Eric Foner on Understanding Our History | Big Think

Eric Foner on Understanding Our History

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The author says it is in our best interest to be well-acquainted with our history and outlines a few ways to achieve this in our schools.

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Eric Foner:

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University, is the author of numerous works on American history, including Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; and The Story of American Freedom, and Our Lincoln. He has served as president of both the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association, and has been named Scholar of the Year by the New York Council for the Humanities.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What’s the proper role of history in society?

Foner: We historians always feel the people don’t know enough history. That’s part of our occupational definition, that we need to teach more history. We’re in a funny position now socially in terms of our concept or understanding of history. On the one hand, history is fairly popular, in a way. There are history books on the bestseller list, people like Doris Goodwin, David McCullough, James McPherson, they write books which are widely read outside the academic world, and that’s of course all to the good. People watch the History Channel on TV. They go to historical battlefield sites and museums. On the other hand, those, the popular interest in history seems to be in a very narrow part of American history. The Civil War, the American Revolution, great figures of history, and there seems to be a disconnect, in a sense, between the way history’s being written in the academic world, which tends to focus nowadays on ordinary Americans, on groups which have tended to be neglected in the past, African-Americans, women, Hispanics. You don’t see books about Hispanic migrant workers on the bestseller list, although historians are studying them. You don’t see books about women’s struggle for the vote on the bestseller list. You see books about great political white leaders, you see books about Civil War battles, you know. So, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think it creates a rater limited view of the broad sweep of American history and a very diverse cast of characters in American History. Knowing history doesn’t tell you what you should do in the present. You can study the history of immigration, as we should, and immigration policy. That doesn’t tell you what our policy about immigration ought to be in the year 2008 or 2009, but if you don’t know that history, you are in a great disadvantage in thinking about the present. You don’t know what has been tried in the past, what has worked, what hasn’t worked. You’re like a person with amnesia. You can go along your life with amnesia, but what kind of life is that? You have no idea where you’ve been, where you’re coming from. So, as a society, we have a certain amnesia about many parts of our history, and I don't think that’s necessarily good.

Question: What educational steps can be taken to give history a makeover?

Foner: One of the numerous unfortunate results of the “No Child Left Behind” Law is that it has forced schools to put all their emphasis on reading and [math] and writing and math tests, because that’s how they judge. Now, I certainly believe young people ought to be able to read and write and know math, but I speak to teachers from around the country, I lecture to them, and history teachers are always saying history is becoming more and more of a luxury in schools because schools are tested and judged and funded on the basis of these tests that have nothing to do with history. So, if you teach history, you’re kind of taking time away from these other subjects which are, which is where your standing is going to come from. So, in a way, it’s the more elite schools that are spending the time teaching history, the private schools, the really upscale public schools, whereas the schools where many lower class students are, schools in trouble find that history is something they can’t even afford to spend time on. So, that, I think is very unfortunate. There’s less history being taught in schools now than there used to be, and that is really something I think that needs to be reversed.

Question: What are the greatest misconceptions Americans have about their history?

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