One way to measure the fears of people in power is by the intensity of their quest for certainty and control over knowledge.
By that standard, the members of the Florida Legislature marked themselves as the folks most terrified of history in the United States when last month they took bold action to become the first state to outlaw historical interpretation in public schools. In other words, Florida has officially replaced the study of history with the imposition of dogma and effectively outlawed critical thinking.
Although U.S. students are typically taught a sanitized version of history in which the inherent superiority and benevolence of the United States is rarely challenged, the social and political changes unleashed in the 1960s have opened up some space for a more honest accounting of our past. But even these few small steps taken by some teachers toward collective critical self-reflection are too much for many Americans to bear.
So, as part of an education bill signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida has declared that "American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed." That factual history, the law states, shall be viewed as "knowable, teachable and testable."
Florida's lawmakers are not only prescribing a specific view of U.S. history that must be taught (my favorite among the specific commands in the law is the one about instructing students on "the nature and importance of free enterprise to the United States economy"), but are trying to legislate out of existence any ideas to the contrary. They are not just saying that their history is the best history, but that it is beyond interpretation. In fact, the law attempts to suppress discussion of the very idea that history is interpretation.
The fundamental fallacy of the law is in the underlying assumption that "factual" and "constructed" are mutually exclusive in the study of history. There certainly are many facts about history that are widely, and sometimes even unanimously, agreed upon. But how we arrange those facts into a narrative to describe and explain history is clearly a construction, an interpretation. That's the task of historians -- to assess factual assertions about the past, weave them together in a coherent narrative, and construct an explanation of how and why things happened.
For example, it's a fact that Europeans began coming in significant numbers to North America in the 17th century. Were they peaceful settlers or aggressive invaders? That's interpretation, a construction of the facts into a narrative with an argument for one particular way to understand those facts.
It's also a fact that once those Europeans came, the indigenous people died in large numbers. Was that an act of genocide? Whatever one's answer, it will be an interpretation, a construction of the facts to support or reject that conclusion.
In contemporary history, has U.S. intervention in the Middle East been aimed at supporting democracy or controlling the region's crucial energy resources? Would anyone in a free society want students to be taught that there is only one way to construct an answer to that question?
Speaking of contemporary history, what about the fact that before the 2000 presidential election, Florida's Republican secretary of state removed 57,700 names from the voter rolls, supposedly because they were convicted felons and not eligible to vote. It's a fact that at least 90 percent were not criminals -- but were African American. It's a fact that black people vote overwhelmingly Democratic. What conclusion will historians construct from those facts about how and why that happened?
In other words, history is always constructed, no matter how much Florida's elected representatives might resist the notion. The real question is: How effectively can one defend one's construction? If Florida legislators felt the need to write a law to eliminate the possibility of that question even being asked, perhaps it says something about their faith in their own view and ability to defend it.
One of the bedrock claims of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment -- two movements that, to date, have not been repealed by the Florida Legislature -- is that no interpretation or theory is beyond challenge. The evidence and logic on which all knowledge claims are based must be transparent, open to examination. We must be able to understand and critique the basis for any particular construction of knowledge, which requires that we understand how knowledge is constructed.
Except in Florida.
But as tempting as it is to ridicule, we should not spend too much time poking fun at this one state, because the law represents a yearning one can find across the United States. Americans look out at a wider world in which more and more people reject the idea of the United States as always right, always better, always moral. As the gap between how Americans see themselves and how the world sees us grows, the instinct for many is to eliminate intellectual challenges at home: "We can't control what the rest of the world thinks, but we can make sure our kids aren't exposed to such nonsense."
The irony is that such a law is precisely what one would expect in a totalitarian society, where governments claim the right to declare certain things to be true, no matter what the debates over evidence and interpretation. The preferred adjective in the United States for this is "Stalinist," a system to which U.S. policymakers were opposed during the Cold War. At least, that's what I learned in history class.
People assume that these kinds of buffoonish actions are rooted in the arrogance and ignorance of Americans, and there certainly are excesses of both in the United States.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice, will be published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen's articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.
Darn if they haven't stepped on my last one good nerve!
The Bushes' iron grip knows no bounds. They also move as slow as snails in instituting their iron grip--lest they have a full fledged revolution confronting them and their power grabs.
Little by little, drop by drop, they are ensnaring this country in a dictatorship the likes of which this country never thought would be possible on its soil.
In my mind I wonder what Doris Kearns Goodwin's assessment of this latest Jeb Bush snuffing out of freedom and democracy might be. I generally view Ms. Kearns-Goodwin's position as being one in support of the Bushes and their agenda.
(If this paragraph seems muddled, it is because I am writing it right after reading your article and, like all things coming from the Bushes, it has blown my critical thinking to pieces. It will take me a while to regain composure of my own rational processes and clear thinking. As a friend of mine likes to say, "Darn if the Bushes haven't stepped on my last one good nerve!")
teresa simón-noble
by
teresa simon-noble (56 articles, 17 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 81 comments)
on Monday, July 17, 2006 at 9:53:55 AM
I see this mostly as a way to prevent the Bush Dynasty from bearing one of the many stains it ought to, were this a reason-based culture. Jeb knows he will be running as vice president, and he knows he will be president one day. Even if that isn't the case, we know he (or any of the Bush klan) don't want anyone looking back and deciding that Jeb helped set this path in motion by aiding his brother in the "election" that wrongfully put Bush in the White House. The Bushes don't want anyone interfering with their rule, their reputation, or their reach. I mean, nobody cared last year about whether or not anyone questioned history. Is it reallllllly the globalization of our knowledge that spurred this? Or the crooked, crooked men in power who HATE reason and the free dispersal of information, as well as the open discussion that democracy entails. Because these men hate democracy.
Either way, however you stack up Jeb's motives, it's a disgusting act, one that shames America...well. Not really. It's hard to raise the bar on fake elections, manipulated mass media, and government sanctioned torture. I guess Florida is not shaming anything except a quaint memory of what the "USA" once meant....and even that's not true. The Europeans and the USA they formed have been for the same things since the "USA" began. Might, Arrogance, Ignorance of Anything Non-American, Land-Hunger, Greed, Wars of Choice and Subsequent Revisionist Origins, Disrespect for Other Cultures, Guns, Racism, and Personal Growth/Freedom....for the Rich and the White. (Maybe the US has stood for a few other things along the way, I may have missed something. I know we brought Torture into the act recently.)
Putting your kids in public schools this day and age is like sending them to Slave Camp. Teach them yourself, your own truths, and the real history of the world. It is a slow motion horror movie where Greed towers over the hearts of men like Godzilla on acid. The ending remains to be written.
by
Nezua (42 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 93 comments)
on Monday, July 17, 2006 at 10:20:15 AM
I didn't worry that I sent my children to public school -- it's where you meet the best (that is most diverse) class of people as opposed to private school where you meet the "best" (that is the rich and white) class of people or at home where you only meet ONE class of people (yours).
It's just that I tought my children to QUESTION AUTHORITY (even my own) and to THINK CRITICALLY about EVERYTHING and ANYTHING they were ever told. Oh yea, and I probably snuck in some distrust of the government, love of animals, and the golden rules (both the one about doing unto others and the one about "the one with the gold makes the rules").
With those tools, all the public schools could provide was DATA TO BE ANALYZED and not brainwashing.
They turned out OK.
This new law in Florida wouldn't be so bad, except that the right-wing religious whackos have taken over so many of the local school boards (a strategy they started some 20 years ago) and even many of the textbook advisory committees.
We of the "progressive and critical thinking" skills abandoned local government a few decades ago and they (the right wing zealots) were smart enough to take it over. Now, the only way to get them out might be by physical force.
Charlie L
Portland, OR
by
Charlie L (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 638 comments)
on Monday, July 17, 2006 at 2:24:51 PM
