recall definition us history

recall definition us history

The Evolution and Impact of the Definition of US History

1. Introduction: The Significance of Defining US History

The megamachine of the modern state has also been a megamachine of historical research from its modern origins around 1600. The United States provides a perfect example of the many difficulties and contests about what constitutes its history. The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate the interrelationships between such definitions of portions of history and various historical parameters. Debate about such history has been most profound during those divisions of study. The pragmatic result has been to tend to exclude many alternative drives at such national divisions so that the definition of history has become more narrow. An added and significant reason is that many such periods have been during periods of significant state building so that exclusion has not only been practical but desirable.

What constitutes the history of the United States? The answer to this question has been renegotiated in every generation as changing political, social, and economic climates have intervened on historical scholarship. Generally, traditional historical epochs such as colonial, revolutionary, Jacksonian, Civil War, World War Two, affect studies in the shaping of national history. A significant dilemma is, however, upon the historian when considering such a national version of history. It is one which requires the concentration of study upon the nation-state at the expense of alternative considerations of historical enterprise. A particularly notorious question becomes, whether indicators such as those mentioned have had more influence on House of History positions rather than alternative drives such as ethnicity, gender, or class of society among the many possible contenders.

2. Historical Perspectives on the Definition of US History

Of the disputes in respect of the content of history, the most apparent is left-right or feminist-traditionalist or Eurocentric-Afrocentric. Indeed, curricular struggle and policy making often turn on the resolution of these disputes at the caucuses and in the committee rooms. But while the outcome may have considerable consequences, the importance of the matter in dispute is often minimized.

The definition of US history (hardly a uniform perception or syllabus), that is, what does or should ‘count’ as American history has profound implications for a variety of audiences including policy makers, educational administrators, parents, students, and regularly incurred. In the academic community, there is also this profound significance combined with a strong countervailing factor: ignorance and innocence. The relative ignorance, particularly in respect of international comparisons, is revealed by the fact that historians do not know how unusual their curriculum often is when compared with the school histories of other countries. And innocently (if pessimists are right about the dangers of history), our ignorance is also apparent in the portrait of reality which is projected by many.

3. Controversies and Debates Surrounding the Definition of US History

As a consequence of these controversies, the United States has developed a large, politically sensitive, and highly fragmented system of school textbook adoptions over the past century. With the demographic transformation in the United States and over a dozen states or big cities as populous as some states have a majority of non-white students, cultural politics and controversial debates sliced across the country. Native American, Hispanic, Asian, and African American or Black activist groups, each with unique histories and ethnic ideologies, strong emotions, and often significant social class differences within their ethnic group have continued to influence the curricular content expected of textbooks adopted for their respective states. And whereas each group expects attention to its particular needs, concerns about the revision of the definition of U.S. history are sometimes mutually exclusive. Consequently or thoughtlessly, the definition of U.S. history in and out of schools has been wielded as a political weapon in U.S. society, reinforcing fears and prompting confrontations.

Comments on the definition of U.S. history have been central to the long-running and apparently intractable culture wars in the United States. Debates over the definition of U.S. history have taken many forms and have been driven by many factors and beliefs, including theories about human character and development, and the aims and purposes of school curricula. These discussions, in and out of school, are no mere academic squabbles. They have serious policy implications because curricular answers to the question “What is U.S. history?” might either foster national cohesion or promote social divisions. Early history textbooks, for instance, were deliberately exclusionary about what and whose history should be part of the American historical experience. Activists who engage in textbook studies find many things that are not found realistic or terrible stereotypes, racist expressions, and suppressing important historical facts.

4. The Evolution of US History Curriculum in Education

A shift occurred in the way the discipline of history was positioned in American schools as graduation requirements placed history on the list of required subjects. Experts in curriculum development began to focus sharply on trends in history teaching to move the history requirement from “the torpid water of irrelevant knowledge” to a more exciting and captivating genre of learning in 1973. The intended goal was more than the memorization of names, dates, and events. Since the contemporary definition of U.S. history’s curriculum, this study purposefully ignored individual state strategies, and the collaboration and examination of Western U.S. region strategies that mirror the national history curriculum initiatives of that era is useful.

Title IV of the Higher Education Act, authorized in 1965, directed heavy support toward the modernization of American secondary education history instruction from predominantly college preparatory tracks to student-rich comprehensive curriculums. In the 1970s, multiple approaches to the adoption of social studies as an overall concept were being established. Western American state high school history requirements, compared to other subjects, are lower. History meets a basic citizenship requirement. In the 1960s, the concept of curriculum defined the acceptable outcomes of what an educated person should know.

The Evolution and Impact of Modern US History Curriculum

5. The Impact of the Definition of US History on Society and Identity

Historical writing scarcely began in the New World before men set about defining it. The definition grew up gradually, and was involved in political controversies of a deep and lasting character which centered about the question – what is right? It is not to be understood by evoking specific statements from the usage of wise ancients, for our progenitors were obliged to think carefully as they had not to act quickly. The circumstances of life on this continent acted in a peculiarly powerful manner to prevent Americans from developing a speculative tradition equivalent to the delightful one inasmuch as they had no confounding metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology other than political philosophy of which these lectures tell. The prohibitions were not anything formal and are not important here either historically or politically, but the results were clear and, so far, lasting.

The definition did have rivals. The Newtonian definition of a “real” story had its own propagandists. The legendaries of Weems and the romantic and historical novelists also claimed to cannibalize and digest the facts. They are more respected than the inventing mythologizers or the idealizing ones, although there were always readers who wished them to conform themselves more to the facts. But the critic of these was powerful before the other kinds of stories could be written and the “scholarly” story that finally displaced the “real” story described the settlement of America according to John Smith with considerable frankness and pointing to the dangers, set it apart from the novels, the legends and heroic poetry that were the other kinds of “real” stories before the last.