Early American History and The National History Standards

Early American History and the National History Standards
Author(s): Gary B. Nash

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 579-600
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
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Notes and Documents

Early American History and the National History Standards
Gary B. Nash
F UTURE historians may conclude that more ink has been spilled over
the National History Standards released in October I994 than any history publication in the nation's history. For the flamboyance and
amount of media attention, the controversy over the Smithsonian
Institution's Enola Gay exhibition may be a close second. Other commemorations and events such as the quincentennial of the Columbus voyages in
I992 and the "America as West" exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's
National Museum of American Art have similarly occasioned heated arguments. All of these controversies have much in common. All provoked
attacks on revisionist scholarship of this generation's professional historians;
all are part of the larger culture wars waged over the last decade; and all
touch raw nerves in some sectors of the public (and in a small sector of the
historical profession) where powerful demographic changes, significant diversification of the professions, and a sharp turn toward conservative politics
have brought history to the fore. If the essence of these controversies, to
which many others can be added, can be reduced to a phrase, it is "Who
owns history?"
This article reports on the sections of the National History Standards
that deal with early American history. The essay has four parts: how the standards were constructed, what they propose as the most essential understandings of early American history to be acquired in the schools, what the
principal criticisms of them are, and what revisions have been made in
response. Some readers may consider this report biased because the author
has been in the storm, but it may be useful for present and future historians
and teachers to have some reflections on a revealing controversy from the
person who served as co-director of the National History Standards Project.
How the Standards Were Constructed
The National History Standards have their origin in the National

Education Goals adopted by the nation's fifty governors in i989, endorsed by
President George Bush a year later, and affirmed by the National Council on
Gary B. Nash is a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles and
director of the National Center for History in the Schools. He thanks Ross Dunn and Richard
Brown for comments and suggestions.
The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Vol. LIV, No. 3, July I997
580 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
Education Standards appointed by Congress in January I992. Among the

governors' six education goals was the creation of challenging standards, for
voluntary use by states and school districts, in five core disciplines, history
included. Congress formalized these education goals in the GOALS 2000:
Educate America Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in March 1994. Deeply
conscious of the long and revered tradition of locally controlled education in
the United States, no one involved in promoting or creating the standards
had in mind rigid "national standards" or a federally mandated curriculum.
Rather, these were to be frameworks in science, civics, geography, literature,
and history that would set forth what teachers and scholars might determine
to be the most essential understandings that American youngsters should master by the end of the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. Supported overwhelmingly in public opinion polls and endorsed enthusiastically by business
organizations, the creation of national standards by 1992 had become a key
element of a bipartisan education reform movement. 1
In spring 1992, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH),
chaired by Lynne Cheney, and the United States Department of Education,
headed by Lamar Alexander, commissioned the National Center for History
in the Schools (NCHS), established in I989 with funding from NEH, to
coordinate the writing of national history standards. Charlotte Crabtree and
I, director and associate director of NCHS, served as co-directors of the
National History Standards Project (NHSP).
Understanding that history is contested terrain, the project's co-directors
attempted to build a structure for involving dozens of national organizations
concerned with history education. Heated arguments over Columbus
Quincentenary observances, Afrocentrism, and a proposed Disney history
theme park near the Manassas (Virginia) Civil War battlefield were attracting
media attention as this process of consensus building began. Nobody imagined the task would be easy. But, in distinct contrast to how curricular
frameworks are constructed in other countries, usually in ministries of education, the project organizers cast a wide net with a policy-setting body consisting of the presidents of nine major organizations (including the American
Historical Association [AHA] and the Organization of American Historians
[OAH]); task forces of schoolteachers who, working with academic historians, would draft the standards; nine organizational focus groups that would
critique drafts of the standards as they were generated; and a National Forum
composed of thirty-three organizations ranging from the National Catholic
Educational Association to the League of United Latin American Citizens to
the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. Whatever the resulting history standards, the project co-directors were determined that they would be
created through open debate, multiple reviews, and the active participation
of the largest organizations of history educators in the nation.2
1 For a full account see Diane Ravitch, National Standards in American Education: A
Citizen's Guide (Washington, D. C., I995)2 For a full account of the history standards-setting process see Gary B. Nash, Charlotte
Crabtree, and Ross Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York,
1997), chap. 7.
NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS 581
In the debate by sound-bite over the National History Standards, I was

frequently referred to as their "principal author" or "main architect."3 In
fact, the standards were created by a historic collaboration between teachers-drawn equally from elementary, middle, and high schools-and professional historians. Living in different worlds and seldom in contact, two
groups of history educators made common cause. Working for two-and-ahalf years, teachers from Soldotna, Alaska, to Umatilla, Florida, hammered
out the standards in conjunction with university historians with specialties in
many fields. Their work, as one draft succeeded another, went through several layers of review and criticism, involving national organizations of teachers, administrators, curriculum specialists, parents, librarians, and
professional historians. After the controversy erupted, Carol Gluck, who pa
ticipated in thirteen lengthy meetings as an NCHS member, observed that
"if the standards were hijacked, they were hijacked by America through an
admirable process of open debate that would probably only happen in the
United States."4
Like all the standards, those relating to early America were scrutinized
and ultimately approved for publication by the NCHS. Of the twenty-nine
members of the council, three had expert knowledge on early America: Joyce
Appleby (UCLA), who served as OAH president; Theodore Rabb (Princeton
University), who served as chairman of the National Council for History
Education (NCHE), and John Patrick (Indiana University), who also served
on the U. S. Teacher Task Force and directs the Social Studies Development
Center at Indiana University's School of Education. Other American historians on the council had more than passing acquaintance with early American
history: Pedro Castillo (University of California, Santa Cruz), Elizabeth FoxGenovese (Emory University), Darlene Clark Hine (Michigan State
University), Morton Keller (Brandeis University), and C. Frederick Risinger
(Indiana University).
In putting the United States History Standards through five drafts, the
advice of the nine focus groups proved indispensable. Among the early
Americanists participating in these groups were Michael Kammen, Deborah
White, and Sandra VanBurkleo for the OAH; James 0. Horton for the
3 John Fonte, an employee of Cheney's at the American Enterprise Institute, has consistently called me the "principal author" of the standards, and this designation has been followed
by others hostile to them. See San Diego Union, Nov. 6, 1994, in which Fonte identifies himself
as "a senior associate with the U. S. Department of Education from i984 to 1993 who was
involved in liaison work with the history standards project." Ravitch, his supervisor in
1992-1993, when the standards were under construction, confirms that he had no role in the
project. Wilcomb E. Washburn subscribes to the Fonte version of the standards' provenance
when he asserts that the project "was hijacked by Professor Gary Nash and his colleagues at the
National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA," in "Serious Questions about the National
Standards for United States History," Continuity: A Journal of History, No. i9 (Spring 1995), 47.
Forrest McDonald also identifies me as "the principal author," in "National Standards for
United States History: An Idea Whose Time Should Never Come," ibid., 42, where I am associated with the "left-wingers [who] began a Maoist long march through the [academic] institutions" "in the i960s."
4 Gluck, "History According to Whom?" New York Times, Nov. 19, 1994.
AHA; Douglas Greenberg, Carl Degler, Edmund S. Morgan, Mary Beth

Norton, Carl Ubbelohde, and Peter H. Wood for the NCHE; and John
Tyler for the Organization of History Teachers. Dozens of teachers with
long experience in teaching early American history also participated in these
groups. Although critiques from the focus groups varied in detail and
emphasis, the final product satisfied all of them in the main.
The involvement of veteran early Americanists went further. When the
National Council for History Standards first met in January I992, its members agreed that the framework provided for the study of early American history in Lessons from History: Essential Understanding and Historical Perspectives
Students Should Acquire, published less than a year before by the NCHS, was
sturdy enough to serve as a guideline, though decidedly not a template. This
book was produced as part of NCHS's contract with the NEH, awarded in
i989 by NEH chairman Cheney. The book was meant to serve as a guide for
the study of American and world history, much as the National History
Standards were meant to do several years later. Closely involved in creating
Lessons from History were Gordon Wood, a member of NCHS's Advisory
Panel, and Thaddeus Tate, one of NCHS's nine participating scholars. Tate,
along with Don Fehrenbacher and Kathleen Conzen, wielded their pens in
drafting sections of the book.
The Treatment of Early American History in the National History Standards

As in every section of the history standards, whether on United States or
world history, the essential content to be acquired in early American history
was wedded to a set of historical thinking skills. "Beyond defining what students should know-that is, the understandings in United States and World
History that all students should acquire," read the books, "it is essential to
consider what students should be able to do to demonstrate their understandings and to apply their knowledge in productive ways." The history
standards insist that students must develop competence in five kinds of historical thinking:
Chronological thinking, in order to identify the temporal sequence
in which events occurred . . . and explain patterns of historical
succession and duration, continuity and change.
Historical comprehension, including the ability . . . to identify the

basic elements of the narrative structure . . . and to develop historical perspectives-that is, the ability to describe the past
through the eyes and experiences of those who were there . . . and
to avoid 'present-mindedness,' judging the past solely in terms of
the norms and values of today.
Historical analysis and interpretation, including the ability to compare and contrast different experiences, beliefs, motives, traditions, hopes, and fears of people from various groups and
backgrounds . . . to consider multiple perspectives in the records
of human experience and multiple causes in analyses of historical

events; to challenge arguments of historical inevitability; and to
compare and evaluate competing historical explanations of the past.
Historical research, including the ability to formulate historical
questions from encounters with historical documents, artifacts,
photos, visits to historical sites, and eyewitness accounts . . . and
to construct a sound historical narrative or argument.
Historical issues-analysis and decision-making, including the ability
to identify problems that people confronted in the past; to analyze
the various interests and points of view of people caught up in
these situations; to evaluate alternative proposals for dealing with
the problem(s); to analyze whether the decisions reached or the
actions taken were sound ones and why; and to bring historical
perspectives to bear on informed decision-making in the present.5
Teachers and curriculum specialists regard these five thinking skills,
braided with the historical content to be mastered, as an essential part of the
history standards. Virtually every participating organization agreed, and
although many labored over and debated the exact language, the pivotal role
of thinking skills was uncontroversial. Adopted in the schools, in connection
with whatever content chosen, the skills have the potential to transform the
factoid approach that has long crippled history education (and bored most
students to tears). In a nation in which the majority of history teachers lack
even an undergraduate major in history, the history thinking skills are a revelation to many who have simply tried to "stick to the facts."
Turning from history thinking skills to historical understandings in the
National History Standards, careful readers will see that the frameworks for
studying early American history in Lessons from History and the National
Standards for United States History are joined at the hip. This is no wonder,
because both books reflect the scholarship of the last half century and show
the influence of some of the historians who have figured importantly in the
work of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
and on the editorial board of the William and Mary Quarterly. The periodization of United States history is orthodox, mostly defined by conventional
political watersheds. Era i of both frameworks is entitled "Three Worlds
Meet," with Lessons from History specifying chronological boundaries from
I450 to i6oo and National Standards for U. S. History from "Beginnings to
i620." In both frameworks, Era 2 addresses the colonial period, with Lessons
from History titling it "The Colonial Era (i600-I754)" and National
Standards for U. S. History using "Colonization and Settlement (I585-I763)."
National Standards for U. S. History, in'an effort to reduce the fourteen eras
deployed in Lessons from History to ten, constructed the third era,
"Revolution and the New Nation," to run from I754 to the I820S. In Lessons
from History, the third unit comprises "The Revolutionary Era" from I754 to
5 National Center for History in the Schools, National Standards for United States History:
Exploring the American Experience (Los Angeles, [1994]), 7 (hereafter NSUSH).
1783 and follows it with a fourth unit, "Nation Building," that reaches from
I783 to I8IS.
Following what is nearly standardized periodization in the textbooks,

both Lessons from History and National Standards for U. S. History map out
similar topics and themes, though in them important differences are evident.
In Era i, both establish two major topics: inquiry into the characteristics of
western European, West and Central African, and pre-Columbian American
societies on the eve of contact in the fifteenth century and early European
explorations and the Iberian conquest and colonization in the Americas.
Neither topic proved controversial, although half a century ago the first
would have been regarded as highly innovative, if not objectionable. All historians involved agreed that schoolchildren are ill equipped to understand
the forming of American society without comprehending the historical
development of the populations from all three of the regions that converged
in the Americas. In National Standards for U. S. History, a short introduction
to the era counsels that "students will not grasp this collision of cultures
without understanding the extensiveness and complexity of the societies of
pre-Columbian America and West Africa." It also suggests that "developing
an appreciation of these pre-I492 societies will dispel stereotyped images of

American Indians and Africans and prepare students for the complexity of the
often violent meeting of these three worlds." In Lessons from History, this
notion is explained in fuller detail, arguing that "students particularly need to
understand the state of American Indian societies along the eastern seaboard
and in the Southwest in the late I5th century because this is where the first
North American interactions occurred with the English and the Spanish
explorers." Similarly, teachers are urged to introduce students to "the long history of Africa . . . to appreciate the great ecological variations; the great cultural diversity that followed; and the cultural consequences of the early
contact, dating from the 9th century, between West Africa and the Middle
East." Exposure to the early history of Africa, as in the case of the early histor
of Indian America, would "help sweep away myths about 'the dark continent'
that clog understanding of the African experience in the New World and help
students appreciate that the peoples of Africa, who represented at least three
quarters of all transatlantic immigrants from the late Isth to the early i9th
century, were a great deal more than units of labor."6
Lessons from History and National Standards for U. S. History present the
same framework for studying Era 2, the colonial period, though with significant differences. Neither will look very controversial to early Americanists.
In the former, two major topics are specified: i) differences in the planting
of Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English colonies and how the English
colonies differed with attention to the motives of immigrants, ecological
change as a result of colonization, colonial labor systems, the transfer of
English law and government, and the place of religion in the early colonies;
and 2) the maturing of colonial societies in the eighteenth century, including
6 Ibid., 39; National Center for History in the Schools;, Lessons from History: Essential
Understandings and Historical Perspectives Students ShouldAcquire (Los Angeles, I99), 55-56, 52.
population growth, economic development, British imperial policy, religious

diversity and the Great Awakening, the development of political ideas and
institutions, and the rise of slavery and African-American culture.
The same elements appear in National Standards for U. S. History,
though configured differently. The first standard focuses on the early arrival
of Europeans and Africans and their interactions with Native Americans. The
second standard focuses on political institutions and the drive toward religious freedom in the North American colonies. The third standard sketches
economic life and how slavery reshaped European and African life in the
Americas. Some more particular aspects of these broad topics treat family life
and gender relations in the English colonies (topics ignored in Lessons from
History) and give greater attention to European-Indian relations and changes
in Indian societies as a result of expanding European settlements. Both
reflect the spectacular burst of scholarship on slavery and African-American
culture. Lessons from History recommends that
students should not only focus on the more familiar growth of the
institution [of slavery] and its supporting legal and political apparatus but also should try to understand that, while being enslaved,
Africans in America blended the culture of their various African
homelands with the culture of the master class, producing a
unique African American culture. This cultural evolution is best
understood by delving into the topics of black religion, family life,
and patterns of resistance. Black protests against slavery also show
how African Americans contributed to an expanding definition of
freedom, which many white Americans wanted to restrict.7
In constructing a scaffolding for the study of the Revolutionary era, the historians involved in both Lessons from History and National Standards/or U. S.
History drew on the rich scholarship of recent decades. The language of the
short introductions to this era is parallel, with National Standards for U. S.
History sometimes borrowing liberally phrases and sentences found in Lessons
from History. Both documents add a few beams and joists to the structure
familiar to history teachers of the last several generations, but veteran teachers will still recognize most of what they taught decades ago: the tangled
causes of the Revolution, the course and conduct of the war, the intellectual
sources of the Declaration of Independence, the travails of the Continental
Congress, the writing of state constitutions, and treaty making.
Both frameworks go beyond traditional school textbooks in drawing
attention to how race, gender, and class-more comprehensively, the multifaceted nature of the Revolution-figured crucially in how Americans fought
a war for Independence while simultaneously struggling to redefine American
society. The National Standards/or U. S. History draws attention to "the fundamental contradictions between the ideals expressed in the Declaration of
7 NCHS, Lessons from History, 68.
Independence and the realities of chattel slavery."8 Both recommend study of
the differing perspectives and wartime roles of enslaved Africans and

American Indians, which necessarily requires students to understand that
many of those who fought with the British did so out of ideological commitments that squared with those of the American Revolutionaries. Both recommend study of women's involvement in the Revolution. Both urge
examination of the multiple and often conflicting "revolutionary agendas
that were constructed by various parts of the population.'"
Both books are thoroughly conventional on the subject of early nation
building. The major topics listed in Lessons from History and restated in
National Standards for U. S. History read like textbook headings:
1. Forming a national government

a. Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation
b. Participants and interests at Philadelphia
c. Main issues and resolutions at Philadelphia
d. Central compromise on slavery
e. Main arguments in ratification debates
f. The Bill of Rights
2. Crises and resolution
a. The Hamilton-Jefferson debate
b. Origins of the two-party system
c. Impact of the French Revolution
d. Role of presidential leadership
e. Origins of judicial review
Only by encouraging close analysis of the Shaysite movement and, in

National Standards for U. S. History, by calling attention to the emergence of
free black communities in the North does either framework go much beyond
orthodox textbook material.
Although the National Standards for History for Grades K-4 was scarcely
mentioned in the protracted controversy, it was created by the same teacher
task force that constructed the standards for grades 5-I2, critiqued by the
same organizational focus groups, and reviewed and approved by the same
National Council for History Standards. No record of the controversy can
afford to ignore it, as have the critics, because it provides the foundations for
youngsters' first understandings of American history and because it helps
establish how thoroughly the first critics misrepresented the National
History Standards.
Virtually everyone involved in the National History Standards agrees
that studying national heroes and national symbols is an effective way of
inculcating basic lessons in civics and national identity. This is a very old
practice among educators the world over. Hence, in the K-4 standards,
George Washington is repeatedly invoked as the quintessential founding
8 NSUSH, 74.
9 NCHS, Lessons from History, 75.
father: military leader of the Revolution, political leader after ratification of

the Constitution, symbol of nationhood, and mediator in Indian-white relations. Thus one of the main standards concerned "how democratic values
came to be and how they have been exemplified by people, events, and symbols."10 Component parts of this standard specified:
-understanding how the United States government was formed
and the nation's basic democratic principles set forth in the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
-understanding of ordinary people who have exemplified values

and principles of American democracy
-understanding of historical figures who have exemplified values

and principles of American democracy
-understanding of events that celebrate and exemplify fundamental values and principles of American democracy
-understanding of national symbols through which American
values and principles are expressed.
Among illustrative classroom activities created by K-4 teachers from across
the country are "draw upon stories and simple biographies of George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin to explain their roles
and importance in the Revolutionary War and the development of the new
nation" and "draw upon sources such as coins, photographs of the Great Seal
with the American Eagle, the Liberty Bell, the national flag, paintings by
Charles Wilson [sic] Peale, and poetry and stamped images of George
Washington that portray him as 'father of our country' in order to develop a
class 'big book' of American symbols reinforcing the idea of one nation."11
Maligning the History Standards
Almost all those who worked on the project and those who had compared National Standards for U. S. History and Lessons from History were
astonished at the blitzkrieg unleashed against the history standards in
October 1994, two weeks before the three volumes were published.
Apparently having read only the penultimate draft, Cheney, the NEH chairman who had funded the project and commended earlier drafts that dealt
10 National Center for History in the Schools, National Standards for Historyfor Grades K-4
(Los Angeles, 1994), 48.
11 Ibid., 49-53. In attacking the history standards on the floor of the Senate, Slade Gorton
(R-Wash.) asserted that "with this set of standards? our students will not be expected to know
George Washington from the man in the moon," Congressional Record (Jan. i8, I995), SIO26.
12 In a letter to Charlotte Crabtree, Oct. 6, i992, Cheney wrote after seeing drafts of Era 2
on the Revolution and Constitution making: "What nice work you do! I've been saying lately
that the best grant I've ever given is to your standards-setting project." In her last press release,
before leaving the NEH chairmanship in Jan. 1993, she took special notice of two grants she had
made to Ken Burns's Civil War television series for PBS and to the National Center for History
in the Schools. See Memorandum for NEH Staff, distributed as a Media Advisory, Dec. 2, 1992.
with early American history,12 delivered a preemptive strike against the new
guidelines in the Wall Street Journal. Her highly deceptive but cleverly calculated opener immediately raised a tempest: "Imagine an outline for the teaching of American history in which George Washington makes only a fleeting
appearance and is never described as our first president. Or in which the
founding of the Sierra Club and the National Organization of Women are
considered noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the U. S. Congress is
not." If those comments were not enough to ignite a firestorm, she offered the
following: "The general drift of the document becomes apparent when one
realizes that not a single one of the 31 national standard mentions the
Constitution." True, the Constitution is described, she said, as "the culmination of the most creative era of constitutionalism in American history." But
that description appeared only in "the dependent clause of a sentence that has
as its main point . . . the paradox that the Constitution side-tracked the movement to abolish slavery that had taken rise in the revolutionary era."13
While the Wall Street Journal reaches many millions, Rush Limbaugh
reaches millions more, mostly in sectors of American society that do not read
the Journal. Eight days after Cheney's blast, Limbaugh revealed that the his-
tory standards were part of the America-bashing "multicultural agenda" perpetrated by historians who had "bullied their way into power positions in
academia" in order to indoctrinate students with the message that "our country is inherently evil." The National History Standards, he asserted, were
written by "a secret group at UCLA." "The zenith of this bastardization of
American history has been reached with new standards that have been written as part of GOALS 2000 to standardize history." Pretending that the history standards are a textbook from which students will study rather than a
framework suggesting major topics and themes that teachers may voluntarily
use as a resource, Limbaugh began tearing pages out of a history book.
"Here's Paul Revere. He's gone," he announced, as a torn crumpled page hit
the TV studio floor. "Here's George Washington as president. Look at all
these pages in this book. He's gone. . . . This is what we're doing to
American history with this stupid new book, folks." 14
Syndicated op-ed writers waded in. The National History Standards,
wrote Charles Krauthammer, "had been hijacked by the educational establishment and turned in to a classic of political correctness. . . . The whole
document strains to promote the achievements and highlight the victimization of the country's preferred minorities, while straining equally to degrade
the achievements and highlight the flaws of the white males who ran the
country for its first two centuries."15 Borrowing the term "hijacking" as a
synonym for historical revision, columnist John Leo picked out an illustrative classroom activity (not a standard) to ridicule the guidelines. Why
should Ebenezer McIntosh and Mercy Otis Warren be included as examples
of lives that students might investigate in their understanding of the struggle
13 Cheney, "The End of History," Wall Street Journal, Oct. 20, 1994.
14 Rush Limbaugh, electronic transcript of television show, Oct. 28, 1994.

15 Krauthammer, "History Hijacked," Washington Post, Nov. 4, 1994.
STANDARD 3
Students Should Understand: The institutions and practices of government created during the re
they were revised between i787 and 1815 to create the foundation of the Amer
ical system.
Students Should Be Able To:
StatesConsin a nd th new government AM estblihed d by: 4
3A Demontrate understanding of the isue involve in xthe creatio and ratifcto ofthe Unite
1' : a, ,: : S A= mu~~~~- et
............~ n it p nt~& V in t
...
.....
3B Demonstrate understanding of the isuantes inolvdi the creationigt and raificantionun ofihegnited
3D
Stte Ceonstiateutionstandin the nhew governpment it etabihed by: mria at ssey
82,. e by: 86,88.
Sta
t ~.(Cn 0 nd ifOfns$
fr m 1789 to~ t 180 y
C u~~~ ~Wndpcn~~~ ~~d~~qua~~b ~~c di U~.. ..........Q~n fdKn
"St andard b," standard relat ied to th unesandigo th ajremo Unted States
Costttin from Na~eotioa Standri nds fori Unied States)Hsoy xlrn h
"StaDardon"strandrsrlaetote understanding of the Uurneso h ilo

3Cm emnstxprateundersrandin fteaates of2 thaneBiloRihsad Edti t Ls cotiungels, ignfi-
Amrcanc Exeinebrdey-: xadd dto LsAnee,[94)
82,...... 84,.86,88,.90
for Independence? Warren "is obviously included so the founders of the

nation won't seem so distressingly male," Leo wrote, but calls to five historians convinced him that McIntosh, the leader of Boston's Stamp Act riots,
was "a brawling street lout of the 176os who whipped up anti-British mobs
and sacked the homes of various colonial officials, . . . an anti-elitist, antioppression and pro-uprising gang member. Since U. S. History is now being
written from the counter-cultural perspective by oppression-minded people
who trashed the dean's office in the i96os (or wished they had), McIntosh
fits right in as a sort of early Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin." 16

The Christian Right and ultraconservative organizations such as Young
America's Foundation took up the baton. Gary Bauer's Family Research

Council and James Dobson's Focus on the Family-determined to scuttle
GOALS 2000, a reform movement in which national standards in the main
disciplinary subjects stand as a centerpiece-used the National History

Standards as an albatross to hang around the neck of the United States
Department of Education. Focus on the Family, urging the abolition of the

Department of Education, cited the National History Standards as "one of
the most frightening examples of the potential for damage" when the federal
government entered the education field in any way.17 The Family Research
Council ran a full-page ad in national newspapers attacking the history standards and announced its own alternative, Let Freedom Ring: A Basic Outline
ofAmerican History, which is in fact a table of contents that one might have
found in textbooks several generations ago.18 By fall 1995, Young America's
Foundation was soliciting contributions with an offer of "a specially
reprinted portrait of 'Paul Revere's Midnight Ride"' that would be a useful
antidote to "Bill Clinton's Left-wing bureaucrats" who have been deleting
Revere "from America's textbooks." "Liberal revisionists," the solicitation
continues, "have decided not to teach our children and grandchildren about
Paul Revere's famous midnight ride . . . anymore. Instead, they're teaching
feminism and homosexuality. . You see, the NEA [National Education

Association] is supporting a federal government plan to rewrite American
history as you and I know it. It's called the 'National Standards for United
States History."'19
As radio and television took up the controversy over the National
History Standards, members of the history profession, including Joyce
Appleby, Alan Brinkley, Eric Foner, and many others, debated Cheney, John
Fonte (her assistant), and such conservative talk-show hosts as Pat
Buchanan, Ollie North, and G. Gordon Liddy. In the long run, the ultraright media blitz will probably be much more relevant to scholarship on
public opinion manipulation than to the teaching of early American history.
16 Leo, "The Hijacking of American History," U. S. News and World Report, Nov. 14, 1994, 36.
17 Linda S. Page, Making the Grade: What Goals 2000 Means to Our Schools (Colorado
Springs, I995), 8, Io.
18 Washington Times, Feb. 2i, I995.

19 Ron Robinson, president, Young America's Foundation, to "My Fellow American,"
undated but received Oct. 5, I994.
ERA 3: REVOLUTION AND THE NEW NATION (1754-1820S) Identify and analyze the fundamental contradictions
chattel slavery and the ideals expressed in the
Students Should Be Able To: formulating sound arguments in response to such questio
t00 i; if~l0B 0 Demonstratetundrstanding; of iithe 0principles~f articulated inX the0: DIlaation i: ii claimed by the Declar
: 5-12 i:E; xp: itlheiininrg:soulthercesimajo. rt[iMdeasarshalepressed

n: thleofDecl4anteceden~t
aration; SoftciIfnrcumstances]
dependene Sand.f i: the* Drawforefront
evidenceoffromthe bistruggl
ographieefors to iexami
ne the li
ievijdiae~nce
ndependence
a: :fff 0 :t; t0: of dIndependnce Aby: i :0i:S f t0: $f iiff f i0 :i i AX fifE were denied to those held in sl
PaineMryOi arn n bnzrMcnoh
7-12 Demonstrating the ffndamental contradictions between the ideals expressed in e, Mercy Otis Warren, and Ebenezer MacIntosh.
the D eclaration of Independence and the tealities of chattel slavery. [IConsidr Grades 9-12 Examples of student achievement of Standard IB include:
multiple perspectives]. ~~~~~~~~Compare the ideas of the Declaration of Independence with those of John
| 9-12 Drawing upon the principles in the Declaration of Indepeindenc to construct a Locke in Two Treatises on Government. How are they different? Similar? Why
Xsound historical argument regarding 0whether it justified American indepen- does Jefferson use the phrase "the pursuit of happiness instead of "property"?
0 :i:0: S;iXf: deftec. [Interrogte
datad10ti[I0n;terrogate
0 0f ;0t ff 0hi0Cstori; ;i;icali i dade efro
dence. Xhi~5stoi0Xrcd:: : SXSW
:ta].seteptt Xrs:Step: : yruto: : apna: X : : XX : What did Jefferson mean by "the pursuit of happiness"?
9 ; -2i Combating the SDeclikition of 1nipe~ndenice wiwthi theiiFrench DieclaratI06n of the0
9-12Comarin th Decaraionof Idepndene wth te Fenc Decaraion f te * Draw upon the principles in the Declaration of Independence to construct a
Riimmportance
ght of0 toManethe~andspreaiCitd~izofenconsti
and cltutinstrucl
ng an argument
r soundpedn.historical argument regarding whether or not it justified American indeonal tdemocraci
es in theeaati19thngandthei210th
centuries. tCompare and contrast diffring sets of ideasl.
Compare and evaluate the arguments in letters, speeches, and other documents
Grades 5-6 Examples of student achievement of Standard I B include: from advocates and opponents of slavery from differe
* Define the terms in the Declaration of Independence, including "all men," "cre- reflecting their perspectives on the ideals of the
, Define the terms in the Declaration of Independence, including "all men," "cre- H ow do pro-slavery Americans justify t
ated equal," "endowed by their Creator," "unalienable rights," "life, liberty, and of inalienable rights to freedom? How di
the pursuit of happiness," "just powers," and "consent of the governed." ideals to obtain their freedom?
* Explain why Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, what its signers Compare the Declaration of Independ
risked in putting their names to the document, and what its consequences were Rights of Man and Citizen, and constru
for the newly declared nation. their importance to the spread of constitutional democ
* Draw evidence from books such as Fourth of July Story by Alice Dalgliesh, and centuries. How have the ideas that inspired t
Give Us Liberty: The Story of the Declaration of Independence by Helen Peterson influenced the 20th-century revolutions in Me
to explain the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Vietnam? How have Americans viewed these modern
Grades 7-8 Examples of student achievement of Standard I B include: Signing the Declaration
* Explain the major principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence includ- of Independence, Dover
ing the basic rights of all people; the source of those rights; the purpose of gov- Publications
ernment; the source of its just powers in the consent of the governed; and the
right of the people to alter or abolish a government "destructive of those ends."
* Explain the historical antecedents of the Declaration of Independence in key

ideas of Enlightenment thought; in traditions of English common law, the
English Bill of Rights, and the Glorious Revolution; and in the traditions of natural law and the Judeo-Christian heritage which hold all persons to be of equal
worth before God and before the state.
FIGURE II
"Standard i," standards related to the understanding of the Declaration of Independence, f

States History: Exploring the American Experience, Grade 5-12, Expanded Edition (Los Ang
Many who attacked the history standards showed no evidence that they had
read the books themselves, and most showed little acquaintance with the historical scholarship of this generation (or even that of previous generations).
Criticisms of the History Standards

More important than the sound-bite debates are several lines of criticism, some from reputable historians, that deserve greater consideration.
Among sober historians and educators who criticized the U. S. history standards, almost none were early Americanists.20 For some historians, the idea of
"a great convergence" of Europeans, Africans, and American Indians following the Columbian voyages is a misleading notion that undermines the primacy of European ideas and institutions in the shaping of American culture.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., whose public remarks on the Cheney-initiated attacks
were, in his words, "an unqualified rejection of Cheney-type attacks," is troubled "by the implication that American society was formed equally by three
cultures in convergence." Agreeing that "there were convergence, modification and enrichment," Schlesinger emphasizes that "the leading American
ideas-democracy, representative government, freedoms of speech and the
press, human rights, women's rights, religious toleration and so on-are
peculiarly European in their origin."21 Diane Ravitch, an assistant secretary of
education during Bush's presidency, also believes that the concept of convergence in Era i (with a terminal date of i620) "suggests that Western European
democratic ideas had no more nor less impact on the nation than Native
American culture or African culture." For Ravitch, this "downgrade[s] the
west," with the result that "the struggle for democracy becomes a minor
theme in American history rather than the central theme."22
These criticisms, which reflect a concern that the rise of democracy in
the West should be the backbone of essential understandings for history in
the schools, did not sufficiently take into account the standards articulated
for Era 2 (1585-1763). As I pointed out in a letter to Schlesinger, later relayed

20 Two exceptions are Washburn and McDonald. In their published comments, however, neither criticized the early American sections of the standards except for McDonald's generalized taunt
that in "the portions that deal with my own area of expertise-the Revolution, the Founding, and
the early Republic-the display of ignorance is awesome. I count on page 70 alone, introducing 'Era
3: Revolution and the New Nation,' nine major errors, not to mention a total lack of understanding
or familiarity with modern scholarship," in "National Standards for United States History," 41.
McDonald submits that such ignorance and unfamiliarity with modern scholarship is explained by
the fact that the task of writing history standards "fell into the hands of (or was captured by) a band
of left-wing zealots and vocal faddists" (p. 42). In a radio debate, McDonald specified at my request
several of the "nine major errors" he found in the introductory page for Era 3. He averred that two
major errors are that the Revolution "severed the colonial relationship with England" and that "it
called into question long-established social and political relationships-between master and slave,
man and woman, upper class and lower class, officeholder and constituent, and even parent and
child." I have not been able to obtain from McDonald his identification of the other seven "major
errors"; The O'Leary/Kamber Report, No. I43, Mar. 5, i996.

21 Schlesinger to Nash, Mar. 4, I995.
22 Ravitch to Nash, Jan. 30, I995.
to Ravitch, Era 2 deals overwhelmingly with European political, economic,

and religious institutions as they were brought to North America and
reshaped there by new conditions, including African slavery and Indian relations.23 Certainly no one involved in constructing or reviewing the standards
made a decision to downgrade the West. Speaking for the scores of historians
and teachers involved, I maintained that the study of all three populations
converging in the Americas is
not at all intended to argue that European, American Indian, and
African cultural forms had equal influence on the formation of
colonial American society. . . . It is important for students to
grasp at the beginning of their study of American history that
both American Indian and African societies, as well as European,
were complex and changing in the early modern period. Despite
scholarly advances of the past half-century, we are still required,
unfortunately, to challenge dog-eared stereotypes about American
Indians existing in tribal stasis when Europeans arrived or about
Africans inhabiting a continent of primeval jungle and social
chaos. It is equally important for students to understand that
Europeans did not simply arise one bright morning and sail off
into the Atlantic but that the European discovery of America was
a consequence of patterns of development that reach back into the
medieval period. These are the simple messages that the standards
in Era i are meant to convey.24
Also troubled with the notion of cultural convergence is John Patrick

Diggins, whose position, though sharing some ground with Schlesinger's and
Ravitch's, is far more extreme. Like Schlesinger and Ravitch, Diggins believes
that schoolchildren should focus on the advent of political freedom in the
West but for him almost to the exclusion of everything else. He argues that
the notion of interacting societies not only detracts from an emphasis on
Western values transported to North America but is inherently bankrupt.
Even in Central and South America, where the greatest interpenetration of
European and Indian societies occurred, Diggins insists that "the latest scholarship indicates that between Spanish conquistadors and Mesoamericanos
there was no 'convergence,"' barred by "profound differences . .. not only in
language and communication but in concepts of time and history and attitudes toward death. The three cultures offered by NHS did not so much converge as bypass one another by means of exclusionary classifications and tragic
misperceptions." Diggins allows that the culture of West Africans and indige-
nous people might appropriately be studied' in anthropology classes but holds

that such exotic cultural understanding "may have no bearing on teaching students how to think historically" because African and Native American cultures had nothing to do with the unfolding of American history. The
23 Nash to Schlesinger, Apr. i8, I995-
24 Ibid.
convergence notion, he argues, sets students to "studying past cultures whose
people reproduced their own bondage to rites and rituals."25

Diggins's view of African and American Indian cultures frozen in amber
and their irrelevance to the development of colonial society emphatically
rejects the idea of a shared history of group interaction. This takes us back
more than a century. It ignores a mountain of scholarship over recent
decades demonstrating the profound biological, epidemiological, and environmental results of the meetings of peoples from three parts of the world;
the extensive intermingling of genetic pools, especially in Iberian America
and the Caribbean; the far-reaching impact of trade and military conflict or
alliance; and the three-way cultural exchanges in foodways, aesthetics, music,
pharmacopeia, linguistics, and many other areas of human activity. All textbooks published in recent years, at both the precollegiate and the college levels, take account in various degrees of the new scholarship on how
dynamically African and Indian societies were changing on the advent of
European colonization and how all three societies were transformed by convergence in the Americas. So does the Educational Testing Service in regularly redesigning its Advanced Placement tests. So does the framework of the
National Assessment of Educational Progress's 1994 U. S. History Consensus
Project.26 Diggins is out of touch with modern scholarship and dismissive of
the history thinking skills that urge teachers to broach various interpretations
and encourage students to understand differing perspectives on the part of
people whose history is under study. If teachers accept Diggins's claim that
historical thinking is impeded by attempts to understand Indian and African
societies on the eve of European contact and thereafter, Americans will be
accepting eurocentric approaches discredited decades ago.
A second criticism concerns what is perceived as a romanticized view of
African and Indian peoples and a corresponding hypercritical view of
Europeans as invaders, marauders, and exploiters.27 "There is a persistent
strain throughout the standards," writes Ravitch, "that Europeans (whites)
are racist, hostile to 'the other,' exploitive of the environment, greedy, individualistic, etc. as compared to Native Americans and Africans, who are
communal and in harmony with the environment. This is overdone. This is
not a matter of solid scholarship as much as it is a matter of interpretation
and tone." Schlesinger objects that the absence of any mention of slavery in
precontact Africa "as a homebred African phenomenon" would lead "students to believe that it must have been one more crime of Europe."28 Many
25 Diggins, "The National History Standards," American Scholar, 64 (I995), 50I, 502.
26 NAEP administers its national test in U. S. History for 4th-, 8th-, and I2th-grade students each year. In the first era of American history, students are tested on "Three Worlds and
Their Meeting in the Americas (Beginnings to i607)."
27 Leo assured readers that the U. S. History Standards "are about 65 percent Indian," in
"Hijacking of American History," 36. Diggins avers that "the NHS is awash in Indian lore," in
"National History Standards," 504.

28 Ravitch to Nash, Jan. 30, I995; Schlesinger to Nash, Mar. 4, I995. In illustrative classroom activities that accompany the World History Standards, attention to slavery in ancient
Mesopotamia and China, in the early Muslim empire, in the medieval economies of African,
critics took particular offense that there is no reference to Aztec human sacrifice, which they believe should be specifically called to the attention of students. Diggins, carrying Western triumphalism to a high pitch, deplores the
absence of "any mention of tribal massacres, enslavement of captives, starvation, ritual sacrifice, illiteracy, the absence of the plow, the wheel, and a tradition of political rights, genital mutilation, female infanticide, death by
stoning for being unfaithful-in short, the brutal, degraded status of women
and the complete acceptance of patriarchal domination as part of the natural
order of things."29 Many historians may believe that, minus the references to
the plow and the wheel, the passage quoted above could just as well describe
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Constructed at this level of specificity, the standards would fill a hefty textbook rather than a curricular guide.
If they treated such topics as death by stoning, starvation, and the enslavement of captives, for example, then the responsible way to promote historical
literacy would be to encourage students to compare the European sentence
peine forte et dure with stoning in non-European societies, to compare recur

rent starvation in seventeenth-century France or nineteenth-century Ireland
with starvation elsewhere, to compare the common enslavement of Indian
captives in both the Pequot War of i637 and the Carolina Indian wars of the
late seventeenth century with Iroquois-Huron wars (a comparison that would
show that Indians generally adopted captives into their societies rather than
transporting them as chattel property or simply slaughtering them as the
English did)-or all these historical situations.
Revising the National History Standards
In revising the National History Standards on the basis of its own assessment of various criticisms and in response to the valuable recommendations
of the Council for Basic Education (CBE) review panel appointed in June
1995 to examine the standards and the controversy over them, NCHS made
changes in Era i that satisfied Ravitch, Schlesinger, and most other critics.30
New material highlights important characteristics of European, African, and
Native American societies and encourages students to understand the
dynamic changes occurring in each of them on the eve of contact. Greater
attention is given to "how the emerging capitalist economy [of western
Europe] transformed agricultural production, manufacturing, and the uses of
Islamic, and Asian societies, and in Africa is given; National Standards for World History, 53, 57,
I38, I90-93.
29 Diggins, "National History Standards," 503.

30 National Center for History in the Schools, N\ational Sta
(Los Angeles, i996). The Council for Basic Education, founded after World War II to improve
precollegiate education and known as a highly professional organization with moderate
Republican leadership, agreed to organize a blue-ribbon commission with funding from the Pew
Charitable Trusts, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and
Spencer Foundation. While rehearsing many of their criticisms of the original standards,
Ravitch and Schlesinger supported the new edition in an op-ed essay, "The New Improved
History Standards," Wall Street Journal, Apr. 3, I995.
labor." References to education and literacy and attention to "the causes and
consequences of European Crusades in Iberia and . . . connections between
the Christian crusading tradition and European overseas exploration," as

well as to the Reformation, provide a sturdier base from which students may
proceed to learn about European colonization in the Americas.31 By the
same token, the section on precontact Africa of the World History Standards
adds elements on "the varying responses of African states to early European
trading and raiding on the Atlantic African coast" and, of more importance
to critics, a component on the "varieties of slavery in Western Africa and the
economic importance of the trans-Saharan slave trade in the i5th and i6th
centuries." Added to the section on pre-Columbian societies in the Americas
is an element exploring "the rise and decline of the Mississippian moundbuilding society."32
Also improving Era i, in response to an important CBE recommendation, is a culminating section urging students to think comparatively about
the worlds of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans in such areas as
political systems, including "concepts of political authority, civic values, and
the organization and practice of government"; social organization, including
"population levels, urbanization, family structure, and modes of communication"; economic systems; and "dominant ideas and values, including religious belief and practice, gender roles, and attitudes toward nature. 33
It is true that American historical scholarship through much of this century, and especially in the last third of the century, has been introspective,
self-critical, and decidedly reformist, juxtaposing the actual practices of the
nation-uncovered in unprecedented detail through community studies,
quantitative analysis, and deeply empirical studies-with the lofty founding
principles. In the popular press, this has led to invoking "historical revisionism" as a snarling curse phrase with calls from politicians such as Newt
Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, and Robert Dole for a return to the soothing certitudes of the old-fashioned history that they imagine existed until the i96os.
More soberly, for historians such as David M. Kennedy, who finds laughable
and lamentable the attack on revisionism itself, the history standards have "a
decidedly modern" tone that "is one of contestation and struggle without
end, a noisy cacophony of colliding cultures and perpetual competition for
standing, justice, power, and preferment. Hubbub and clamor, not harmony
and consensus, are the sounds that emanate from this document. In this,
too, the Standards is unmistakably born of its time. "34
31 In the revised World History Standards, a new element further strengthened students'
understanding of the English background to colonial American institutional development, recommending analysis of "the significance of developments in medieval English legal and constitutional practice and their importance for modern democratic thought and institutions";
National Center for History in the Schools, National Standards for History, Basic Edition, i68.
32 National Standards for History, Basic Edition, 77-78.
33 Ibid, 78.
34 Kennedy, "A Vexed and Troubled People," History Teacher, 28 (I995), 4I9-20.
Most of those whose scholarship was under attack in the media barrage
against the history standards (though it took some time for historians to understand that the attacks on the National Standards for U. S. History were indictments of modern historical scholarship as well as an assault on a particular
curricular guideline) might agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson's question, raised
in the introduction to Era 4 on "Expansion and Reform, i8oo-I86I": "What is
man born for but to be a reformer?"35 As Emerson meant to stiffen the sinews
of antebellum reformers, the work of late twentieth-century historians similarly
means to prick the nation's conscience while serving as an antidote to the flagwaving, chest-thumping self-congratulatory history that was the standard fare of
textbooks for generations. A casual examination of the contents of the Quarterly
over the last forty years shows that the field's flagship journal has published an
array of new evidence that the early American world was far more raw, exploitative, unequal, and turbulent than previously recognized.
This astringent reevaluation of American history, including an attempt to
remedy the malign neglect or vicious treatment of African and Native
American history, does tend to romanticize those previously denigrated or to
overlook the dark side of peoples previously ignored while seeming to reserve
most criticism for the European colonizers. This reflects something of the
intellectual culture of the current generation of teachers who have tried to
transcend the pious, drilled-in history of earlier decades. While working to
analyze American institutions and practices in a more penetrating way, they
have attempted to help students appreciate and recognize the achievements and
struggles of minorities and nonwestern peoples. The initial version of the
National History Standards shares this tendency to some extent. As thesis leads
to antithesis and then to synthesis, however, self-correction in a mature profession is certainly taking place. In recent scholarly work on Pleistocene mammal
destruction, Iroquois expansionism, and the idea of an enslaved "AfricanAmerican community" we can see important examples of this.
Some adjustments to the first two eras respond to these criticisms. Added to
the introductory statement for Era 2, "Colonization and Settlement," and to the
first standard on the early arrival of Europeans and Africans is the important matter of "Why the Americas attracted Europeans" along with the corollary question
of how well they succeeded in seeking their future on the other side of the
Atlantic. Additions to the revised standards urge the study of "the seeds of public
education in the New England colonies and how literacy and education differed
between New England and southern colonies." Another new element recommends exploration of "how the mobility and material success of many colonists
encouraged the development of a consumer society and led to the imitation of
English culture." As noted above, the standard on precontact western Africa now
incorporates slavery and the slave trade before the advent of the transatlantic slave
trade. All of these changes, though not bulking very large in the units on the first
two eras, are important adjustments and speak to the continuing quest for balance
in constructing guidelines for history instruction in the schools.36
35 National Standards for U. S. History, Basic Edition, 92.
36 Ibid., 8i, 83. The CBE report mistakenly reported that the standards recommending the
study of "family life, gender roles, and women's rights in colonial North America" "lapses into a
Among criticisms that the project leaders did not find worthy, one concerns literacy. Both Ravitch and Schlesinger consider it important to play up
European literacy, to contrast it with illiteracy in precontact Africa and the
pre-Columbian Americas, and to emphasize that literacy "is critical for technological, cultural development" and proof of "the superior dynamism of
Europe."37 Certainly, literacy was an important element in the growth of the
economy, the spread of urbanization, and the rise of technological and scientific innovations in Europe in the early modern period, but the contrast in economic growth and technological development between Europe on the one
hand and Africa and the Americas on the other is explained by a wide range of
factors. Literacy, in fact, was more widespread in the Middle East and North
Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than in Europe, yet Europe
underwent more rapid economic growth in the sixteenth century. (Arabic was
widely used in political administration, trade, and scholarship in West Africa,
particularly in Sudanic West Africa, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.)
The standards writers agree that differences in economic growth in various
parts of the world raise intriguing and challenging questions for students to
consider, though the best context for such investigations would be world history rather than United States history. Moreover, the issue here is far more
complex than distinguishing between a literate Europe and a nonliterate Africa
or Native America-an exercise leading toward a kind of cultural crowing akin
to Eurocentrism of the past or Afrocentrism of the present.38
A third criticism concerns the subject of historical agency. In conservative
circles, the "great man theory of history" is embraced as enthusiastically as
when Thomas Carlyle wrote his famous words, now inscribed in the Great
Hall of the Library of Congress, that "history is but the biography of great
men." The National History Standards tries to strike a balance between traditional political history that stresses great leaders (who, children have tradition-
ally learned, set everything in motion), and the new social history that
attributes agency to ordinary people who were more than clay in the hands of
the potters at the top. Perhaps Cheney's most effective ploy was to claim that
the history standards were banishing nearly every white male from the national
pantheon-Washington, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, Alexander
Graham Bell, Albert Einstein, Robert E. Lee, Daniel Webster, Paul Revere,
and Henry Clay.39 Writing just after Cheney's screed, Leo attacked "the PC
monolithic treatment of women" by failing "to acknowledge the varying circumstances and cultures of women and in fact suggests a stereotyped view of women," in History in the Making: An
Independent Review of the Voluntary National History Standards (Washington, D. C., i996), i9.
The CBE report inadvertently overlooks the specific components of the standards stated above
that called for explaining "how and why family and community life differed in various regions of
colonial North America" and for analyzing "gender roles in different regions of colonial North
America"; National Standards for United States History, 54 (emphasis added).
37 Ravitch to Nash, Jan. 30, I995; Schlesinger to Nash, Mar. 4, I995.
38 Utilizing the comments of Ross Dunn, coordinator of the World History Standards, I
made these points in a letter to Schlesinger, Apr. I8, I995.
39 In a radio debate with the author, Oct. 26, I994, after calling the National History
Standards "politically correct to a fare-thee-well," Cheney defined political correctness, after
much hesitation, as the "undervaluing of white males." An actual count of names mentioned in
attack on heroism." Targeting the Smithsonian Institution (he would shortly

turn to the history standards), he lambasted the "PC canon [by which] heroism in general and military heroism in particular are highly suspect.... PCers
tend to see heroism as a form of historical elitism. It seems unfair that a few
historical figures are remembered and glorified while almost all others are forgotten."40
The history standards in no way banish either heroism or leadership. In

general statements about essential understandings, the guidelines make no pretense of evoking particular names as if they were textbooks. They do explicitly
call for young learners to "compare how early colonies were established and
governed" (p. 58); compare "the arguments advanced by defenders and opponents of the new imperial policy on the traditional rights of English people
and the legitimacy of asking the colonies to pay a share of the costs of empire"
(p. 72); analyze "the character and roles of the military, political, and diplomatic leaders who helped forged the American victory [over the British]" (p.
76); explain "the contributions of African American leaders in the early republic" (p. 8o); assess "the accomplishments and failures of the Continental
Congress" (p. 82); analyze "the alternative plans considered by the delegates
and the major compromises agreed upon to secure the approval of the
Constitution" (p. 84); compare "the leaders and the social and economic composition of each party [in the development of the first American party system]"
(p. 88); appraise "the significance of John Marshall's precedent-setting decisions in establishing the Supreme Court as an independent and equal branch
of the U. S. government" (p. 90); and so forth.
At the same time, the scores of teachers and scholars who developed the
standards consciously tried to temper the great man theory of history. In the
K-4 guidelines, one standard calls for an "understanding of ordinary people
who have exemplified values and principles of American democracy," and
another urges "understanding of the movements of large groups of people into
their [students'] own and other states in the U. S. now and long ago."41 Both
standards seem entirely appropriate-indeed essential-in a democratic society
where we hope for the active participation of students in politics and community affairs. Carrying this belief further, the authors of the guidelines constructed history thinking skills that among other things stress the need to
"consider multiple perspectives of various peoples in the past by demonstrating
their differing motives, beliefs, interests, hopes, and fears" and also to examine
"the importance of the individual in history" and "the influence of ideas, human
interests, and beliefs. "42 This is a far cry from what Diggins describes as
"romantically unexamined assumptions about agency from below" that he
believes is the hallmark of my scholarship and hence the governing spirit of the
National History Standards that he insists are primarily my handiwork.43
the hundreds of suggested classroom activities accompanying the history standards shows that
more than 8o% are those of white males.
40 Leo, "The PC Attack on Heroism," U. S. News and World Report., Oct. 3I, I994, 36.
41 National Standards for History for Grades K-4, 50, 55.
42 NSUSH, 27 (emphasis added).
43 Diggins, "National History Standards," 498.
6oo WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
None of the CBE review panelists challenged the notion that schoolchildren should consider the role of ordinary people in the making of the
American economy, the American political system, the American war-making
capacity, or American religion. No objections were raised to the possibility that
historical agency exists below the uppermost layer of society. The CBE panelists
did recommend explicit mention of Washington and Jefferson in the standards,
partly as a way of putting the bean-counting issue to rest. Hence, the revised
standards change one element to read "Appraise George Washington's military
and political leadership in conducting the Revolutionary War," which, while it
draws attention to Washington in particular, diverts attention from other "military, political, and diplomatic leaders" as suggested in the first version. Another
revision replaces "explain the development of the two-party system, although
political factions were widely deplored" with "explain the principles and issues
that prompted Thomas Jefferson to organize an opposition party."44
The controversies over the National History Standards seem to be abating
as this article is written, at least in the popular media, but the pivotal issues
involved will not go away because they cut to the heart of why we study history,
how we study it, and how our reinterpretations of the past reflect contemporary
concerns, ideas, and sensibilities. It is hard to imagine that another twenty years
of scholarship published in the William and Mary Quarterly and another shelfful of books published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History
and Culture will not oblige historians to revise another set of national history
standards. For now, I am satisfied that the standards reflect this generation's
scholarship in a form and at a level appropriate to precollegiate education.
Beyond the controversy, what will be remembered and what will count in
the long run is the collaboration that occurred between teachers from every
level in the schools and historians from the colleges and universities. This
unprecedented joint effort, both in the construction of the standards and in
the airing of controversies surrounding them, represents an important step in
connecting two communities of history educators who have been separated for
many decades by a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon. Supported by the
Rockefeller Foundation, the Organization of American Historians has sponsored dozens of meetings at colleges around the nation where teachers of history at all levels of education have come together for a few hours, a day, or a
weekend. They have examined the history standards, discussed the controversies, and-most important-talked history. Many participants report that
these meetings have been mutually satisfying when the gap between school
and college teachers gives way to common concerns about teaching history.
Something can be said for the annealing effect of a controversy that called
into question the striking scholarship of the last generation and even the
practice of history writing as a continuing debate about the past.
44 NSUSH, 76; National Standards for History, Basic Edition, 87, 90.

Early American History and The National History Standards

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Early American History and the National History Standards

Author(s): Gary B. Nash

Notes and Documents

The National History Standards have their origin in the National

580 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Education Standards appointed by Congress in January I992. Among the

NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS 581

In the debate by sound-bite over the National History Standards, I was

582 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

AHA; Douglas Greenberg, Carl Degler, Edmund S. Morgan, Mary Beth

The Treatment of Early American History in the National History Standards

Historical comprehension, including the ability . . . to identify the

NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS 583

of human experience and multiple causes in analyses of historical

584 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Following what is nearly standardized periodization in the textbooks,

an appreciation of these pre-I492 societies will dispel stereotyped images of

NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS 585

population growth, economic development, British imperial policy, religious

7 NCHS, Lessons from History, 68.

586 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Independence and the realities of chattel slavery."8 Both recommend study of

the differing perspectives and wartime roles of enslaved Africans and

1. Forming a national government

Only by encouraging close analysis of the Shaysite movement and, in

NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS 587

father: military leader of the Revolution, political leader after ratification of

-understanding of ordinary people who have exemplified values

-understanding of historical figures who have exemplified values

588 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

14 Rush Limbaugh, electronic transcript of television show, Oct. 28, 1994.

NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS 589

Students Should Be Able To:

StatesConsin a nd th new government AM estblihed d by: 4

82,. e by: 86,88.

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"StaDardon"strandrsrlaetote understanding of the Uurneso h ilo

Amrcanc Exeinebrdey-: xadd dto LsAnee,[94)

590 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

for Independence? Warren "is obviously included so the founders of the

fits right in as a sort of early Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin." 16

America's Foundation took up the baton. Gary Bauer's Family Research

disciplinary subjects stand as a centerpiece-used the National History

Department of Education. Focus on the Family, urging the abolition of the

feminism and homosexuality. . You see, the NEA [National Education

18 Washington Times, Feb. 2i, I995.

undated but received Oct. 5, I994.

: 5-12 i:E; xp: itlheiininrg:soulthercesimajo. rt[iMdeasarshalepressed

PaineMryOi arn n bnzrMcnoh

* Explain the historical antecedents of the Declaration of Independence in key

"Standard i," standards related to the understanding of the Declaration of Independence, f

592 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Criticisms of the History Standards

for Era 2 (1585-1763). As I pointed out in a letter to Schlesinger, later relayed

errors"; The O'Leary/Kamber Report, No. I43, Mar. 5, i996.

NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS 593

to Ravitch, Era 2 deals overwhelmingly with European political, economic,

Also troubled with the notion of cultural convergence is John Patrick

nous people might appropriately be studied' in anthropology classes but holds

594 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

convergence notion, he argues, sets students to "studying past cultures whose

people reproduced their own bondage to rites and rituals."25

"National History Standards," 504.

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