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JackSpratts · 06-07-04, 03:03 PM

Review

HISTORY LESSONS
How Textbooks From Around the World Portray U.S. History.
By Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward.
404 pp. The New Press. $26.95.

'History Lessons': Goodbye, Columbus
Daniel Swift

HAD you gone to high school in Norway, your textbook would have taught you Columbus was old news: the most important arrival in America was the Viking Leif Ericson's in the early 10th century. If, on the other hand, you'd spent your teenage years in Cuba, you'd have learned that when Columbus discovered Cuba, he thought it was the promised land and didn't want to go any farther. These and other extracts in ''History Lessons: How Textbooks From Around the World Portray U.S. History'' tell us two things: historical narratives are biased and untrustworthy; and America's impact on the world cannot be underestimated.

Interesting history is interested history, so the secondary school texts excerpted here generally relate international events as they reflect local concerns. French textbooks recount the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 through the prism of growing nationalism in their own troublesome colony, Algeria. Caribbean textbooks are sugar-centric, gauging the effects of the Monroe Doctrine and the Great Depression on sugar prices. The Canadians, meanwhile, rarely miss an opportunity to insert their own countrymen into global events: ''the sky above Juno Beach was to be protected by R.A.F. bombers, many of which were flown by Canadian bomber crews''; ''most Canadians are unaware of the crucial role Canada played in the development of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.''

Much entertainment is to be found in what's excluded and included. An excerpt from a British textbook on the American Revolution snootily refers to ''the colonies'' -- as in, ''the colonies did not have uniforms, men or money'' -- and notes that Tom Paine, the author of ''Common Sense'' and godfather of America, ''earned a living first as a maker of ladies' underwear.'' Compare that coy little fact to the reverential treatment of Paine in American textbooks like ''A People and a Nation'' (where Paine is ''a radical English printer'' who called ''stirringly for independence'') or ''The Great Republic'' (where he ''belonged to no country'' and ''lived by his pen.'')

Dana Lindaman, a graduate student at Harvard, and Kyle Ward, an assistant professor of history and political science at Vincennes University, assert that ''History Lessons'' is a comparative study offering a corrective to the ''isolationist tendency'' of American textbooks. ''If we wish to move beyond judgment and toward understanding, we must honestly consider other perspectives,'' they write, making the now ubiquitous gesture to Sept. 11.

But their brief editorial introductions to the excerpts are anything but honest. Lindaman and Ward reductively describe 15th- and 16th-century exploration as motivated by ''the European desire for riches during the Renaissance period''; the profit margin was certainly on Columbus's mind, but as a Jamaican textbook notes, the first waves of European colonists came to convert as well as plunder. The final section of ''History Lessons'' quotes a French textbook on ''A New World Order'': Lindaman and Ward's description of France as ''an imperial power eclipsed by the United States after WWI,'' which ''has struggled with the reality of a U.S.-dominated world'' shades into the worst of lazy American anti-French sentiment.

Even as they have produced a book that suggests all tellings of history are biased, the editors refuse to examine their own preconceptions. Consider the Spanish-American war: the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Bay in 1898 prompted American intervention in the Spanish-Cuban War and eventual occupation of Cuba. American textbooks conventionally describe the explosion as either a Spanish attack or an accident; a Cuban textbook quoted here insists the Americans blew up their own boat in order to justify their invasion. The excerpt is introduced with a brief note: ''No history book of this scope is published in Cuba without the government's explicit approval. Of particular interest is the conspiracy theory of the U.S.S. Maine's explosion.''

In treating the Cuban argument so offhandedly, Lindaman and Ward diminish the valuable lessons of their own shocking and fascinating book. A central motif in the excerpts is American foul play. A Saudi Arabian textbook suggests that all American intervention in the Middle East -- peace plans, oil deals -- have been part of a continuing war on Islam. The Cuban textbook also accuses the United States of spreading crop diseases though Cuba in the 1980's. An Iranian textbook describes the hostage crisis of 1979 as a popular reaction against an American conspiracy to undermine Ayatollah Khomeini and reinstate the shah, who had taken refuge in the United States.

These may be conspiracy theories, or they may hold some traces of truth. But either way, neither ''History Lessons'' nor the United States can afford to dismiss the ways the rest of the world sees America, and how America is represented to young people in schools.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/bo.../04SWIFTL.html
Daniel Swift writes regularly for The Times Literary Supplement in London.

06-07-04, 03:03 PM	#2
JackSpratts Join Date: May 2001 Location: New England Posts: 10,018	Review HISTORY LESSONS How Textbooks From Around the World Portray U.S. History. By Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward. 404 pp. The New Press. $26.95. 'History Lessons': Goodbye, Columbus Daniel Swift HAD you gone to high school in Norway, your textbook would have taught you Columbus was old news: the most important arrival in America was the Viking Leif Ericson's in the early 10th century. If, on the other hand, you'd spent your teenage years in Cuba, you'd have learned that when Columbus discovered Cuba, he thought it was the promised land and didn't want to go any farther. These and other extracts in ''History Lessons: How Textbooks From Around the World Portray U.S. History'' tell us two things: historical narratives are biased and untrustworthy; and America's impact on the world cannot be underestimated. Interesting history is interested history, so the secondary school texts excerpted here generally relate international events as they reflect local concerns. French textbooks recount the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 through the prism of growing nationalism in their own troublesome colony, Algeria. Caribbean textbooks are sugar-centric, gauging the effects of the Monroe Doctrine and the Great Depression on sugar prices. The Canadians, meanwhile, rarely miss an opportunity to insert their own countrymen into global events: ''the sky above Juno Beach was to be protected by R.A.F. bombers, many of which were flown by Canadian bomber crews''; ''most Canadians are unaware of the crucial role Canada played in the development of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.'' Much entertainment is to be found in what's excluded and included. An excerpt from a British textbook on the American Revolution snootily refers to ''the colonies'' -- as in, ''the colonies did not have uniforms, men or money'' -- and notes that Tom Paine, the author of ''Common Sense'' and godfather of America, ''earned a living first as a maker of ladies' underwear.'' Compare that coy little fact to the reverential treatment of Paine in American textbooks like ''A People and a Nation'' (where Paine is ''a radical English printer'' who called ''stirringly for independence'') or ''The Great Republic'' (where he ''belonged to no country'' and ''lived by his pen.'') Dana Lindaman, a graduate student at Harvard, and Kyle Ward, an assistant professor of history and political science at Vincennes University, assert that ''History Lessons'' is a comparative study offering a corrective to the ''isolationist tendency'' of American textbooks. ''If we wish to move beyond judgment and toward understanding, we must honestly consider other perspectives,'' they write, making the now ubiquitous gesture to Sept. 11. But their brief editorial introductions to the excerpts are anything but honest. Lindaman and Ward reductively describe 15th- and 16th-century exploration as motivated by ''the European desire for riches during the Renaissance period''; the profit margin was certainly on Columbus's mind, but as a Jamaican textbook notes, the first waves of European colonists came to convert as well as plunder. The final section of ''History Lessons'' quotes a French textbook on ''A New World Order'': Lindaman and Ward's description of France as ''an imperial power eclipsed by the United States after WWI,'' which ''has struggled with the reality of a U.S.-dominated world'' shades into the worst of lazy American anti-French sentiment. Even as they have produced a book that suggests all tellings of history are biased, the editors refuse to examine their own preconceptions. Consider the Spanish-American war: the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Bay in 1898 prompted American intervention in the Spanish-Cuban War and eventual occupation of Cuba. American textbooks conventionally describe the explosion as either a Spanish attack or an accident; a Cuban textbook quoted here insists the Americans blew up their own boat in order to justify their invasion. The excerpt is introduced with a brief note: ''No history book of this scope is published in Cuba without the government's explicit approval. Of particular interest is the conspiracy theory of the U.S.S. Maine's explosion.'' In treating the Cuban argument so offhandedly, Lindaman and Ward diminish the valuable lessons of their own shocking and fascinating book. A central motif in the excerpts is American foul play. A Saudi Arabian textbook suggests that all American intervention in the Middle East -- peace plans, oil deals -- have been part of a continuing war on Islam. The Cuban textbook also accuses the United States of spreading crop diseases though Cuba in the 1980's. An Iranian textbook describes the hostage crisis of 1979 as a popular reaction against an American conspiracy to undermine Ayatollah Khomeini and reinstate the shah, who had taken refuge in the United States. These may be conspiracy theories, or they may hold some traces of truth. But either way, neither ''History Lessons'' nor the United States can afford to dismiss the ways the rest of the world sees America, and how America is represented to young people in schools. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/bo.../04SWIFTL.html Daniel Swift writes regularly for The Times Literary Supplement in London.