Sanitizing history

 

There’s an old saying that most of us have heard a thousand times, with a hundred variations: Who doesn’t know the past is doomed to repeat its mistakes. If we don’t study history, we’ll bring ourselves down by repeating the follies of earlier generations. It seems, though, in our rush toward patriotism, that bit of advice is being left behind. But that’s not new.

I read today that schoolchildren are not being taught about the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of about 60,000 Native Americans from Florida and the Deep South to Oklahoma in the mid-nineteenth century. Instead of being taught how the people of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were marched under guard, with many dying, school children are told that the Indians agreed to move to make room for new settlement. A blatant and horrible distortion of the truth. They were moved to make way for white greed.

Similarly, at least one textbook informs children that Africans came here as “workers”—no mention of slave ships, slavery, cruel overseers, families torn apart. I suppose children are also not being taught about the internment of Japanese citizens during WWII. Another big blot on our history. I’m reading a novel called Clark and Division right now—the title being the name of an intersection on Chicago’s North Side, in a community where many Nisei (first generation) and Issei (born in Japan) were settled when transferred from internment camps.

Truth in history is giving way today to the current furor over critical race theory. If it weren’t sad, I’d be amused by the people who are so emphatic that CRT (as it is called) should never be taught in K-12. If only these loud voices knew that they make themselves look stupid. CRT is a graduate school discipline which studies the effects of racism on our society. It is mostly confined to law schools and would never be taught to school children. I love the response of an elementary school teacher who said, “If I can get them to read and write and do basic math, I’m a success. Who would have time to teach anything more?”

Here in Texas our governor has decided to enter the history fray. He was probably happy in 2016 when Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller were banished from the classroom, as was slavery as the cause of the Civil War, and Moses was credited with the principles espoused by America’s Founding Fathers. (Better go back up on that mountain again, Moses). I think those extreme standards have been relaxed, but now Governor Abbott has proclaimed that teachers must always use the word heroic in describing the defenders of the Alamo. That, he said, is not debatable.

That of course ties right into the controversy about the current myth-breaking book, Forget the Alamo, which essentially says that the Texas Revolution was all about slavery and the heroes were really a less-than-heroic bunch, many of them adventurers and mercenaries. Reviews ranged from recommending its pages if extra toilet paper is needed on a camping trip to “Well-written, compelling and meticulously foot-noted, [this is] an excellent analysis of the Alamo as both a significant historical event and an enduring Texas legend.”

All this reflects a burning desire on the part of some Americans and many Texans to portray our history in flawless patriotic terms. It’s not a new argument for education. From the seventies into this century, Mel and Norma Gabler from East Texas held sway over the choice of textbooks with their mom-and-pop business called Educational Research Analysts. They were fierce enemies of what they described as humanism—anything anti-American, anti-family, and anti-God. Textbook publishers, needing a profit, couldn’t do one set of books for Texas and another for the rest of the country, yet Texas was a big market. The upshot was that the Gablers basically dictated what was taught across the country—and the truth suffered.

And therein, lies the origins of today’s sanitized history. When I asked one of my grown children what they knew what the Trail of Tears was, the answer was negative. I’m afraid to ask the grandchildren. Enough, Sunday evening rant over.