In Ignorance We Trust

[Laurie Verge]

This will be a long post, but I feel that it's worthy of attention: One of the Surratt Museum volunteers handed me an online commentary called the Opinionator from the NY Times. It ran yesterday, Dec. 13, 2012, and carries the title which I used to name this thread. The commentary is by Timothy Egan, author of a book on the Dust Bowl.

"A packet of letters arrived the other day from the honors English class at St. Lawrence School in Brasher Falls, NY. Snail mail from high school sophomores? Yes, and honest, witty and insightful snail mail at that. They had been forced to read a book of mine.

"'Personally, I don't like reading about history or learning about it,' wrote one student, setting the tone for the rest of the class."

"'The Dust Bowl? Really?' So began another missive. 'When we heard we were reading your book...heads dropped. Let me rephrase that, heads fell to the floor and rolled down the hallway.'"

"You get the drift: history is a brain freeze. And, writers of history, well, there's a special place with the already-chewed gum in nerd camp for them. But as I read through the letters I was cheered. Some of the last survivors of the American Dust Bowl were sophomores when they were hit with the nation's worst prolonged environmental disaster. In the 1930s story of gritty resilience, the Brasher Falls kids of 2012 found a fresh way to look at their own lives and this planet.

"History is always utilitarian, and often entertaining. It stirs the blood of any lover of the past to see Steven Spielberg's majestic LINCOLN -- at its core a drama about politicians with ZZ Top beards writing legislation - crush the usual soulless, computer-generated distractions at the box office.

"But history, the formal teaching and telling of it, has never been more troubled. Two forces, one driven by bottom-line educators answering to corporate demands to phase out the liberal arts, the other coming from the circular firing squad of academics who loathe popular histories, have done much to marginalize our shared narratives.

"David McCullough, the snowy-headed author and occasional national scold, says we are raising a generation of Americans who are historically illiterate. He cites Harry Truman's line that the only new thing in the world is the history you don't know. And today, in part by design, there's a lot of know-nothingness throughout the land. Only 12 percent of high school seniors are 'at or above proficient' in American history, which of course, doesn't mean they are stupid.

"For knuckle-headed refinement, look to the State of Florida, a breeder of bad ideas from its dangerous gun laws to its deliberate attempts to make it hard for citizens to vote. Gov. Rick Scott's task force on higher education is now suggesting that college students with business-friendly majors pay less tuition than those in traditional liberal arts fields.

"'You know, we don't need a lot of anthropologists in this state,' the governor said in October. 'I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering, and math degrees. That's what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on.'

"Notice he said ALL. If the governor, who's been trying to run Florida like a corporation, had applied the skills of the liberal arts, his approval rating might be higher than 38 percent. Any anthropologist could tell Scott how he misread human behavior in the Sunshine State.

"I defy anyone to read Robert K. Massie's CATHERINE THE GREAT (enlightened German teenager takes over Russia) or Erik Larson's IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS (Nazis oozing evil in diplomatic circles) and not come away moved.

"...One of my best friends in college ripped through chemistry, engineering, and advanced calculus courses. And then, degree in hand, he felt strangely incomplete. On his own, and for a full year, he read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald, and Civil War histories. He spent the next 30 years at Boeing. No doubt, he was one of the few mechanical engineers who not only was aware of Faulkner's immortal line --'The past is never dead. It's not even past' -- but also understood what it meant."