of emphasis, inclusion, and interpretation get packaged into whether to start the United States Standards before Columbus, at 1492, or at 1607! 5 In 1994, the National History Standards were caught up in a controversy which engulfed the entire nation. Under criticism was the social history and that too for representing African-Americans in the American story who had erstwhile been excluded at the cost of underplaying or excluding the “white” descendents of European origin. Much of the flak came from the right-wing mainly White European leadership for instance Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, John Leo, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Lynne Cheney, Gordon Liddy, and Newt Gingrich who heaped abuse on the American and World History Standards on numerous counts but focusing on what they thought the Standards managed to achieve: balance the contributions of African-Americans with white Europeans thus underplaying the “rise of the West” part of the story. Scholars and experts were invited to draft standards and a national board of citizens, scholars, and others reviewed the standards and provided feedback to the authors, who revise the standards. “It was an interesting idea, but it died a violent death at the hands of politics.”6 In October of 1994, the National History Standards were about to be unveiled. Lynne Cheney, the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities who had helped fund the creation of the history standards, attacked the standards for political correctness in a Wall Street Journal article entitled, “The End of History.” Cheney said that the Standards pandered to "the forces of political correctness," that it ignored or trivialized important events, themes and persons, and that its picture of the United States was warped and disparaging.7 A hullabaloo erupted and editorial pages and talk radio were flooded with outraged voices. For instance, on The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour,, Cheney renewed her charges when she confronted Gary B. Nash, co-director of the National History Standards. She said the National History Standards had cast the story of the United States in terms of failure and oppression, with very little sense of the countrys greatness, and she again deplored the exclusion of important figures such as Edison. Nash replied that the National History Standards was not trying to compile names. "Thats what we want to get away from," he said. "We do ask students to understand the role that technology has played in American work, American life, the American economy. But we do not tot up lists of names for students to absorb and spit back . . . ." 8 In January, 1995, the Senate passed a resolution condemning the National History Standards by a vote of 99 to 1. It urged NESIC to reject them, and said that if any federal funds were to be provided for the development of history standards, the recipient of such funds would have to possess a "decent respect" for American history and for Western civilization. The resolution was introduced by Senator Slade Gorton (Republican) who described the National History Standards as "ideology masquerading as history." A month later, another Republican, Senator Nancy L. Kassebaum, introduced a bill aimed at shutting down the entire Standards program. Her bill would eliminate NESIC, would restrict the authority of the National Education Goals Panel (another agency established by the Goals 2000 Act), and would forbid the expending of federal funds "for the development or dissemination of model or national content standards, national student performance standards, or national opportunity-to-learn standards." 9 The Washington Times10 published an article by Arnold Beichman who cited a detailed critique by Walter A. McDougall of a history textbook, “United States History: In the Course of Human Events” said to have been published under the National History Standards. Following are the points which reflect the general criticism offered by the apologists of white supremacy. The National Standards suggested that the United States is founded on "three cultures" –Amerindian, African and European [rather than a product of Western civilization]. In the new textbook the pre-Columbian and African civilizations "are described in sympathetic detail; that of Renaissance Europeans is dismissed in a few pages devoted only to their skill in ship-building and lust for spices and gold." 11 Fifteenth century Africans displayed "diverse cultures," "great luxury," says the textbook, and boasted a university in Timbuktu that "attracted students from all over North Africa." No mention is made that by 1492 Europeans had established sixty universities. The Renaissance gets seven lines of text, the Reformation none, and the Enlightenment six short sentences. "Judging by the information provided here," Mr. McDougall observes dryly, "the European settlers might as well have come from Mars." 12 George Washington is given a box as one of fifteen "People Who Made a Difference." The three African-Americans, one Hispanic, one Asian, and four women who made the list are praised as heroic, Washington is described as a cold man of "ordinary talents," more of a symbol than a real hero. Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Mother Jones, Cesar Chavez and other leaders of womens and minorities movements get not only unqualified praise but more space than Washington. 13 As is to be expected, the pages on President Reagan are tendentious beyond belief. This is what the textbook says: (1) President Reagan won two elections because he was a professional actor allied with Big Business and the New Right. (2) His military buildup led to "worsened relations" with the Soviet Union. (3) It was Gorbachev alone who ended the cold war. (4) "Reagans legacies would continue to shape the nation in years to come."14 The countervailing argument in the polemics of the so-called Standards controversy is put forth by Gary Nash: The Standards take an explicit stand against official forms of history. In setting forth critical thinking skills, the Standards call for students to "differentiate between historical facts and historical intepretations." They ask students to "challenge arguments of historical inevitability," to "compare competing historical narratives," to "hold historical interpretations as tentative," and to "evaluate major debates among historians." They urge students to examine historical eras, movements, and transformations from "multiple perspectives." 15 Thus, the National History Standards which were not binding on states to adopt for their schools, was culled by narrow-mindedness and the political differences which naturally cropped up as the Standards, arguably, set out to challenge the very value system based on the cultural supremacy of one ethnic group over the others. Joan Wallach Scott has proposed that social history is being attacked because it "has exposed the politics by which one particular viewpoint established its predominance."16 Gary B.Nash adds: “Equally threatening, the rise of social history has ended forever any single interpretation or completely unified picture of American history.”17 The social meaning attached to the physical characteristics of African-Americans past and present results in economic, educational, social, and political obstacles to their full participation in mainstream society.18 The Standards were an attempt to rewrite the past so that the powerful groups felt threatened by the attempt to bring a sense of participation among the weaker groups. It sought to highlight the historical past of the African-Americans in the traditional text-books and tried to balance out with the European migrants but this was seen as a heresy by the right-wing. Gary B. Nash: “recapturing parts of the American past about which we have suffered bad cases of historical amnesia promises to promote greater unity among Americans. Will not African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans be more likely to feel less alienated from the American past when they see the struggles and contributions of their own predecessors in the way the nation developed? Will not that benefit all Americans who believe in e pluribus unum?” [Italics Added]19 According to Kaye, we must think historically and politically to make sense of the furor. We must recognize the experience and the agency behind the demand to create national standards for historical education—the most formal and official statement of American and word history ever possibly to be licensed by the Federal government. If nothing else, we must see it in terms of the "culture wars" currently being pursued so avidly by conservative politicians and pundits. But, even more fundamentally, we should comprehend it in terms of the renewed class war from above waged for a generation now against both New-Deal liberalism and the progressive changes wrought in the course of the 1960s - a class war clearly resulting in the rich getting richer and working people and the poor poorer.20 Why Standards? Tracing back the reasons why the standards initiative was taken at this juncture in history, it is noteworthy that before the government came up with the idea of launching national education standards the American society witnessed a cultural revitalization that may be reminiscent of the "black" power movements that emerged during the 1960s civil rights era. According to Hutchinson21, accompanying the judicial and legislative enactments was the popularization of African culture articulated in various arenas of a diverse African- American community: the revitalization movement of black Muslims, a student-driven movement of black power advocates (Hamilton and Carmichael)22, a black separatist movement advocating violence as a means of achieving racial equality (Brown 1993)23, and a cultural movement, which in the 1960s emerged out of scholarly discourse (Karenga)24. These diverse movements, each with its distinct ideologies, was accompanied by the acceptance of African influence on the cultural traditions of African-Americans. Question arises whether the initiative to standardize history which by the way legitimized and imbibed white European supremacy among African-American students and preferred to present a one-dimensional narrative of American history and Western Civilization was an attempt to prevent the African-American influence from “un-yarning” the American story or presenting it in a manner that the past connected to the struggles of today. For instance consider Newt Gingrichs statement thus: Gingrich, similarly, believes that because until 1965 "America had one continuous civilization" and that it had produced a unified, undifferentiated understanding of "what it meant to be an American," we can therefore write a standardized United States history that will last forever in the schools, never to be revised.”25 The political belief of the Right was that the result would be an appropriately conservative document of traditional American history with our mythology intact.26 Ironically, what originally had been so ardently desired by the Right ended up becoming just what they had feared to begin with: That is, standards for historical education which—referring to the U.S. volume—reflect the nations diversity; appreciate the struggles that have been so central to its development; articulate the tragedy, irony and progress of American life; and challenge students to critically approach the connection between past and present - thereby, proposing that the making of history is far from over.27 Some Florida history teachers questioned the philosophical underpinnings of the Florida Education Omnibus Bill (H.B. 7087e3) when it was signed by Florida Governor, Jeb Bush. It purports to include “the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement to the present.”28 Special provisions mandate the teaching of the history of the Holocaust, the history of African Americans, and Hispanic “contributions” to the United States. Conspicuously, the role and contribution of First People is absent and students are taught “the arguments in support of adopting our republican form of government.”29 The attacks on feminism, affirmative action, and multiculturalism are linked by the fear of a changing culture. Traditional ideas are no longer merely accepted as the eternal truth but instead are challenged by new perspectives of the status quo.30American history and government teachers community summarized the concerns that if students were required to memorize information that would create “little robots” and not responsible and active citizens. Since the history is deemed to be like politics which undergoes cyclic change, the first attempt to revise history was made in 1918 when Franklin Bobbitt, a professor of educational administration at the University of Chicago, published How to Make a Curriculum, a book in which he broke up recommended subject matter into lists of objectives, principles, and assumptions and recommended some pupil activities and experiences, all designed to develop the good citizen. Bobbitts standards were part of the efficiency movement in education at that time but never gained great credence in schools. Nevertheless, one can excuse Bobbitt for his presumptuousness, if one remembers that teacher education was largely not a profound intellectual exercise at that time. Following high school, most prospective teachers attended a normal school with few courses or preparation in disciplinary knowledge. Bobbitt offered some often neglected guidance in the organization and direction of knowledge presentation. African-Americans in Historic Perspective In order to understand the issue of inclusion of African-Americans in the American history one needs to briefly look at their present social construct and then trace back their development in history. African-Americans are a cultural group, and they are a part of that racial group known as African-American or “Black” American simply meaning members of the American society who descended from Africa. In terms of demographics African-Americans comprise approximately 12 percent of the total population in the United States. The majority live in the South but there are smaller communities still living in the north, central, northeastern, and western regions. Just like the white and other ethnic groups, African Americans are a very diverse group. The differences are visible in education, occupation, religion, generation/descent, gender, region, sexual orientation, and their residence in urban, rural or suburban areas. One reason why African-American population formed a cultural group is, obviously, common culture but a much more compelling reason appears to be political: when African-Americans won the right to vote they used it to their favor and emerged as a single voting bloc. In order to survive as a minority their only option was to live as a voting bloc which would eventually make political leaders, mainly white (some white supremacist) listen to their woes and extend them protection. However, one needs to look back in history to be able to understand the social construct of this important group and one finds four historical contexts in which African-Americans constructed themselves as a cultural group. These contexts are derived from four periods in American history which inform us of the situations in which it developed as a distinct cultural group. These periods are: 1. Forced immigration and slavery 2. Emancipation and institutionalized segregation 3. The great migration and development of urban ghettos 4. The civil rights movement Forced Immigration and Institutionalized Slave Labor The uprooting of Africans from the West coast and Central Africa and their subsequent life of slavery provides the fundamental reason for the formation of African-American culture. When huddled into slave ships, the Africans experienced horror together which made them bind together to survive the wrath. Therefore, it is safe to say that slave ships were the incubators of African-American unity across cultural lines. Slaves were selected from different places and historians identify some forty cultural groups in which they were divided before being thrown on to the slave ship. Tales of the traumatizing experience of the slave trade and "mid-passage," the name given to the voyage of the slave ships, have been retained in folklore to this day in certain areas of the South. The story of King Buzzard is one whose themes recall treachery, suffering, and loss of their African way of life when they were enslaved. Other stories, such as Gullah Joe and Old Man Rogan, tell of their painful life in slavery. The themes tell of feelings of loss for ones African family and homeland as well as the grief felt when members of ones slave family were physically abused and sold to other slave owners.31 By the end of the seventeenth century slave labor played an important role in the growth of agricultural economy producing such crops as tobacco, cotton, rice, sugar, hemp, and indigo. However, the system was one of chattel slavery because the slaves were socially defined as legal property and therefore had no legal rights like white members of the society. Under a set of laws called the Slave Codes, their owners mainly upper class landlords and traders could use physical coercion to control them entrenching white supremacy in the then American society. It is the social relationship of subjugation of one group of society by another group that made white supremacy look natural. One may question what would happen if, hypothetically, the roles were reversed and African-Americans were the ones to bring in European-Americans as slave? Would there not be black supremacy? But it’s the demographic construct of the American society in which European-Americans happened to be in a majority that the African-Americans were served the natures sleight of hand. Meier and Rudwick32 suggest: Whether one views Southern servitude as harsh or paternalistic, the older view that slavery virtually denuded Negroes of a culture of their own has now been discredited. Instead, it is universally recognized that, within the slave regime, blacks demonstrated a striking resiliency and found enough "social living space" to develop a community and subculture, which enabled them to maintain group identity and to cope with the oppressive institution in which they found themselves. Nowhere has this new perspective of historians produced more important results than in analyses of the slave family and slave religion. White culture and the masters actions played a role in shaping both, it is true, yet it is just as true that what emerged was as much or even more a product created by the slaves themselves. The prejudice and discriminatory treatment of the free black population came to surface as early as during slavery times and this was the context in which the status of the African-Americans as a minority was assured. Free blacks were those who had purchased their freedom, had run away from their owner, or whose owner had freed them. Emancipation and Institutionalized Segregation In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery but the fight against white supremacy had just begun. Martial law was imposed on the Southern states during the Reconstruction period. The Freedmans Bureau was established in 1865 by the Department of War with the responsibility to protect and provide for the welfare of the freedmen. The work of the Freedmans Bureau was thwarted, however, by other political and economic forces such as the Black Codes. The laws were "a system of social control that would be a substitute for slavery, fix the Negro in a subordinate place in the social order, and provide a manageable and inexpensive labor force.”33 In 1877, martial law was ended but racial restrictions on African-Americans increased and in 1896 segregation was legitimized by the Supreme Court. Legal segregation thus became the law of the land until it was overturned after decades of political battles in a 1954 Supreme Court ruling34. The Great Migration and Development of Urban Ghettoes During the First World War around one million African-Americans in the South migrated to the northern regions as a result of economic and social crises in the South, such as the boll weevil infestation of the cotton crop, floods in Alabama and Mississippi, and widespread lynching of blacks.35 In the North, immigration from other countries stopped because of the war resulting in a shortage of labor. The migrants did not fit in the urban melting pot for a number of reasons such as poverty coupled with animosity of the white workers who saw African-Americans as competitors in the labor market. Shortage of housing in the cities also pitted whites against African-Americans so that race riots erupting in Pennsylvania and Illinois resulted in the death of some forty African-Americans. Yet the ghettoes spread all over the cities bringing with it the ghetto culture developed in response to their segregation in schools, restaurants and so on and the safety of living together which gave rise to the development of Black church, mutual aid, clubs, schools and political organizations. The response to the so-called Black resilience was more restrictions, the revival of Ku Klux Klan but most significantly loss of job among the African-Americans because poverty bred anguish against the whites as African-Americans became weaker. According to Meier & Rudwick36 these conditions led to an extraordinary outbreak of race riots -- over twenty in that “Red Summer” of 1919. They ranged from Washington, DC, to Elaine, Arkansas, from Longview, Texas, to Chicago. The basic cause of most riots lay in white fears of economic competition and voting power of urban black migrants. The urbanization of African-Americans led to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement which is discussed infra. “Those who constructed the National History Standards (teachers, academic historians, and curriculum specialists) knew that they would have little effect in raising historical literacy across the country unless teachers were better trained in subject areas, rich curricular material were available in all the schools, and equity was established in the public schools where inequities are glaring.”37 Encyclopedia of African-Americans38 has created a profile of African-American movers and shakers who excelled in the American society despite the outcry of discrimination against them. Politically but less so economically, blacks have made substantial strides in the post-civil rights era. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, brought unprecedented support and leverage to blacks in politics. In 1989, Virginia became the first state in U.S. history to elect a black Governor, Douglas Wilder. In 1992 Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. There were 8,936 black office-holders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001 there were 484 mayors and 38 members of Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus serves as a political bloc in Congress for issues relating to African Americans. The appointment of blacks to high federal offices—including General Colin Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1989-1993, United States Secretary of State, 2001 - 2005; Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 2001-2004, confirmed Secretary of State in January, 2005; Ron Brown, United States Secretary of Commerce, 1993-1996; and Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas—also demonstrates the increasing visibility of blacks in the political arena. Economic progress for blacks has been less rapid. According to Forbes rich lists, Oprah Winfrey was the richest African American of the 20th century and has been the worlds only black billionaire since 2004. Not only is Winfrey the worlds only black billionaire but shes been the only black on the Forbes 400 nearly every year since 1995 (BET founder Bob Johnson briefly joined her on the list from 2001-2003 before his ex-wife acquired part of his fortune). With only one black wealthy enough to rank among Americas 400 richest people, blacks are currently only 0.25 percent of Americas economic elite, despite being 12 percent of the U.S. population. Is history all about glamour and victory? Gary Nash answers the question thus: It will make as much sense to deny young learners access to the darker chapters of our history as to banish most of the literature that we treasure as part of our cultural achievements. Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn, Ole Rolvaags Giants in the Earth, John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath, Richard Wrights Native Son, Toni Morrisons Beloved, William Faulkers Absalom, Absalom, F. Scott Momadays House Made of Dawn, and indeed nearly the entire American literary library will have to be put off-limits for youngsters if the test of their worth is measured in terms of grimness and gloominess. Likewise, we will need to hide away the works of art produced by the American regionalist painters of the 1930s: Ben Shawn, Grant Wood, Georgia OKeeffe, and others who celebrated the endurance and strength of everyday heroes and common landscapes through bleak lenses of life (and yet with a fondness for the people who endured it). Literature and art are about triumph and tragedy, lightness and darkness, cowardice and heroism, accomplishment and failure, nobility and treachery. So is history. In a society stratified along racial and economic lines "the absence of [state] standards guarantees that educational opportunities for students will be stratified according to where one lives and what one’s background is.39 This bring us to examine why is it important for African-Americans to be given an equal share in the American story even if they are a minority in terms of their contribution to the economy, art and other social sectors. Demographically, African-Americans are around 12 percent of the American population, yet the National History Standards recommends equal level of inclusion? Is that justified? For sure, history moulds the past and sets the future direction. Let’s presume that the history of a nation has similar characteristics as the history of an individual as indeed the British thinker Herbert Spencer believes that the state is like a human body. The growth of an individuals personality traits, his attitudes towards society and his behavior are determined by his ancestral background and his own past. For example, a young man coming from a military family background will be different from a young man with an artistic background. The training these two men received during their childhood and adolescence and the family value systems instilled by their families definitely set them apart but a major role is played by the background, the history of the individual. In another example, a person with a successful family background is more likely to excel in life than a person with a poor background. At the same time, two persons with similar background are likely to be similar and so is their future going to be. A good past makes one proud and a bad past makes one ashamed. Having said that let us presume that a person who had been told he belonged to a military background suddenly comes to know that in fact his ancestors were musicians. Will his personality change over a period of time? One is convinced that it will change for the simple reason that this revelation will impact on his thought process which in turn will impact on his action and indeed future direction in life. By extrapolation it may be asserted that the cultural difference between African-Americans and European Americans exists only because of their social status set by the history and their individual personality which is made up of what he or she has achieved in their own personal life, what have their forefathers achieved in their lives and how was their community viewed by history. In the same vein, the European-Americans role in history has been of high achievers and a superior race which makes them proud and that pride spurs them on in present life and since they feel a moral obligation to maintain the pride of their race they work hard to ensure that the future is even better, for the future generation. On the other hand, the African-Americans carry the stigma of having entered the American story as slaves whose job it was to serve the European masters and who were an inferior race makes them feel bad and in fact guilty which dampens their spirits and they are unable to cut out a better future for themselves. At the community level since African-Americans are a minority and in a democracy which upholds the "tyranny of the majority," they are not allowed to excel. But if the history is revised to exclude the negative characterization of the African-Americans and increase their participation so that the overall impact of history on the minds of an African-American student is a positive one. He or she suddenly comes to know that his ancestors performed poorly in their lives because of the suppression regime imposed on them by the larger communities and that in fact they were respectable free individuals before they were enslaved by Europeans and brought to American in chains to serve them. This is likely to impact positively on the African-American students hence they will shed the guilt they have been carrying for generations and will feel proud about themselves. If a community that has been largely a liability over the society in terms of poor economic contribution and is seen as no more than a social burden, suddenly shines up and is turned into an asset by simply telling them the historic truth, this will only help the nations present state of the society and indeed ensure a better future. We know that Guion Bluford was the first African-American astronaut or that Garrett Morgan invented the traffic light. For historians this may be trivial information but according to Barton & Levstik, students are expected to identify with them—for African-American students, so they can see members of their own ethnic group as active participants in the nations history, and for other students, so that they can see the United States as a multicultural society in which everyone can contribute to the nations progress.40 Thus, the element of remembrance takes historical precedence over other political tools of racial harmony such as dismantling of apartheid and affirmative action which have resulted, unfortunately, in a small minority in the African American community gaining wealth, fame and other luxuries of life and the vast majority remaining unaffected—suffering the same fate as before these actions were taken and this is not restricted to the United States but “whether in newly democratic nation-states such as South Africa, African nation-states that have had formal independence for over thirty years, advanced industrial societies such as the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany, or historically independent states of the Caribbean and Latin America, youth who are noticeably of African descent fare worse than their lighter-skinned counterparts.”41 Is history of a nation an amalgamation of the history of its members? Works Cited Appleby, Joyce, Controversy Over The National History Standards, OAH Magazine of History, Organization of American Historians, Spring, 1995 Barton, Keith C., and Linda S. Levstik, Teaching History for the Common Good. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. Beichman, Arnold. "A Lot of Standards, but Little Truth." The Washington Times 23 July 1997: 17. Berry, Mary Frances. "Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History." The Historian 66.3 (2004): 582+. Bienstock, Barry W. "Everything Old Is New Again: Social History, the National History Standards and the Crisis in the Teaching of High School American History." Journal of Social History 29.Suppl. (1995): Bond, Bradley G. Mississippi: A Documentary History. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Cheney, Lynne, The End of History, Wall Street Journal, October 20, 1994 Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Questia. 25 Sept. 2006 Craig, Bruce, (2006) New Florida Law Tightens Control Over History in Schools, History News Network Fonte, John, and Joseph E. Fallon. We the Peoples: The Multiculturalist Agenda Is Shattering the American Identity." National Review 25 Mar. 1996: 47+. Hutchinson, Janis Faye, ed. Cultural Portrayals of African Americans: Creating an Ethnic/Racial Identity. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1997. Joan W. Scott, "History in Crisis? The Others Side of the Story," American Historical Review 94 (1989): 690 Kaye, Harvey, Whose history is it? - National Standards for History, Monthly Review, November, 1996. Kosar, Kevin, Failing Grades: The Federal Politics of Education Standards, Lynne Rienner Publishers, (2005) Lee, John K. "Ideology and the Web." Social Education 66.3 (2002): 161+. Meier, August & Rudwick, Elliott, From Plantation to Ghetto, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1976 Nash, Gary B. "The History Standards Controversy and Social History." Journal of Social History 29.Suppl. (1995): 39+. Nash, Gary B. "The National History Standards and George Washington." Social Studies 88.4 (1997): 159-162. Nash, Gary B., Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) Naylor, Larry L., ed. Cultural Diversity in the United States. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1997. Nelson, Murry R. "Are Teachers Stupid?--Setting and Meeting Standards in Social Studies." Social Studies 89.2 (1998): 66-70. Singer, Alan J. Social Studies for Secondary Schools: Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1997. Stotsky, Sandra, ed. Whats at Stake in the K-12 Standards Wars: A Primer for Educational Policy Makers. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Stuckey, Sterling, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America, Oxford University Press, 1987 Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. West, Woody. "Take Their Education Standards - Please." Insight on the News 24 Feb. 1997: 48. Wilson, John K. The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. Wineburg, Sam. "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts." Phi Delta Kappan 80.7 (1999): 488. Read More