I read this discussion of the historical "canon" with some interest, if some tardiness. I've often been struck, in these discussions, by the unspoken assumption that the choice is between the conventional "canon" and a fully deconstructed PC-extremist version. This seems odd to me; I don't see much point in being forced to choose between two equally flawed extremes.
When I returned from my first sojourn in the Philippines, I was invited by a former history teacher to teach a few sessions of a high school honors American History class. The subject was the American role in Philippine history. I was young and enthusiastic, and designed a 3-part review, the first dealing with the acquisition of the Philippines, the second with the colonial period, the third with the post-colonial period. We never got past the first session. There was a veritable tidal wave of outrage. Parents proclaimed that "those things couldn't have happened because Americans wouldn't do that", that I was "teaching children to hate their country", that "this is all communist propaganda", etc. One particularly rabid parent denied that the US had ever had a colony.
The consensus seemed to be that episodes in our history that are incompatible with our self-image should simply be omitted.
The "traditional" history course leaves as much to be desired as the fully deconstructed one. It is unbearably Eurocentric, and excessively focused on "great men", who are invariably stripped of all humanity and presented as cardboard caricatures only slightly removed from comic-book heroes. Shades of grey become black and white, and students emerge with the notion that they and theirs are and have always been The Good Guys, and that anyone who objects to our sanctimony is either evil or deluded.
"The canon" - history as traditionally presented in our schools, is, IMO, largely responsible for our grotesque and thorough misunderstanding of practically every other culture in the world.
It would be obviously ridiculous to reverse this trend completely, as a few PC extremists have attempted to do. But an effort to mediate it by trying to present a more balanced and comprehensive (and, ideally, more academically rigorous) account of history would not be a bad idea at all.
Not that it's likely to happen. Conservatives will never permit it. |
