September 10, 2006
Teaching History After 9/11 Posted by Fredric Smoler at 11:45 AM EST There was another New York Times story this week on the teaching of history. This time it wasn’t about the Chinese Communist party revising the subject but on an American version of the process. We are coming up on the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and the Times was reporting that 9/11 is affecting the way American history is being taught. There was one linkage between Chinese and American trends: less history of the nation state, more what the Times called the “global context.” There is apparently more interest in the history of terrorism, on Muslims in America, on “international cultural contacts and exchanges,” and on what the Times called “the turbulent history of civil liberties in the United States.” That last is certainly praiseworthy, although I was a bit surprised to see the trend described as particularly new, since it was going pretty strong when I was taught American history in high school, in 1968-1969, and seemed conspicuous in the curricula of the colleges and universities I have attended or taught in since. The Times also reports a renewed interest in empires, and that seems right, going by the new books showing up in the college bookstore up the block. Again, the question of whether the United States may be an empire does not seem quite as novel as the Times suggests, if you started paying attention to this business in the late 1960s. The Times also reported, shrewdly enough, that not all changes in historical fashion are pointing in the same direction. In particular, a trend toward internationalizing American history abuts another, a renewed interest in American exceptionalism. Based on a quotation from a historian at Rice, this interest in American exceptionalism does not look much like the version I remember from high school, when it denoted a boast of relative freedom from the political vices of wicked old Europe. In those days, an interest in American exceptionalism meant debating things like why there was no socialism in America, and on the palmier days, whether we might indeed be, or become, a shining city on a hill. Nowadays, by contrast, the gent from Rice suggests that “the appalling crudity and brutality involved in the settlement of Virginia back in the 17th century does take on a new relevance. . . . I think all those episodes of majoritarianism run amok do begin to fall into a pattern that has to make us wonder: What is it about American culture that puts us into this position time after time?” This is pretty dispiriting stuff. The appalling crudity and barbarism involved in the settlement of Virginia were very real, although scarcely unique to American history. American carelessness about civil liberties in the wake of successful terrorism is also real, but again, scarcely unique. Shameful acts—torture of suspects—remain shameful when we commit them; they are not, however, plausibly represented as crimes Americans are peculiarly, even uniquely, prone to commit. In any event, we do seem to be going in a direction different from the one the Chinese are taking. They are removing enemies from the teaching of history. In at least one classroom at Rice, we are instead, it seems, becoming the enemy. This suggests that the effect of 9/11 on the teaching of history may be less striking than the Times is suggesting. Civil liberties may well be in significant peril, but it looks as if in the classrooms, as well as in the airports, some of the authorities are rounding up the usual suspects.
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