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Just out of curiosity have any of y'all looked at current History texts used in high school or college? Not ones for specialty courses like Women's Studies or the various minority studies specific ones. Just the general US/World/Early-Modern Civ ones.
Have they changed? Yes. And that answers the original question somewhat. As new information, peer reviewed information, becomes available the texts incorporate that (one thing I remember which has changed in the time I've been teaching is the Lusitania narrative. For decades the British denied it was carrying munitions. They finally admitted it a couple decades ago and that has now been included. Same with the USS Maine story.).
Has the focus shifted in some classes? Yes. AP World History only spends about 20% of class time on Europe now and incorporates Asian, African and Pre-Columbian Americas (as well as colonial and post-colonial Americas). Regular World History is the same proportion.
Rousseau wrote "Let them eat cake" (Qu’ils mangent de la brioche), attributed to "a great princess", in writings published when Marie Antoinette was nine years old.
Is it nefariously "revisionist" to contend that Marie Antoinette, as wife of Louis XVI, was not really the originator of such a remark, nor, for that matter, sufficiently callous and ignorant to have done so? And to contend that the history of Marie Antoinette is "fixed" and no longer subject to revision except by self-interested malfeasants?
Good point.
Marie Antoinette never said that. The Queen may have had many shortcomings, but one of them was not indifference or lack of compassion for the poor who were suffering greatly at that time.
Another example of character assassination by detractors of a famous person is the case of writer and poet Edgar Allen Poe. Immediately after Poe's death a rival of the great author wrote defamatory articles about him alleging alcoholism and drug addiction. When I was younger it was generally accepted as an "urban legend" that Poe was a drug addict. Not true at all.
As new facts are discovered, it is then acceptable to "revise" history.
But our understanding of history should be under constant reexamination and revised as historians discover new information or apply fresh insights to previously unexplored or neglected areas of the past. If previous accounts of historical events and eras are not tested on a continuous basis then history become nothing more than dogma or worse, mythology. So to answer the question, "when should history be revised" whenever new evidence is revealed and its important withstands the rigor of examination, then the historical record is and should be revised.
^^This.
In case the OP is wondering when we should revise history TEXTBOOKS, to incorporate new events, I'd say it depends on the event, but the more complex or momentous the event is, the longer it may take to get an accurate picture of what happened for a detailed description and how things panned out. More insights may come later that may compel revisions, but I think it's good when textbooks get as close as possible to the present day.
My thought exactly. The only response that came immediately to mind was, "Don't worry about it. Obama will do it for you!"
But the real response is, "Never!" It's already been done too much to make school books politically correct.
There's a difference between "politically correct" and "factually accurate, and more complete". Nomenclature has been changed quite a bit for political correctness (not necessarily a bad thing), but history has only been corrected with new evidenced-based fact, to debunk myths and legends, and to round out information to account for more than one perspective.
I wouldn't want my kids to learn mythology, distortions, or omissions as History. School is about academics and proper scholarship, not indoctrination to a cult. A lot of what I learned in 1970s history classes were lies with holes big as a house.
Do you have an example of the changes you object to?
The people who argue in favor of "revising history", are invariably the people who seek to impose their version of the truth on everybody else, and too often, to silence anyone who disagrees.
What more need be said?
Oh, I think I understand what you're saying.
Good point!
You are dismayed by politicians - yes, politicians and not distinguished historians - in Texas that have demanded to reinterpret the African Slave Trade as a more acceptable "Atlantic Triangle Trade" in the history text books in that state. Also, to de-emphasize the role of Thomas Jefferson; to make no mention of the concept of separation of church and state; to give Jefferson Davis equal status with Lincoln; etc.*
lol History will be revised AGAIN when the Western powers eventually fall. Just as World history was revised when they rose (think about the Christopher Columbus myth).
It's not very hard to correct the deliberate downplay of the input of Americans outside the traditional predominately-white, predominately-male stereotype. One excellent example of this effort is the Oxford History of the American People (which, BTW, also calls attention to the fact that until recently, the influence of those who lived closer to the land was much greater -- a point too easily dismissed by sheltered suburbanites with short memories).
But as we have been forced to discover since the events of the fall of 2008, industrialized, urbanized society is more fragile than the advocacy for Big Brother cares to admit, and the second shoe may be about to drop.
And despite the dire warning about the passing of "Western" civilization, such trends require hundreds of years. Our Oriental neighbors have other concerns -- China has never lost a "foreign" war, and never won one.
We have the capacity and societal breadth to easily adjust to the immediate disruptions -- the Social Security mess, for example, can easily be addressed via a moderate, impartial, across-the-board restructuring. But it is the desire to protect that particular segment of largesse which serves "our crowd" which has led to most of the petty squabbles of the present.
History will take care of itself -- and doesn't require a new generation of self-appointed interpreters.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 10-13-2013 at 06:03 PM..
When I was in school in the 1950s and 1960s, 'history" was about famous white men with a token acknowledgement of the woman's rights movement in the 1830s, a mention of Booker T. Washington, and a cursory list of "immigrant gifts". Native Americans were always blood thirsty savages except for Sacajewa (sp), and Latinos were simply non-existent even though they were the majority population of New Mexico, Arizona, and California when these areas became part of the US in 1848.
I was in college before I found out that blacks served in the Union Army in the Civil War and that there were Latino peoples living in New Mexico and California long before and after 1848.
I was in graduate school before I found out much about the history of various European ethnic groups. It was only in the 1970s that historians started looking at the lives and culture of non-famous people via demographics from census data and other records.
With all due respect, History is a broad sweep, not an accumulation of tiny particles. Take the movement that brought us to the automobile age. It is pointless to examine every patent that made tiny incremental changes in the mechanical operation of the automobile. Just as it is pointless to examine the biography of every woman or every black or every Latino who made a contribution to the flow of history that led to the diversity that is now America.
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I hear you!
