Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of yelling about 'history' these days. People want to pull statues down, for the perfectly sound reason that the people being honoured by the statues weren't exactly paragons of virtue. 'They are trying to erase history!'

One Saturday, we went to see what history looked like in West Freedom, PA¹.

CIVIL WAR EXPERIENCE

Sponsored by

Perry Township Historical Society

Bring a Chair and Spend the Day with History!!

'Preserving History, Not Burying It'

DISTANCING IS RECOMMENDED

Costumed reenactors demonstrated Civil War fashions, rifles, medical practices, quilting, etc. One reenactor told the story of Andersonville Prison Camp (at least one man from West Freedom died there). Another pretended to be a 'slave-catcher' from down South, and told the story of the Underground Railroad. Here's a picture of a 'station' in nearby Brookville, in Jefferson County.

Visitors had a lovely time, and ate fried chicken or hot dogs while chatting about what they'd learned and catching up with the neighbours. West Freedom is next to Parker, which at population 840 is the smallest city in the US. It's a neighbourly place.

I particularly enjoyed the rifle-vs-musket demonstration.

I was impressed with the quick musket loading. An uncle of mine owned a real muzzle-loading rifle from the Civil War (all of my ancestors were Confederates), and he loaded and fired it for us once. He took about an hour to do it, because…you know, valuable antique. Then he fired it into the holler across the road, slightly annoying a groundhog down there, which ambled off. Bill could have hit the groundhog if he'd wanted to – he was a crack shot, like all the brothers – but he had no desire for groundhog for dinner. Besides, his wife Betty would have killed him. Those old guns have more range than you'd think, though.

What do people mean when they complain about the way 'history' is taught? Not what historians usually think. I spent a decade or so writing historical education stuff, so I know. When they told us they wanted better history education, real history education, my boss, a university professor, designed a beautiful US history course. It was a cracker, as Mark Twain would have said. I came up with interactive 'land use' features where students could design their own colonial farms in the Northeast, Middle Atlantic, plantation, and backcountry colonies. Then I re-purposed the program from 'land use' to 'land misuse' and demonstrated Sherman's March to the Sea. We taught them how to analyse primary sources. We went down all the highways and byways of the American journey, indepth and unbiased…

The schoolteachers hated it.

'This is a great college course,' they complained. 'But you can't throw all that at high school students!' They had a point.

When you tell a historian, 'Teach real history!', she/he hears, 'Teach them to think like a historian.' They wax enthusiastic about primary sources, contingency moments, multiple causation…it's a mad, wonderful world out there, and the human saga paints a broad canvas. Phooey, says the school board. Double phooey, say the politicians. What the heck? Yell the parents.

Nobody's really interested in history. History is an academic discipline, a science of studying the past. They don't want it. You can't fill ballot boxes with an academic discipline. There is no emotional satisfaction in parsing primary sources.

What these people mean when they say 'history' is, 'Give us a communal narrative that fosters a sense of continuity and belonging.'

That's why we're in a crisis these days. It's not that school history textbooks from Maine to California are full of half-truths and propaganda. Of course they are. Just like the textbooks in the UK, Germany, Austria, South Africa, Israel, Thailand, and any other country that prints textbooks. History books for schools have always been about internalising a national narrative which allows students to take pride in their ancestors and feel hopeful about their future as a group.

In other words, the story needs to say, 'We've always been the good guys.' Which, of course, will be a lie, because….humans.

That's what people want when they clamour for 'real history'. A story that emphasises the civic virtues they believe in, accentuates the positive, and presents the negative as an obstacle overcome. Wherever you live, whatever country you call home, that's what 'real history' is to you (if you aren't an academic historian). Fine.

Why there's a problem now: the demographics of various places are changing. This is normal. An actual historian will tell you that sort of thing happens all the time. Heck, in the early Middle Ages, certain parties in Britain were running around claiming to be 'the Romans', when they were obviously Celts…never mind. It happens.

Now, we know enough these days to realise that the old stories aren't going to serve the people living now. We know better than some of the stuff those ancestors got up to. Not a lot better, mind you: just enough to find the old narrative cringeworthy. It's time for a new one. Not a radical new one. Not 'come see the violence inherent in the system' new. Or Das Kapital new. Not culture-shock new. Just a new look at the old tale, with some necessary corrections. In the case of the United States, that should include:

• The fact that women of all backgrounds and walks of life, people of colour, ditto, and even kids participated far more fully in weaving this story than was previously acknowledged in the 'history books'. We need to widen the franchise and tell everybody's stories.
• Recognition, however belated, of the fact that some of the guys our ancestors put on pedestals didn't belong there. You don't really want your kid to grow up to be like Samuel Adams – he was a terrorist, after all, even though you approve of the result – or Francis 'Swamp Fox' Marion, because if your kid grows up and acts like that, he's going to end up on the FBI's 'Most Wanted' list.
• Full recognition of the fact that there were people in those tales we could use as role models. Ben Franklin was pretty much a good guy. True, you don't want your kids to find out everything about his personal life, but when it came to civic-mindedness, he couldn't be beat.

I could go on, but I'll shut up for now. The point I wanted to make, before the commenters show up and pretend I said something different, is that the general public do not want to take up academic historiography as an unpaid hobby. They want to achieve a national narrative they can live with. Everyone wants this, no matter whether their personal hero is Ethan Allen (oh, look him up) or Harriet Tubman. So let's achieve an inclusive national narrative that tells as much of the truth as we can stand – possibly 'with some stretchers', as Mark Twain put it.

Brits: stop listening to Shakespeare, and tell the real stories of Henry V, Richard III, and Henry VII, for a start, and admit the truth about the Zimmermann Telegram, and you might get the kids to wake up for those A Levels.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

12.10.20 Front Page

Back Issue Page