Probably, the most striking thing for me while I took this course consisted in the subject of heroification. Usually, when I read or learn about a cult of a specific person or something I tend to believe it and not subject the person in question to much objectivity. However, during this course one of principal things I learnt (though totally not the most pleasant one, because getting disillusioned is never pleasant) was that glorified people can be different – and were different. We all know about the most glorious pages of their biographies and about the significance of their contributions to the world’s history or history of their nations. However, along with that there are host of things that are usually not known about these people, and these things are notorious.
Let’s take the examples of several American Presidents. For instance, Woodrow Wilson was always know to me as the front runner of the Democratic Party at the beginning of the 20th century as well as the official who contributed t to the utmost extent to the post-war rebuilding of the world. He drew up the fourteen points which not only outlined the principles of the rebuilding but also provided for the establishment of the League of Nations. He was the first among the American Presidents in office to leave the continent when he joined the Paris peace conference which only underscores his merits as a diplomat. At the same time, I was taken aback when I learnt that Woodrow Wilson was a very active interventionist – actually, it was him who organized interventions in numerous Latin American states like Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico and Panama. Moreover, I was even more bewildered when I learnt that he actually was doing this at the same time when conducting peace talks in Europe! Unbelievable.
Or let’s take another US President – Thomas Jefferson who is always designated as one of the founding fathers of the American state as such. His merits can hardly be overestimated as well as his role in the American history and nascence of what later became the mightiest nation in the world, by far. However, it is disgusting from the standpoint of the modern world to look back and understand that Thomas Jefferson was a land and slave owner!
Building up one’s physical might, as can be shown in the example of America is primarily an instrument for economic expansion. I understood that if it were not for the American troops that changed the geopolitical situation on the verge of the two centuries in the Caribbean American trade that literally skyrocketed from almost zero level would not have developed that fast and that successfully. That is why physical power is always the ultimate clue.
There is also a point of honesty in building up and employing power, though. The next thing I learnt is that where interests of any nature (economic, political, etcetera) merge with military power, there is always hypocrisy. What I’m trying to say is this: Zinn argues in his 12th Chapter that the pretext of most American invasions in the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century (say, to Cuba or to Nicaragua) was protecting the lives and the rights of Americans, which cannot but be hypocritical, as the excuse is quite lame – the number of Americans residing in those areas, especially that it was not so big, was far from being the real reason for intervention. Probably, interests for economic routes and for trade in the region and beyond were.
In my opinion, distortions and reasons why they happen in historiography can come down to the explanation presented by Loewen in his eleventh chapter: “Textbooks rarely present the various sides of historical controversies and almost never reveal to students the evidence on which each side bases its position”. This made me think about who and why is interested in this one-sided layout of the material – and here are some points I have concluded.
First of all, the very form of how material is delivered to students is a predisposition for distortions. In classrooms, history is a narrative rather than a science. It is storytelling, not burdened very much with methodology which would give far less space for those distortions. Secondly, textbooks and classroom activities in history are not meant, again, to be science – they are meant to be a means of bringing up children in a specific way. That is why patriotic gist and similar things justify omitting some details and sacrificing objectivity, either for the sake of simplicity or for the sake of direct need to highlight some things and lurk others. Thirdly, textbooks are usually a compilation and paraphrasing of host of other sources. That is why, it is hard to embed an opinion in that compilation, in that narrative.
Finally, let me answer this: what is the result of teaching history like this? IN answering that I would like to refer to some ideas expressed by Loewen. The latter says bringing about the narrative approach instead of giving some room to analysis, consideration of alternative approaches and standpoints is something that leads to grave consequences. He argues, for instance, that such style of teaching is what leads to children being eventually unable even to name the right century of a specific happening! “Student’s are left with no resources to understand, accept, or rebut historical referents used by candidates for office, sociology professors, or newspaper journalists.” I cannot subscribe entirely to this point of view. I do not see very clearly a connection between these two things – narrative and impossibility to reproduce the material. I think that analysis rather than narrative would increase pupils’ interest in the learning process and their productivity as well as critical thinking, however, I would not go for saying that the narrative style is what makes pupils entirely reluctant to do just anything.
However, there is one quote by Loewen that I will happily agree with. It is this: “Emotions is the glue that causes history to stick.” I think that being able to present material to children in an emotional way is something that will guarantee that material will stick to their memory better. The problem with history consists in the fact that it has to deal with the past events which we cannot revive in any way other than just our own imagination, as compared to, say, nature sciences that allow us to have subjects of our study before our eyes. Given that, emotions is the key factor that ensues the respective level of interest in a discipline and subsequently – academic result of a given pupil in it.
