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Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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capricorn152244
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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Harry Marks wrote:
capricorn152244 wrote:3. History textbooks are terrible.
Discussion Questions for the Introduction:
1. Do you agree with any of Loewen's claims in the introduction? Did you have experiences in high school (or college) that run counter to his claims?
No, not really. I was trying to think (in part because it is possible I will be a history teacher next year) how to do better. I think a grand narrative about democracy and rights would open lots of interesting discussions. Why people in the minority need to be protected from the majority, and what that might imply for protecting the rich from redistribution of income as well as for protecting races and religions from bigotry.

I think there is too little understanding of economic forces, but they were raised for us in connection with the Civil War and why the North won.

Loewen's big point (IMO) about repressing feelings of those whose groups have been victimized was spot on. This business of avoiding discussion of awkward facts is an ancestor of our post-truth approach to politics today.
Yes, I have to agree, my understanding of economic forces from high school, and even college history classes was woefully lacking owing to absence of information. Now I feel like I'm playing catchup going through learning economics on my own and seeing the very large, very powerful lines economics draws through history. I really, really wish someone had told me all of this when I was in high school; it makes understanding history and its succession of events quite a bit easier for me.

I agree too with the repression of victimised groups' feelings, and moreover how our current state of post-truth politics and even culture can be traced to failing to recognise or care about the people around us.

Currently I struggle with how we can get back to a place where the truth actually matters, although the past few years in the US have been so bad I begin to question if it ever was that way or if that was just another delusion of mine about the kind of country the US is. To my mind, people simply caring about the truth rather than what feeds their confirmation bias would be a good start, but I don't know if that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Do any of you see a good way to working toward a post-post-truth society (if you will forgive the awkwardness of such a phrase)?
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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DWill wrote:I tend to think that little emphasis should be placed on "grand sweeps," whether from conservative or liberal sides. Expose students to historical materials; de-stress interpretation at this stage.
DWill, you ignorant slut. Interpretation is "meaning" and "relevance." However, I think a strong case could be made for letting students construct opposing interpretations. "Wilson was enlightened and ahead of his time on collective security, even if he was socially reactionary." vs. "Wilson was arrogant and obsessed with his own righteousness rather than working with the forces acting in history," or some such contrast. Neither should be endorsed by the teacher, and that way they begin to learn that there are many ways to interpret a set of facts.
DWill wrote:I also have enjoyed the Big History approaches of Jared Diamond and Noah Yuval Harari.
Ha! See, interpretation is wonderful. Actually, I am thinking I also enjoy finding flaws in those "big history" sweeping narratives. Though often that amounts to finding the exceptions that prove (i.e. "probe") the rule.
DWill wrote: The gain, if any, would have to relate to national heritage. The textbooks aim to give students a sense of our heritage, and there seems to be little sense if the heritage is not presented as positive.
Yes, I suppose, some positive heritage is a valuable resource, for each of us as well as for the mutual commitments that hold us together. I appreciate the Howard Zinn-ish critiques of the heritage narratives, but I don't think the critique is very valuable if you don't understand the basis for the claims of the patriotic view.
DWill wrote:I'd like to see textbooks draw no general conclusions about any figure, not attempting to reconcile contradictions, because usually they can't be reconciled.
I see. This is perhaps the basis of your view that I objected to above. I agree with you up to a point. Because there are many things going on at once, no single fact or incident represents confirmation or disconfirmation of a general tendency.

For us economists, the test of a good theory is ability to predict. If one predicts significantly better than others, or even than a null hypothesis, then you give it a lot of respect. But no prediction is anywhere near certain, at least in economics.
DWill wrote: I can see that it would be rewarding for students to explore the forces and pressures that existed to make Wilson think a suspension of basic constitutional rights was needed. Emphasis being as much on these forces as on Wilson himself as leaning toward tyranny.
Yes, I think this is exactly right. Ability to understand the forces at work, and to put oneself into the mindset of the various players, is a vital skill for critical thinking, about history but also about human interaction going forward.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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capricorn152244 wrote: Yes, I have to agree, my understanding of economic forces from high school, and even college history classes was woefully lacking owing to absence of information. Now I feel like I'm playing catchup going through learning economics on my own and seeing the very large, very powerful lines economics draws through history. I really, really wish someone had told me all of this when I was in high school; it makes understanding history and its succession of events quite a bit easier for me.
Yes, one good example is the Progressive movement in the farm states in the late 19th century. The role of an inelastic currency, and what deflation does to debt, the enormous sloughing of workers to go to cities, yet at the same time the general improvement in the lot of farmers, all play into understanding William Jennings Bryan and, for that matter, the Roosevelt-Taft-Rockefeller saga.

To understand why the explosive growth of railroads in the North mattered so much to the Civil War, it isn't enough to know how much quicker the troops could be moved. Students would have much more perspective if they knew that incomes of Iowa farmers multiplied by four to ten times in the 1840s when they could shift from raising grain, which could last the slow trip to Eastern markets, to raising cattle, which needed quick shipment but sold for much more money. Quadrupling income is a dramatic change.
capricorn152244 wrote:Currently I struggle with how we can get back to a place where the truth actually matters, although the past few years in the US have been so bad I begin to question if it ever was that way or if that was just another delusion of mine about the kind of country the US is. To my mind, people simply caring about the truth rather than what feeds their confirmation bias would be a good start, but I don't know if that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Do any of you see a good way to working toward a post-post-truth society (if you will forgive the awkwardness of such a phrase)?
I think about it a lot, but I fear I don't arrive at much in the way of answers. It helped me to recently read Tara Westover's memoir of growing up in survivalist Idaho, "Educated." The forces opposing realism and honesty are heavily intertwined with gender roles and the poor, pitiful male ego.

I might even say the solution (if one exists) is likely to follow from men learning to accept lower status. "Promise me son, not to do the things I done. Walk away from trouble when you can. It don't mean you're weak if you turn the other cheek. You don't have to fight to be a man."
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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With hindsight we know that Wilson’s interventions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua set the stage for the dictators Batista, Trujillo, the Duvaliers, and the Somozas, whose legacies still reverberate.
Wow, that is a lot for our hero to live down! :chatsmilies_com_92: Let's forget that lesson so we can repeat it yet again as soon as possible!

As to Wilson's racism, I expect it comes much more from the culture rather than him setting an example. The KKK made a strong resurgence right around that time including a huge march in Washington DC. Large crowds lined the streets, not to taunt and shout them down, but to watch and cheer! Talk to the average citizen at the time and I expect they'd sound similar to modern neo-nazis.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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Harry Marks wrote:DWill, you ignorant slut. Interpretation is "meaning" and "relevance." However, I think a strong case could be made for letting students construct opposing interpretations. "Wilson was enlightened and ahead of his time on collective security, even if he was socially reactionary." vs. "Wilson was arrogant and obsessed with his own righteousness rather than working with the forces acting in history," or some such contrast. Neither should be endorsed by the teacher, and that way they begin to learn that there are many ways to interpret a set of facts.
Well pardon my sluttishness, Chevy Chase! You're the one who might be wading into history teaching, not me, and I think that's a good thing. I might go nuts with internal debating before I could ever broker this subject with 25 adolescents. Needing to take into account the differences between freshmen and seniors, intellectually, plus the variations of learning styles, literacy, and analytic ability within a grade--I wish you luck and success if you do it. History seems the most difficult of subjects to me. I can understand why teachers want to make it rather cut-and-dried, just the facts, ma'am. I'm not set against that approach entirely, either. How does anyone get into her head the basic outline of what happened, so that she doesn't end up completely clueless telling Jay Leno that Churchill was a great Civil War general?
Harry Marks wrote:
DWill wrote:I also have enjoyed the Big History approaches of Jared Diamond and Noah Yuval Harari.
Ha! See, interpretation is wonderful. Actually, I am thinking I also enjoy finding flaws in those "big history" sweeping narratives. Though often that amounts to finding the exceptions that prove (i.e. "probe") the rule.
Now I have to wriggle out of an inconsistency (gulp). Big History is the biggest sweeper of all. With my fuzzy use of the word 'interpretation' I think I had in mind moral interpretation, which BH seems to avoid pretty well since it hardly mentions individuals at all and floats above moral judgment.
Harry Marks wrote:
DWill wrote: The gain, if any, would have to relate to national heritage. The textbooks aim to give students a sense of our heritage, and there seems to be little sense if the heritage is not presented as positive.
Yes, I suppose, some positive heritage is a valuable resource, for each of us as well as for the mutual commitments that hold us together. I appreciate the Howard Zinn-ish critiques of the heritage narratives, but I don't think the critique is very valuable if you don't understand the basis for the claims of the patriotic view.
Another way of looking at the heritage question would be to, for example, speak of our treatment of native peoples as much a part of our heritage as our great Declaration. That would hurt, but maybe it should. What troubled me most about Zinn was the lack of context, the implication that America's flaws were unusual aberrations in societies and showed America as being worse by comparison. History should be taught comparatively. There, I've got something to stand on (for now).
Harry Marks wrote:
DWill wrote:I'd like to see textbooks draw no general conclusions about any figure, not attempting to reconcile contradictions, because usually they can't be reconciled.
I see. This is perhaps the basis of your view that I objected to above. I agree with you up to a point. Because there are many things going on at once, no single fact or incident represents confirmation or disconfirmation of a general tendency.
How about trying on this as a distinction to guide teaching: is history class to be about historiography or history? I'm thinking that in a basic sense historiography increases with the age and intellectual ability of the students. Earlier on it is mostly about what we think we know of the facts.
Harry Marks wrote:
DWill wrote: I can see that it would be rewarding for students to explore the forces and pressures that existed to make Wilson think a suspension of basic constitutional rights was needed. Emphasis being as much on these forces as on Wilson himself as leaning toward tyranny.
Yes, I think this is exactly right. Ability to understand the forces at work, and to put oneself into the mindset of the various players, is a vital skill for critical thinking, about history but also about human interaction going forward.
Perhaps related to this point, history is going to make students have strong feelings of sympathy or antipathy and of side-taking. Those are signs of engagement, at least. How does a teacher avoid stifling these feelings while encouraging students to go deeper, where they might find reasons to acknowledge feelings others have about the matter? I was thinking about the Southern argument that the CW was about state rights, not slavery. I'm pretty sure that slavery was the key point of conflict, but was state rights just something the South cooked up for cover? I don't think that is true, either. All of us need to be willing to take an empathetic look at the other side.

Edit: In the first line of the post, I should have said, of course., "Dan Aykroyd." So does historical error creep in.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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DWill wrote:I was thinking about the Southern argument that the CW was about state rights, not slavery. I'm pretty sure that slavery was the key point of conflict, but was state rights just something the South cooked up for cover? I don't think that is true, either. All of us need to be willing to take an empathetic look at the other side.
  • What were the state rights that Southerners were defending against Northern aggression? The right to own slaves.
  • Southerners also claimed they were defending their economy against Northern aggression. What parts of their economy needed to be defended militarily? The immense capital value of slave ownership and the profits that produced.
  • Southerners further claimed (and some still do) that they were just defending their "heritage." Although the Southern heritage certainly is significant, what part of it required the incalculable loss in blood and treasure to defend? (Insert your answer here.)
  • Do you see a pattern behind these euphemisms "cooked up for cover?"
  • We must understand history, but we do not necessarily have to consider all sides of every situation with empathy.
If you have doubts whether the Civil War was about slavery, here's a 5 minute video explainer. It's a presentation by Col. Ty Seidule, head of the department of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. (I'm sure you'll agree from that position, as an authority on US military history, he should know what he's talking about.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcy7qV-BGF4
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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LanDroid wrote:
DWill wrote:I was thinking about the Southern argument that the CW was about state rights, not slavery. I'm pretty sure that slavery was the key point of conflict, but was state rights just something the South cooked up for cover? I don't think that is true, either. All of us need to be willing to take an empathetic look at the other side.
  • What were the state rights that Southerners were defending against Northern aggression? The right to own slaves.
  • Southerners also claimed they were defending their economy against Northern aggression. What parts of their economy needed to be defended militarily? The immense capital value of slave ownership and the profits that produced.
  • Southerners further claimed (and some still do) that they were just defending their "heritage." Although the Southern heritage certainly is significant, what part of it required the incalculable loss in blood and treasure to defend? (Insert your answer here.)
  • Do you see a pattern behind these euphemisms "cooked up for cover?"
  • We must understand history, but we do not necessarily have to consider all sides of every situation with empathy.
If you have doubts whether the Civil War was about slavery, here's a 5 minute video explainer. It's a presentation by Col. Ty Seidule, head of the department of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. (I'm sure you'll agree from that position, as an authority on US military history, he should know what he's talking about.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?vCW =pcy7qV-BGF4
What I have doubts about is that you can say it was this way or that way, exclusively, for the South, meaning for everyone in the South; and that there was no history about state rights previous to its discussion immediately before the war. Of course state rights had a history, going back at least as far as the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton, Federalist and Republican. State rights were not invoked only regarding the issue of slavery. Aren't we supposed to be studying history for some of the nuances, rather than insisting only on summary judgments? In any event, for me if we tease out the nuance history is a lot more interesting.

I have no doubt that the South seceded finally because of the threat to its peculiar institution. It was by far the most significant state rights issue for the wealthy political class of the south.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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I haven't gotten to the Civil War chapter of the book, and I agree that slavery was the key issue. But couldn't you also point to tariffs that were protecting industries of the North, when the South relied on raw material production and so they were bearing the cost of the tariffs? And obviously protecting slavery was part of protecting the Southern economy.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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Of course, to shoot for balance you also have to consider the complicity of the North in slavery and the racism of the North.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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DWill wrote:What I have doubts about is that you can say it was this way or that way, exclusively, for the South, meaning for everyone in the South; and that there was no history about state rights previous to its discussion immediately before the war. Of course state rights had a history, going back at least as far as the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton, Federalist and Republican. State rights were not invoked only regarding the issue of slavery. Aren't we supposed to be studying history for some of the nuances, rather than insisting only on summary judgments? In any event, for me if we tease out the nuance history is a lot more interesting.
I don't know where you got that, I didn't say anything like it. Of course states rights controversies go back to the beginning. As I recall the Constitution strengthened the federal government because the states were so strong under the articles of confederation that not much got done. Sounds like we are actually in agreement on states rights...
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