A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF REVISIONIST HISTORY
Mar. 19th, 2010 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogLike some of you, I’ve been following the Texas textbook story. And to be honest, the reason I haven’t posted anything on it is because I’ve been waiting for Jon Stewart to do my heavy lifting for me.
It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of this isn’t new. History has always been whatever historians and the People In Charge say it is, and has always had a point of view. We’ve always had liberal historians and conservative historians and other historians of varying stripes. Or, as G.K. Chesterton put it, “There is no history; there are only historians.”
Historian history interests me greatly, you know. I once spent a semester studying how different historian trends have fallen in and out of favor over the last 200+ years. Which is why the Texas Textbook Saga, at face value, seems like another version of the same thing.
The difference, of course, is that the decisions are being made by evangelical dentists, not historians. (Hell, the majority of the board aren’t even teachers.)
And that matters primarily because people in the same ideological camp as Don McLeroy have been increasingly active in constructing their own alt-reality where even facts (rather than yr opinion of them) are open to debate, whether it’s how men and dinosaurs co-existed, no domestic terror attacks happened when Bush was president, or the healthcare reform bill calls for mandatory death panels.
And why not, Jim? You have to expect that in an age where you can get all yr news information from “unbiased” sources like Fox News, MSNBC, Red State and Buzzflash to keep yr worldview well fed and unchanged. Even the Bible is available in liberal and conservative flavors now. School textbooks were going to be dragged into this sooner or later.
Which, in itself, will make for fascinating history lessons 50 years from now ... provided the textbooks bother to mention it. Not that it will matter – by 2059 "education" will be a simple matter of yr parental unit downloading the "right" reality library software into yr onboard brain.
Just you wait.
Class dismissed,
This is dF
========================================
EDIT 04.04.10: Adding a link to an article written after I posted this that mentions the shifting views of historians.
It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of this isn’t new. History has always been whatever historians and the People In Charge say it is, and has always had a point of view. We’ve always had liberal historians and conservative historians and other historians of varying stripes. Or, as G.K. Chesterton put it, “There is no history; there are only historians.”
Historian history interests me greatly, you know. I once spent a semester studying how different historian trends have fallen in and out of favor over the last 200+ years. Which is why the Texas Textbook Saga, at face value, seems like another version of the same thing.
The difference, of course, is that the decisions are being made by evangelical dentists, not historians. (Hell, the majority of the board aren’t even teachers.)
And that matters primarily because people in the same ideological camp as Don McLeroy have been increasingly active in constructing their own alt-reality where even facts (rather than yr opinion of them) are open to debate, whether it’s how men and dinosaurs co-existed, no domestic terror attacks happened when Bush was president, or the healthcare reform bill calls for mandatory death panels.
And why not, Jim? You have to expect that in an age where you can get all yr news information from “unbiased” sources like Fox News, MSNBC, Red State and Buzzflash to keep yr worldview well fed and unchanged. Even the Bible is available in liberal and conservative flavors now. School textbooks were going to be dragged into this sooner or later.
Which, in itself, will make for fascinating history lessons 50 years from now ... provided the textbooks bother to mention it. Not that it will matter – by 2059 "education" will be a simple matter of yr parental unit downloading the "right" reality library software into yr onboard brain.
Just you wait.
Class dismissed,
This is dF
========================================
EDIT 04.04.10: Adding a link to an article written after I posted this that mentions the shifting views of historians.
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no subject
on 2010-03-19 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-03-19 01:28 pm (UTC)