Most Americans never look backwards. Unless some grievance is concerned, they don't give a fig about the past—or know anything about it.
I've been devoting time recently as a volunteer to an historic preservation nonprofit, and so have been reading and thinking a lot about Americans' grand indifference to history.
I've learned, among other things, that the American Association for State and Local History published a research paper recently that plumbs the depths of that indifference.
To inform themselves, the researchers interviewed 13 professional historians and 20 adult citizens.
They found that, on the whole, Americans consider history merely the random concatenation of events—without significance.
(That history and its teaching have become headline news this week has nothing to do with Americans' passion for the subject, but only some people's hatred of others.)
Specifically, the researchers found that Americans share these eight beliefs:
- History comprises the acts of a smattering of great figures. Martin Luther King, for example, solely crafted the civil rights Blacks now enjoy. (And the Freedom Riders were—who cares?)
- The great figures were nearly all White and male; the acts of lesser figures don't merit consideration. (Sorry, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.)
- Dredging up unpleasant parts of the past is a drag, and to be avoided. (Sorry, Crazy Horse.)
- History is factual (transparent, indisputable); and historians are just news reporters. The news that most historians report is simply "old news." (The news that mavericks like Nikole Hannah-Jones and the late Howard Zinn report, on the other hand, is "fake news.")
- Evidence-based history is just "historians' opinion," not the truth. (Sure, the truth is out there—but only Mulder and Scully will ever find it.)
- History is useless; a dead-end hobby. (Sorry, Ken Burns.)
- Learning history is all about memorization. (Why bother when you can Google it?)
- Teachers of history get worse and worse all the time. (No surprise. Our schools suck, in general.)
Odd though it may sound, the researchers concur with belief Number 8: teachers of history have let Americans down. "The K-12 education system fails to teach the skills necessary for students to engage critically with the past," they write.
And while they suggest ways for future historians to tackle these eight detrimental beliefs, the researchers are clear about the intractable nature of the problem educators have created.
As critics a century ago said of America, we're a nation of boobarians.
