“Balancing” the Books

The Arkansas State Capitol. Stuart Seeger/Flickr/CC BY 2.0

I generally see government officials’ interest in history in the same way that I see broader public engagement with it—as a good thing. Every year, the National Humanities Alliance sends a contingent of humanists and humanities supporters to Capitol Hill to inform and update legislators about the activities of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, programs in international education, and other humanities-related work. We encourage support for these vital organizations and look forward to meetings with staff of members on both sides of the aisle whose “boss” (the preferred term on the Hill) has a reputation as an avid reader of history. We might disagree on specific issues—including historical interpretations and the quality of different books—but I appreciate the give-and-take with our discipline and the acknowledgment that history and historical thinking are important elements within public culture.

But any healthy interest that government officials have in history should not translate into attempts to dictate the content of what scholars teach in the classroom or learn from the sources. The AHA recently collaborated with historians in Texas to help the state’s board of education reject a deeply flawed textbook whose disdain for facts complemented—indeed facilitated—its generally racist demeanor. A few years ago, we denounced Virginia’s use (quickly discontinued) of a fourth-grade textbook that pointed to thousands of African Americans purportedly volunteering to help defend the Confederacy. In both cases, the texts were prepared without the participation of professional historians. In too many states, decisions about what is taught in history classrooms are made by nonprofessionals whose fealty is to an ideology rather than to sound disciplinary practice. We have input only when we insist on it.

Hence, our letter to the governor of Arkansas in April, sent after a legislator introduced the following amendment to the state’s public education code:

6-16-149. Prohibited course materials.

A public school district or an open-­enrollment public charter school shall not include in its curriculum or course materials for a class or program of study any book or other material:

(1) Authored by Howard Zinn from the years 1959 through 2010; and

(2) Concerning the books or other materials under subdivision (1) of this section.

At the urging of more practical censors, the legislator added this qualifier three weeks later:

(b) A public school district or an open-­enrollment public charter school that includes a book or other material under subsection (a) of this section in its curriculum or other course materials shall present the book or other material in a balanced manner that considers other opinions and points of view.

This might seem reasonable. But to me it smacks of a double standard: why require balance for some assigned historical materials but not others? Moreover, the concept of “balance” in this context is itself complex and controversial, and I will leave an extended discussion of it to a future column. Various controversies, from creationism (as a “point of view” appropriate to public school science education) to the stubborn persistence of discredited (and racist) views of slavery and Reconstruction point to the limitations of “balance” as a workable approach to controversial issues in any context. History education should teach students the difference between simplistic dichotomies and complex variation in perspective.

This is not the first time the AHA has encountered unqualified state officials presuming to assess the quality of historical scholarship. As my letter to Governor Hutchinson states, the AHA will provide any state commission, legislature, education department, or other entity with the names of qualified historians to act as peer reviewers for any aspect of a history curriculum. The AHA does not stand to gain materially from such advice. What prompts us to act is not profit but the 1889 congressional charter that established our organization “for the promotion of historical study.” We owe it to our students and members, to the taxpayers, and to future citizens to provide professional oversight of our discipline.