As a history major, I take a lot of history classes, and I read a lot of history books. The first lesson I learned is that “fact” is a very difficult thing to define in that field.
The further back you go, the more information is based on educated guesses and sparse archeological evidence, and, the closer to present day you get, the more likely things are going to be deeply entrenched in politics. Despite that, there is the middle road – the moderate view of history that can prevent a scholar from going too right or too left, because to do either would be to pollute the history one is studying.
Teaching a different version of history to serve political devices is changing history – that’s editing it to become something else. Maybe only a few people will see it incorrectly at first – but the idea can spread. Just like those awful emails about how our president is a Muslim; sure, an educated, reasonable person wouldn’t believe that, but enough uneducated or unreasonable people do believe that.
What’s the danger in understanding history differently? What’s the danger in knowing a new version to things? Discussion of varying viewpoints, after all, is how ideas are developed and strengthened.
Discussion is fine. Discussion is productive. But plenty of teachers don’t provide discussion; they provide “facts.” This was how the world was, for all we knew – and why should we think differently? Why should we doubt the validity of a lecture? We shouldn’t have to be suspicious of our professors’ political agendas.
And that’s just what it is – and that’s just why this is important. It’s all about a political spin. Take the Roman Empire; it is established in the historical field that it collapsed due to the weakening of its societal values, German invasion and integration into the populace, plague and political deterioration.
What lesson can we learn from that? Well, for one thing, democracy is a good idea; we should probably have a strong healthcare system because it would likely suck if we all died of a plague, or swine flu; and it would probably be best if we didn’t have a bunch of corrupt people running the place.
There’s another idea that the Roman Empire collapsed because of the rise of Islam in the Middle East, which pitted the Byzantine Empire against the Persian Empire and eventually led to the collapse of Rome.
What lessons can we learn from that? Well, if one were to compare the United States to the Roman Empire (as people often do), then the lesson would be to distrust Islam, because Muslims will be the end of us.
It’s a much uglier lesson – a much more dangerous lesson, because it isn’t a lesson at all.
It’s a political spin on history meant to affect our modern mentality rather than our understanding of the ancient world and how it might affect us. It’s – to use strong words – fear mongering, and it’s very dangerous, especially when it isn’t even based on historical fact. It’s even more dangerous when people believe it – and people do.
Teachers are right there next to doctors in the whole “we should be able to trust them” department. Our teachers are meant to give students information that is true, and they shouldn’t put their own politics into their lesson plans. When we’re taking notes in the classroom, we shouldn’t have to ask ourselves, “Is this true?” And we shouldn’t have to doubt the information that is being given to us. That’s a part of our education, and we should be able to trust it.
Hearing different viewpoints on history is an enriching and interesting opportunity. I try to hear every perspective; but there is a serious disparity between a perspective and a political spin. Teachers have a responsibility as our instructors to give us the right information and to label theories in dispute as just that. I wouldn’t mind if a professor went on all day about the most outrageous conspiracy theories out there, so long as that professor established it as a conspiracy theory – not historical fact, however fluid and transitional this “fact” can be.