Allow me to disagree. I don't think teaching social, socialist, or marxist
history is the key to awakening historical interest. While these are valid
areas of history, it is often the method of teaching that's at fault rather
than the specific subject matter. You can teach people all you want about
Eugene Debs, but if you can't make it interesting, no one will a) remember,
or b) care enough to learn more on their own.
Let me say that I'm not blaming this exclusively on the teachers, though I
think enough of them are at fault. The educational system does not
encourage in depth study, as I think someone earlier mentioned. Parents do
not seem to have a ton of interest either. Popular culture has very little
interest in history, and very little on education in general. What's
disturbing is that history can be interesting and exciting, if taught
properly.
And frankly, I disagree that people can get a good grasp of history without
great men, great deeds. If you choose to add the story of regular people,
regular deeds that's fine, but I fail to see how you can truly grasp what
happens without understanding the role of the big players. You can
certainly learn a lot from the experience of the average Civil War soldier,
but skipping the role of Abraham Lincoln, R.E. Lee, and U.S. Grant is not my
idea of teaching the history properly.
Before I go completely Cassandra on everyone, I think for all it's "All
Nazis, All the Time" programming, the History Channel and some of the
Discovery Channel history programs are a wonderful boon to the study &
promotion of history. It may be that we as history professionals are in a
niche, but at least we have these outlets in the popular culture.
DS
______________________________________
Daniel Sokolow, Archives Coordinator
David Taylor Archives
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
155 Community Drive
Great Neck, NY 11021
mailto:[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Archives & Archivists [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Hempe, Andrew - HPL
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 10:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Early Friday Funny
This is an important question, and deserves discussion. It is no accident
that the general level of historical knowledge in the US is extremely poor.
When historical education consists of teaching a string of events that have
no relation to the day-to-day reality of people's lives, people will
naturally consider history to be trivia that really doesn't need to be
bothered with.
How many people know why Labor Day is celebrated in the US, rather than May
Day? If you know the answer to this, you've gone a long way toward knowing
why the average American's level of historical knowledge is so low.
To quote Rosa Luxemburg, the famous German Marxist, "Historical
consciousness is an essential component of class consciousness." The fact
is, a great deal of history has been deliberately suppressed. Who knows
about the uprising of 1877? Or the Seattle General Strike? Who has heard
the names Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, or Walter Reuther? Until history is
taught in a way that emphasizes class structure and relations, and that the
contributions of ordinary people are important, rather than history as
something that is made by "great men", there will continue to be a lack of
interest in the general public in historical matters.
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