Historians in the News Roundup

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Melody Burri, "Historian Nancy Hewitt to present new work on Quaker Amy Post," MPNnow, August 22, 2012

Farmington, N.Y. - Nancy A. Hewitt, Professor of History and Women's Studies at Rutgers University, will give the fourth talk in the summer series for the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse Museum.>>>

Professor Hewitt will present "Faith and Politics: The Spiritual Journeys of Amy Post."

Edward Helmore, "UK Harvard star Niall Ferguson accused of intellectual fraud," The Week, August 22, 2012

 THE British-born journalist and Harvard-tenured historian Niall Ferguson has landed himself in a nasty spat with some of America's most distinguished economists, among them Princeton's Nobel Prize-winner - and venerable New York Times columnist - Paul Krugman.

Ferguson is a promoter of Chancellor George Osborne's cut-to-growth economic philosophy. Krugman is a spend-to-grow man, as is President Obama.>>>

An interview with Victor Davis Hanson on his essay "There is No One California," Forum, KQED, August 20, 2012

California has become a target of mockery in the presidential campaign, with GOP challenger Mitt Romney holding the troubled state up as an example of where the country is headed under Barack Obama. Historian and conservative columnist Victor Davis Hanson also slams the state in a recent article entitled, "There is No One California." He joins us to talk about the piece, and to give us his take on the presidential campaign.>>>

Rebekah Higgitt, "(Pseudo)scientific history?" Guardian blog, August 16, 2012

There have been many writers who have claimed that history can be, or should be, scientific. Different things are meant by this, of course, and such statements are provoked by different motivations, although generally they trade on the perceived successes, rewards, professionalism and certainty of the sciences.>>>

"Historian Taylor Branch Critiques College Sports," Only a Game, WBUR (rebroadcast), August 25, 2012

The NCAA is facing growing scrutiny from college athletes, coaches and the people who follow college sports. The September 2011 issue of the Atlantic Monthly featured an article by Pulitzer-prize winning historian Taylor Branch — author of Parting the Waters, The Clinton Tapes, and others — entitled “The Shame of College Sports,” which criticizes the corruption within the NCAA.>>>

Roundup: The Trials and Tribulations of David Barton

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Elise Hu, "Publisher Pulls Controversial Thomas Jefferson Book, Citing Loss Of Confidence," NPR, August 9, 2012

Citing a loss of confidence in the book's details, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson is ending the publication and distribution of the bestseller, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson.>>>

Chris Beneke and Randall Stephens, "Lies the Debunkers Told Me: How Bad History Books Win Us Over," Atlantic blog, July 24, 2012

Earlier this month, George Mason University's History News Network asked readers to vote for the least credible history book in print. The top pick was David Barton's right-wing reimagining of our third president, Jefferson's Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson. But just nine votes behind was the late Howard Zinn's left-wing epic, A People's History of the United States. Bad history, it turns out, transcends political divides.>>>

John Fea, "What Can We Learn From the David Barton Controversy?" Patheos, Anxious Bench, August 15, 2012

In case you have not heard, last week Thomas Nelson, a Christian publisher based in Nashville, ceased publication of David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, saying it has “lost confidence in the book’s details.”>>>

Paul Harvey, "David Barton: Falling from Grace?" Religion Dispatches, August 10, 2012

This has been the summer of discontent with David Barton. First, in a poll taken by History News Network, Barton’s newest work, The Jefferson Lies, topped the list of “least credible history works in print.” The same work met a unanimous chorus of refutations from Jefferson public humanities scholar and radio personality Clay Jenkinson, from religious historians ranging from Martin Marty to John Fea, and (in the full length work Getting Jefferson Right) from Grove City College professors Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter.>>>

Jennifer Schuessler, "Hard Truth for Author: Publisher Pulls ‘The Jefferson Lies’" NYT, August 14, 2012

Last month the History News Network voted David Barton’s book “The Jefferson Lies” the “least credible history book in print.” Now the book’s publisher, Thomas Nelson, has decided to stop publishing and distributing it.

The book, which argues that Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiastic orthodox Christian who saw no need for a wall of separation between church and state, has attracted plenty of criticism since it appeared in April, with an introduction by Glenn Beck. But the death knell came after Jay W. Richards, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author, with James Robison, of “Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family and Freedom Before It’s Too Late,” began to have doubts and started an investigation.>>>

Roundup: The University of Virginia Board vs. . . . Everyone

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Sara Hebel, "A UVa Board Member Resigns and a Prominent Faculty Member Leaves in Protest of 'Fiasco,'" Chronicle, June 19, 2012

Ousted UVA president Teresa Sullivan

The vice rector of the University of Virginia board resigned on Tuesday, saying that he hopes his decision will help begin a "needed healing process" at the university, which has been reeling during the past week-and-a-half over the board's decision to force Teresa A. Sullivan, a president popular with faculty and students, from office.>>>

Siva Vaidhyanathan, "Strategic Mumblespeak: Er, UVA’s Teresa Sullivan was fired for what?" Slate, June 15, 2012

. . . . We were all baffled. So Sullivan did nothing wrong? The board would not even hint at the reason she was fired. Conspiracy theories quickly circulated to fill the vacuum. And they got worse after Kiernan’s letter unleashed an unfounded fear that an MBA “cabal” was in cahoots with Goldman Sachs to loot the university.>>>

Zinie Chen Sampson, "UVa vice rector resigns after president's ouster," Guardian, June 19, 2012

The vice rector of the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors resigned Tuesday, saying he wanted to help quell the turmoil surrounding the abrupt ouster of President Teresa Sullivan.>>>

Kevin Kiley, "Going Another Round?" Inside Higher Ed, June 22, 2012

After a highly unusual -- arguably unprecedented -- series of events over the past two weeks, the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors will meet on the campus Tuesday to reconsider the controversial forced resignation of President Teresa Sullivan.>>>

Marie Griffith, "What Can We Learn from UVA?" Religion & Politics, June 21, 2012

The forced resignation of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan, announced June 10, did not go as planned. Pushed out by a faction of the university’s governing body, the Board of Visitors, Sullivan was said to lack vision and “strategic dynamism,” a term appearing in a widely distributed email from Peter Kiernan, the then-chair of UVA’s Darden Business School Foundation Board. (He resigned shortly after the email went public.) Reporting on the forces behind the orchestrated firing, The Washington Post revealed that Sullivan’s Board critics felt she “lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn’t sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.” Classics and German, “obscure departments”? raged university stakeholders. What else is on the chopping block? Any subject that doesn’t easily lend itself to direct monetary gain?>>>

Just the Facts? Revisions to Our Virginia: Past and Present

Brendan Wolfe

Today’s guest post comes from Brendan Wolfe, Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia Virginia. Here Wolfe returns to the Our Virginia textbook—which we posted on here and here. He asks if the revisions to the volume, implemented after a the controversial first version, make it a good enough text.

A little more than a year ago, the Washington Post reported that Virginia's fourth-grade history textbook was full of factual errors. The big news were those two battalions of black Confederates supposedly under the command of Stonewall Jackson, but there were other errors, too, and the resulting kerfuffle put Five Ponds Press on the defensive and almost out of business. More importantly, it persuaded the folks there to involve actual historians in the vetting of their books.

Now a new edition of Our Virginia: Past and Present has been released, and as one might expect, those historians have made it a much better book. But is it good enough? I'm not yet convinced.

To be clear, the facts are all largely in order. But as for the narrative constructed from those facts, it's a real mess. Facts only get us so far, after all. Textbook authors still must do the hard work of telling us what they mean, why they matter, and how we can put them together so that they begin to make sense.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about from Our Virginia:

The book tells us that the English colonist John Smith was "obnoxious" while describing his adversary Powhatan as "a ruler of great spiritual, mental, and physical strength." It makes no mention of Powhatan's explicit understanding of power and violence: that he ruled some of his people by force, for example, and that he both helped and fought the English.

Why does this matter? Because on the same page the textbook tells us that without Powhatan and his daughter Pocahontas, "Jamestown might have ended up as another 'Lost Colony.'" How? Why? The book doesn't say. And what it does say about the Lost Colony at Roanoke doesn't help, because the author never even hints at why that colony might have failed or that it might have been because of fighting with the local Indians.

In other words, even though the facts are in order, a reader would still be left with the inability to draw any meaningful conclusions.

The author later tells us that the Starving Time at Jamestown occurred because the English settlers did not save enough food. While this is partly true, it doesn't explain why Powhatan and Pocahontas had helped them earlier but not this time. Nor does it acknowledge that food was short for everyone, and that this very shortage was causing conflict between Englishmen and Indians.

Food and conflict. These are two important concepts that are perfectly understandable to fourth-graders but are missing here. To make the point earlier that Powhatan understood power and violence is to be able to make it again now, when it truly bears on the students' understanding of the material. In the meantime, to pay respect to Virginia Indians is to make them actors in this drama. And yet during the Starving Time—this moment when they come so close to expelling the English once and for all—they have completely disappeared!

Last year's textbook controversy focused on fuzzy facts and, to a lesser extent, whether you could find quality information online. But now that many of those facts have been corrected, we are still left with . . . just facts. What do they mean? Why do they matter? Our Virginia is still not up to the task.

History’s Tests

Chris Beneke

Testing brings out the anti-Whig in all of us it seems. The declension model was back in fashion last week as the American public was reminded of how little history it knows. The National Assessment of Educational Progress’ report on U.S. history revealed that American eighth graders have difficulty enumerating colonial advantages over the British in the Revolutionary War, fourth graders have trouble explaining Abe Lincoln’s importance, and twelfth graders often fail to grasp who was allied with who during the Korean War.

Here’s a quick summary of the academic fallout:

Several historians suggested that we un-knot our knickers. Sam Wineburg reminds us that we’ve been wringing our hands over our historical ignorance for about a century now and assures that common knowledge questions are not included in these assessments. In other words, graduating seniors probably do appreciate the significance of Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, the bombing of Hiroshima, and Auschwitz. They just aren’t asked about stuff that we know they know. Paul Burke echoes Wineburg’s claim that the much bemoaned results may simply reflect the test’s design, rather than the United States’ descent into barbarity. James Grossman adds that, whatever the use of the individual questions, they may not have been asked of the right students. “[I]n many states children don’t study much U.S. history until fifth grade.” “Next year,” he quips, “let’s give fourteen-year-olds a test on their driving skills.”

Very little history until the 5th grade? Linda Salvucci’s argument is that this is precisely the problem. Indiana elementary students, for example, get a grand total of twelve minutes of history instruction per week. Salvucci says that “parents … really ought to be mobilizing to demand that public officials get serious about adequately funding history education in the schools. History must not be allowed to become some optional or occasional add-on to the ‘real’ curriculum.” Her conclusion: “We need a STEM-like (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) initiative for history.”

James Livingston lays some blame for the alleged poor performance at the feet of professional historians and their affinity for anti-glorious counter narrative. Viewing the matter from the perspective of a 12th grader, he writes: “If you tell me the past doesn’t matter because it’s a record of broken promises, systematic cruelty, and failed dreams, or because it’s an irretrievable moment of eccentric deviations from a norm of appalling complacency, fine, f--- it. If I can’t use it to think about the present, why should I bother? Thanks, Doc, you convinced me that I don’t have to.”

Happily, the NEAP flare up coincided almost exactly with the publication of Historically Speaking’s roundtable on historical thinking at the K-12 level. Fritz Fischer suggests that “[w]hen it comes time to write the guidelines for how history is taught in the classroom, historical thinking [as opposed to the digestion of content] needs to become the guide.” Bruce Lesh agrees and details how he focuses student attention on a series of provocative questions and getting them engaged in interpreting primary sources. Robert Bain draws this lesson from the teaching of world history—teachers need to keep the overarching economic and social forces in mind “while attending to what their students are thinking and learning.” The two goals, he points out, are not easily reconciled. Because while you may be thinking about the geopolitical forces that propelled the European conquest of America, your students are thinking about “Columbus’s desire for personal wealth and glory” (or something along those lines . . . ). Linda Salvucci wraps up the forum with a call for nudging the public toward better history. “[W]e need to grab, define, and educate the audience,” she writes. We need to offer history that is both accessible and edifying.

More on Our Virginia: Past and Present

Randall Stephens

The new issue of Harper's Magazine includes some of the findings of a "Report on the Review of Virginia’s Textbook Adoption Process, the Virginia Studies Textbook Our Virginia: Past and Present, and Other Selected United States History Textbooks." Heather blogged about the controversy surrounding the adoption of the textbook and some of its pseudohistory here. Now we return to it with more on the text's creative or unknowing anachronisms . . . I didn't see anything in the report about John Quincy Adams being a founding father.

The reviewers of the text included: Christopher Einolf (DePaul University); Mary Miley Theobald (Retired: Virginia Commonwealth University); Brent Tarter (Retired: Library of Virginia); Ronald Heinemann (Retired: Hampden-Sydney College); Lauranett L. Lee (Curator of African American History, Virginia Historical Society).

A note to any future textbook writers out there: Check your sources and then check them again. Or, at least have sources. Don't make things up.

I include below a sampling of the official critique. The items in quotes are from Our Virginia:

“In 1607 Queen Elizabeth sent three ships to found Jamestown, Virginia.” That would have been difficult, since Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and neither she nor her successor, King James, “sent” any ships. They approved when a private company, the Virginia Company, sent ships to Jamestown, and no doubt King James approved when the colonists astutely named the town after him.

“They had been terribly persecuted and had seen friends killed.” I would like to know the source for this statement. I’ve never heard of Pilgrims being killed in England. Mostly they left England because they wanted to get away from the bad influences of the established Anglican Church. The statement seems over-the-top, but I can’t prove or disprove.

“Very few people in colonial America could read . . .” This is a myth. The overwhelming majority of white colonists were literate. In New England, literacy rates were higher than elsewhere because there were more schools and there was an emphasis on learning to read the Bible, but even in Virginia and other Southern colonies, almost all white men and even most white women could read in the eighteenth century. Percentages change over time, always growing larger, but even in the seventeenth century, about 60% of men in Virginia could read and about a quarter of the women. Figures are higher for the northern colonies. At no time in American history did “very few people” know how to read (unless one is talking about African Americans or Native Americans).

“. . . until you realize that it hurt America’s tea makers, whose tea already had a heavy tax.” America didn’t have any tea makers; the climate isn’t suited to growing tea. American had merchants who sold smuggled tea, avoiding the tax. Again, I understand it is hard to explain a complicated issue in simplistic terms, but this treatment of the Tea Act isn’t accurate.

“Washington and French General Lafayette inspect troops before the Battle of Morristown in New Jersey.” First of all, there was no Battle of Morristown. Morristown was where Washington and his troops wintered in 1777 (January 6- May 28). Second, Lafayette was not a general until July 31, 1777 and didn’t even meet George Washington until August 10, 1777, long after Morristown, so they wouldn’t have been reviewing any troops.

“Cyrus McCormick’s young grandson was there on the day the reaper was tested.” (then the book quotes the grandson’s “eyewitness ” account). Since Cyrus McCormick was 22 in 1831 when he first tested his reaper, it is unlikely his grandson was present. The reason this grandson’s account is quoted is to “prove” that a black slave, Jo Anderson, helped invent the reaper. While the slave helped with all the farm work, including building a reaper, he should not be credited as a co-inventor, as some Politically Correct people would like. It is a serious mistake to title this section “Anderson and McCormick’s Reaper.” It was Cyrus McCormick’s reaper. http://www.virginialiving.com/articles/lion-of-the- hour/index.html

“The Quakers, a religious group, believed that all people were created by God.” A rather unnecessary sentence, don’t you think? What religious group does not believe that all people were created by God? It doesn’t say anything about the Quakers’ beliefs. It might be better to note that they were Christian pacifists who believed all people were equal, even women, Indians, and blacks.

“Evenings were spent playing cards or checkers, writing letters to loved ones, reading old worn newspapers, and playing baseball by torchlight.” That would be some trick, playing baseball by torchlight, since you couldn’t see to catch a ball. Torches give off almost no light beyond a few feet from the flame. I have never seen any mention of playing baseball by torchlight.

“Atlanta, Georgia, was one of the South’s largest cities. It was an important railroad hub . . .” Yes, Atlanta was a railroad hub, but it was one of the smaller cities in the South. In the 1860 census, Atlanta ranks 99th among American cities, with a population of 9,000. The South had many, many cities larger than Atlanta, including Baltimore at 212,000, New Orleans at 169,000, Louisville at 68,000, Richmond at 38,000 (25th), etc. Georgia alone had three cities larger than little Atlanta: Savannah, Augusta, and Columbus. http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab09.txt

Map showing Fort Necessity (which is spelled wrong as Neccesity) locates the fort in the wrong state. Fort Necessity is in Pennsylvania, not Ohio. Fort Duquesne is also in Pennsylvania, not Ohio. (The text accurately states that Fort Duquesne is near Pittsburgh, but the map positions it in Ohio.)

St. Louis is always written as St., not Saint.>>>