John
Stuart Mill wrote, “A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a Nationality if they
are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between
them and any others.” These common
sympathies induce people to cooperate with each other more willingly than with
foreigners. He gave several
possible causes for this affinity.
Among them are race, decent, common language or religion and
geographical limits. He stated that the strongest of all these causes is the
possession of a national history.
A knowledge of a national history should result in a common sense of
community, common “recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure
and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past.”
A
basic understanding of the history of one’s nation is essential for the
continuation of a society.
It is what binds a people together. Our knowledge of the past forms a large part of our
identity. This knowledge provides
a framework for interpreting events that take place in the present. A knowledge of past mistakes or
successes can be an invaluable tool for planning for the future. Bertrand Russell described the importance
of the study of the past in his essay On History:
Of all the studies by which
men acquire citizenship of the intellectual commonwealth, no single one is so
indispensable as the study of the past.
A knowledge of history is capable of giving to statesmanship, and our
daily thoughts, a breadth and scope unattainable by those whose view is limited
to the present.
The
importance of history has been commented on since ancient times. The Roman orator Cicero remarked,
"He who is ignorant of what happens before his birth is always a
child." A more modern comment
on the importance of a knowledge of the past was provided by columnist Ann
Coulter who stated, "If history always begins this morning, the world holds exciting
surprises around every corner."
Jeffrey Hart explained that, "History is to a civilization what personal memory is to an individual: an
essential part of identity and a source of meaning." C.S. Lewis commented, "men without a past are forever children, easily manipulated and
enslaved."
Yet
the commitment to the study of history is weak in our institutions of higher
learning. Harvard historian David
Donald provided an example in a 1977 article in the New York Times entitled,
"Our Irrelevant History."
Donald claimed, "The ‘lessons’ taught by the American past are today not merely
irrelevant but dangerous. . . . perhaps my most useful function would be to
disenthrall (students) from the spell of history, to help them see the
irrelevance of the past, . . .
(To) remind them to what a limited extent humans control their own
destiny." Donald’s view of history is not unique. It appears to be shared by a large
section of the academic community. Worse than the neglect of history is the
emphasis placed on the negative aspects of the nation’s history.
Richard
Bernstein described in his book, Dictatorship
of Virtue, what he learned at the 1987 convention of the American
Historical Association. "The unvarying underlying themes were the repressiveness inherent in
American life and the sufferings of groups claiming to be victims of that
repressiveness. ... The history of
the United States was the history of suffering for all but the white
establishment."
Commentator Tammy
Bruce has remarked that, "the purging of history courses is no accident." The animus toward
the teaching of history goes back at least as far as the Enlightenment. Bertrand Barere, a member of the French
revolutionary Committee of Public Safety, commented, "All memories of
history, all prejudices resulting from community of interest and of origin, all
must be renewed in France; we wish only to date from to-day." A knowledge of history fosters
prejudices that stand in the way of the universal community desired by the progressives. Author Milans Kundera wrote in his
novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, "You begin to liquidate a people by taking away its memory. You destroy its books, its culture, its
history. And then others write
other books for it, give another culture to it, invent another history for
it. Then the people slowly begins
to forget what it is and what it was." Alexander Solzhenitzyn has stated, "To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots." Tammy Bruce asserted, "The first step for the Intellectual Elite is to unmake and then
remake history itself. Smear the
Founding Fathers, cast patriotism as jingoistic, and classify the United States
as a genocidal nation bent on terrorism." This is also the conclusion of Jim Nelson Black who has
asserted, "The game plan of the deconstructionists in the universities has been to eradicate the
past and indoctrinate the young men and women of this nation with a new view of
society and a radical political ideology.
They know a great deal more about Madonna, Ice-T, and the 2 Live Crew
than Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms."
This
has resulted in a reduced emphasis on history and the near elimination of what
might be described as traditional history. One example is the New Jersey Department of Education omitting America’s founding fathers, including
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, from the revised
version of the state’s history standards. One justification for this omission is that the
founding fathers, were "racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, Eurocentric
bigots."
What
are the consequences of this new interpretation of history? The appalling ignorance of what might
be called traditional history has been amply documented by several
commentators. A study by Prof. Judith Remy Leder of 100 students at California State University
at Fullerton revealed that fewer than half could identify either Geoffrey
Chaucer or Dante Alighieri, and 90 per cent could not identify Alexander
Hamilton. A study sponsored by the
National Endowment for the Humanities of a representative national sample of 7,812
17-year-olds found that less than a third could place the Civil War in its
correct half-century and that more than a fifth thought the radio and telephone
had been invented since 1950. This
caused the study’s co-author, Chester E. Finn Jr., to remark, "We're
raising a generation of historical and literary incompetents." A 2001 Colonial Williamsburg Foundation study found that a quarter of American teenagers
didn't know what Independence Day is supposed to celebrate.19 A National Assessment of Educational Progress in
History survey found that
57 percent of our high school seniors lack a basic understanding of American
history.
According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni: "As we move forward into the 21st century,
our future leaders are graduating with an alarming ignorance of their heritage
- a kind of collective amnesia - and a profound historical illiteracy which
bodes ill for the future of the republic."
As
if to emphasize this point, in 1995 vice-president Al Gore commented that the
national motto of the United States, "E pluribus Unum," was
translated as "Out of one, many" in a speech praising
multiculturalism. Vice
President Joe Biden claimed, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D.
Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the
princes of greed.” Senator Chuck
Schumer, a member of the Judiciary Committee stated, "you know, we have three branches of
government: we have a House, the Senate, we have a President, and all three of
us are going to have to come together and give some.”
