In the new National Standards for United States History, schoolchildren are asked to "examine the lives of individuals who were in the forefront of the struggle for independence, such as Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, Mercy Otis Warren and Ebenezer McIntosh."
Warren, a minor poet and playwright, is obviously included so the founders of the nation won't seem so distressingly male. But Ebenezer McIntosh? The first four historians I phoned had no idea who this hero of the Revolution might be. The fifth explained that McIntosh was a brawling street lout of the 1760s who whipped up anti-British mobs and sacked the homes of various colonial officials.
This helps explain why McIntosh managed to overcome natural handicaps (great obscurity, whiteness, maleness) and get himself mentioned in a modern text as somebody children ought to know. He was an anti-elitist, anti-oppression and pro-uprising gang member.
Since U.S. history is now being written from the countercultural perspective by oppression-minded people who trashed the dean's office in the 1960s (or wished they had), McIntosh fits right in as a sort of early Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin.
No uprising or rebellion seems to go unmentionedin these history standards, from the important ones (Shays', Nat Turner's) to Leisler's and the Paxton Boys' (don't ask). And it certainly makes sense. If you view America as inherently oppressive, then the only possible national story line is the gradual rise of more and more rebellions against the selfish and hypocritical ruling white elites.
That, in fact, is the spine of the story told in the standards. The usual multicultural excesses are all here. White ethnics more or less disappear because of their blurred multicultural image (victims as immigrants, conventional white oppressors now). The Founding Fathers are sprinted past as rapidly as possible. And by the allocation of the text, America today seems to be about 65 percent Indian, with most of the rest of us black, female or oppressive.
Two great stains. Anyone trying to write an honest history of America has a problem: how to write about the national commitment to liberty and equality while facing up to the two great stains on the national character -- the destruction of the Indians and the enslavement of blacks. For those with an oppression obsession, there is no problem: America is almost all stain; emphasis on freedom and equality is mostly smoke blown by manipulative elites. One question in the text asks archly: "Is the American concern with human rights a subterfuge for realpolitik?"
Many other suggested questions for students are just as tendentious: Was political democracy characteristic of the West? How did social Darwinism justify the political, economic and social dominance of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males? How effective was the use of language in the Declaration of Independence in expressing the sentiments of women? To what extent was Bolshevism a real or imagined threat to the United States? And so on. One question implies that America might have provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Another suggests American hypocrisy in "making the world safe for democracy" in World War I while suppressing dissent at home.
As sour and negative as these American history standards are, some on the steering committee say the World History Standards due out this week are even worse. "A travesty," said Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers.
The next-to-last draft of these standards is a great heap of data on various civilizations, past and present. ("How would a Muslim from Adal have evaluated Zagwe history?") Buried deep within the pile is Western civilization, which seems to be on a par with the Kush and the Carthaginians. In the multicultural view, all cultures are equal. The hopelessly PC American Historical Association reportedly threatened to withdraw its support for the standards if Western culture got any special treatment.
The document tends to be quite enthusiastic and uncritical about non-Western civilizations, much more critical of things Western. The text urges students to "discuss social oppression" during the Renaissance, analyze "the motives that impelled several European powers to undertake imperial expansion against peoples of Africa, Southeast Asia and China," compare "the consequences of encounters between intrusive European migrants and indigenous peoples," and assess why science and medical advances have "failed to eradicate hunger, poverty and epidemic diseases."
And much of the history is treated in a dumbed-down, cutesy tone with heavy emphasis on "multiple perspectives." (There's no such thing as truth, only different views.) Students are asked to present a television talk-show discussion of Renaissance gender roles and to argue over "who should get `top billing'" among the leading stars of Egyptian history.
This won't do. The whole idea was to set unbiased national standards that all Americans could get behind. Along the way, the project was hijacked by the politically correct. It's riddled with propaganda, and the American people would be foolish to let it anywhere near their schools.
