Founding Myths (44 page)

Examining texts without context can perpetuate mythologies. For example: Revolutionary Era curricula based on the Common Core will likely feature the Declaration of Independence. Students, in examining that document, will naturally highlight Jefferson's “all men are created equal,” not realizing its connection with Mason's “all men are born equally free and independent.” They will also note the dramatic conclusion, in which congressional delegates pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” courageously placing themselves on the line. Without context, they will not see this as standard practice for the genre, based on similar pledges from hundreds of lesser-known patriots who ascribed to earlier declarations in favor of independence. Consequently, the famous document presented for examination, and by association its primary author, will carry the full load of the narrative. Careful examination of this one iconic text, in isolation, masks as much as it reveals.

Students might also be asked to examine the famous “liberty or death” speech, attributed to Patrick Henry. As they do, they will certainly note the noble sentiments, including the argument that oppressed patriots had exhausted all available options except war. They will never dream to ask what the author of this speech avoided, arguments dear to the heart of white Virginians at the time: British officials are prepared to free your slaves and set “savages” against you. Nor will they ask questions critical to the understanding of the words they are reading: Who was the real author, and when was this speech actually written? What emerges from their study is not a fair representation of military mobilization in the South in March 1775.

DBQs can even create mythologies. In 2005, the AP United States
History test presented a historical image in which a woman wears a tricorn hat, grasps a powder horn in one hand, and supports a musket with the other; in the distance, a flag waves from a fort. No context is provided except for the title: “Woodcut of Patriot woman, Marblehead, MA, 1779.” Students were expected to use this image when constructing an essay on the question “To what extent did the American Revolution fundamentally change American society?” The official “Scoring Guidelines” explained the “document inferences” students were expected to draw from this single image:

       
•
   
Women participated in the American Revolution.

       
•
   
Women's roles were expanded during the American Revolution; women performed tasks previously done solely by men.

       
•
   
Hints at the potential for revolutionary change in women's roles.
¹⁷

Yet women did not participate in the American Revolution in the manner depicted, bearing muskets for military reasons. The war did expand their roles and their worries, but not in that direction. Indeed, the original publication of the image accompanies an explicitly antiwar poem, “A New Touch on the Times, well adapted to the distressing situation of every Seaport Town.” With men “gone the ocean wide” (Marblehead was a fishing center), women were left on their own to face wartime shortages and exorbitant prices: “It's hard and cruel times to live, / Takes thirty dollars to buy a sieve.” How did “every Seaport Town” fall upon such hard times, the author asks?

               
For sin is the cause of this,

               
We must not take it then amiss,

               
Wan't it for our polluted tongues,

               
This cruel war would ne'er begun.

               
We should hear no fife and drum,

               
Nor training bands would never come:

               
Should we go on our sinful course,

               
Times will grow on us worse and worse.

               
Then gracious GOD now cause to cease,

               
This bloody war and give us peace!

               
And down our streets send plenty then

               
With hearts as one we'll say Amen!
¹⁸

Not only did the AP program present the Marblehead woodcut out of context, but it also erred by assuming the image was descriptive rather than normative. This is a common mistake: images and words can have many purposes, and reporting is only one. They can praise or condemn, ridicule or scold, and often they are meant to cajole. Not understanding the genre or the intent, we cannot draw inferences from an isolated document—yet that is exactly what the AP asked students to do. Most likely, test takers followed the errant path the test makers cleared for them and assumed the image was presented as a true representation of real women. Presented with evidence this scanty, students are not merely encouraged but forced to jump to conclusions. They have no choice but to practice hasty history.

The example might be extreme, but the problem is common. Since teaching to the test requires a fast-moving curriculum, document-based lessons must be brief. On any given subject, students are presented with minimal evidence and little context with which to evaluate that evidence. On the basis of this small sample they are asked to make snap judgments, undermining the very intent of document-based learning.

Thinking historically.
This is not to say we shouldn't teach with documents. To reveal mythologies for what they are, we do need to start by evaluating sources. The Common Core Standards are on to this, and DBQs can be of great service. But
how
do we evaluate sources?
¹⁹
And
how do we weave these strands of evidence into historical narratives? We need standards for our standards.

Mythologies can thrive only when we don't think clearly about how we know—and don't know—the past. We can dispel myths one by one, as I do in this book, but we can also create a climate of learning hostile to the development of attractive but misleading narratives. We can learn the art of “historical thinking,” as educators and historians now say. But to practice and teach historical thinking—and that is the aim of the Common Core—we must first accept our limits and proceed from there. By approaching the past cautiously rather than hastily, we can attack mythologies at the roots.

Learning to think historically, in my mind, involves five basic tenets that build on each other:

       
(1)
   
We don't know the past.
As historian Richard White puts it, “Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not be a familiar echo of the present.” Because of differences in time, circumstance, and perspective, we can never create a one-to-one correspondence between the actual past and the narrative we use to represent it.

                   
This is not a difficult lesson to convey. In fifth grade, or even earlier, a teacher can arrange to video some event the students all witness or experience. A month or two later, students are asked very specific questions about this event, such as how many people there were, the exact time, and so on. Responses will likely differ, but which of the answers are wrong and which correct? The video is played back, a contemporaneous answer book, and students learn that memory can play tricks with history. Then comes the kicker. A month or two after another shared event, students are asked to respond once again to specific questions. This time, though, there is no video to determine who is correct. What to do now? What sorts of contemporaneous documents
might we look to for answers? Did anybody keep a journal at that moment? Interview participants? Issue reports at the time? Welcome to the practice of history.

       
(2)
   
While no constructed narrative can claim to be “true,” some are clearly better than others
. We do have standards: all claims to historical authenticity must conform to the available evidence from the times. We observe the past through spotty remnants. While these will never tell the whole story, they can shape its parameters.

                   
Again, this is easily taught even at the elementary level. Lay out some facts, then weave two or more narratives around those facts. To make one story interesting, bend a fact or two. Weave another narrative, perhaps more mundane, that conforms to all the facts presented. Then weave a third story, from a slightly different perspective, that also conforms to the facts. Students will see that one story is demonstrably wrong, even if they can't say for sure that either of the others is a true representation of what actually happened.

       
(3)
   
Things might have happened differently
. Humans are historical agents. They make decisions and take actions, not fully knowing how things would turn out. To grasp this, we need to disregard all that has occurred since and view matters in light of the circumstances at a specific point in time, using only the information available to people then as they pondered their options and tugged with each other to produce desired outcomes. Our past was their present. Before it was history it was life in the moment, one thing after the next, the future uncertain.

                   
Simulated debates can demonstrate that historical outcomes are not fixed. People do make decisions; they act one way or another. Debating any hot topic from the past, with time and circumstance clearly established and all arguments
based on later happenings strictly banned, will reveal the contingency of history.

       
(4)
   
Things didn't happen differently. They happened the way they happened.
After we come to realize that multiple options were possible, we need to go one step further and ask, “Why
wasn't
it otherwise?” If we don't pose this question, history will remain incomprehensible. The political processes that steered history on the course it took need to be viewed carefully and in sequence. History happened
when
it happened. We need to see how decisions made and actions taken, day by day, influenced subsequent events, leading to new sets of contingencies and opening some options while closing others. We watch history unfold, not in real time but as closely to it as we can.

                   
Here, unfortunately, there are no quick and easy methods. Teachers and students, authors and readers have no choice but to engage each subject on its own terms. Here is the daily grind of history, and it requires scrutiny and patience. Since sequencing is key, all events must be viewed strictly in the context of when they happened. If we try to short-circuit time to prove some point, we will likely get the story wrong.

       
(5)
   
Historical inquiry never ceases
. New evidence, or new perspectives on old evidence, can produce new insights and new conclusions. Part and parcel of every document-based lesson should be: “What related questions might we ask to clarify matters? What other types of sources might we seek to deepen our inquiry and/or test our hypotheses?” Historical thinking is not limited to
answering
questions; we must also learn to
ask
questions that might reveal what has been hidden.

                   
Following this path, and asking questions few have thought to pose, mythologies begin to wither. For example:

       
•
   
During the Revolutionary Era, when and where did both political and military authority first transfer from British officials to colonials? This is a logical question to ask for any revolution, but it is not often posed for this one. If it were, those sleepy-eyed farmers whom Paul Revere allegedly awoke would be restored to their place in history.

       
•
   
In 1777, Britain lost a force of some eight thousand in its failed Hudson River expedition. Four years later it lost a similar number at Yorktown, but it still had forty thousand troops in North America and the West Indies stationed in nearly impenetrable strongholds. Why did one defeat trigger the end of the war, while the other did not? Posing this question requires us to examine Britain's struggles to maintain its vast empire, challenged on many fronts by other world powers. The question itself—again quite logical but rarely asked—would lead to an expanded look at the end of the war and lay to rest the David-bested-Goliath mythology surrounding Yorktown.

       
•
   
At Valley Forge soldiers suffered in the cold. Did they suffer from the cold during other winters as well? Was Valley Forge in fact the coldest? These are questions curious fifth graders might ask but textbooks don't. If they did, we would hear about Morristown as well, and soldiers who mutinied. The Valley Forge story would not disappear, but its triumphalism would be tempered. We would see that the everyday problems faced by soldiers in the Continental Army were not solved by the winter at Valley Forge.

The questions continue, or at least they should. That's the only way we can clear the air. We might not learn exactly how it was in Revolutionary times, but we can free the people who lived back then from shackles placed upon them by later generations.