A couple of decades back one of the major American news magazines–I don’t recall which, but it was either Time or Newsweek–ran an article on a cranky couple who were making a life’s work of reading textbooks and complaining to the publishers about what they saw as ideological impurities.
Though just two people, and not persons of any social or adademic prominence, they had been surprisingly effective in shaping the teaching of American history to their liking. For instance, a civics textbook had remarked that the Constitution was a living document which had been amended over time to reflect changing values in society. While this is indisputably true, the passage was excised from future editions after this couple complained that teaching this was “subversive”
In addition to these two cranks, publishers must deal with dozens upon dozens of other pressure groups, as well as the collective prejudice and ignorance of society as a whole. The result is an at times oddly unbalanced, circumscribed, censored view of the past.
I remember as a child reading in my 8th-grade history book that the U.S. sent troops to Hawaii to “protect American businessmen” there. That’s one way of putting it; in fact, while Grover Cleaveland had argued that the U. S. should send troops to save the native Hawaiians from the businessmen who had overthrown the constitutional monarchy there, Congress responded by sending Marines to prevent the natives from staging an uprising to take their country back.
In the end, the Queen of Hawaii decided she didn’t want her subjects to shed blood in a futile effort, and ordered them not to fight. They then watched helplessly as the recently installed apartheid-style government of President Dole (of the Pineapple Doles), signed their country over to the U. S. as a colony.
I guess I was in my forties before I learned about that, seeing a documentary on PBS.
I did a little better with the origins of May Day.
Many times I have heard someone venture, as May 1st rolled around, that “it must have something to do with Russian history”. In fact, May Day is recognized around the world as Labor Day, in countries ranging from Communist dictatorships to right-wing military regimes. The reason is because a national strike for an eight hour day, a pivotal event in the development of labor unions, occured in The United States in on May 1st, 1886. There must be schoolchildren around the world who learn that essential piece of American history; I learned it in an MBA program.
The squeemishness of American schools in teaching about slavery and the Civil War are other outstanding examples of how only an extremely limited trickle of information is sometimes allowed on a sensitive subject. I recall that when I was in grade school (the 60s) one got the impression from school books that slavery had been opposed by a mere handful of people led by John Brown, who was obviously a lunatic. It was only a couple of years ago that I read that, in fact, there appears to be no record of any of his contemporaries, even his harshest critics, of having suggested that Brown was crazy.
I also remember an illustrated box in my history textbook showing a picture of a carpetbagger and a scalliwag. I was reminded of it years later when I saw the Woody Allen movie Love and Death; there is a scene where Allen’s character, as a boy, is shown educational cards with pictures of Jews on them by his Orthodox pastor. One of them is wearing prison stripes, and the other has a devil’s horns.
No mention was made of the fact that the so-called carpetbaggers and scalliwags, among other ‘atrocities", abolished debtors’ prisons and established free public education.
This crazy house mirror view of the Civil War was enshrined on film in the 1930 and 40s, as Hollywood sought to make movies which would offended no one (aside from African Americans). There was a film in which Erroll Flynn and Ronald Reagan played West Point classmates–they went on to become Custer and Lee, or other famous generals. In any case, it seemed to be suggested in the film that the Civil War was brought on as a conspiracy of slavery opponents who couldn’t take a joke, led by John Brown, in the form of Raymond Massey at his wild-eyed best.
I recall that after studying the Civil War in grade school many of my classmates were still unsure as to which side had won. This was in St. Louis, where, contrary to what a great many people from elsewhere in the country assume, the natives do not consider themselves to be “down South”.
One classmate of mine, a transplant from Alabama, offered that people “mostly emphasize the bad things about slavery”, and that it “taught people a trade”. By “people”, he did not mean the slave traders. Our teacher did not feel a need to question his statements. It was not until high school (again in St. Louis) that I learned that life as a slave was sort of like a protracted stay at a health spa, as slaves were too expensive for owners to have ever wanted to beat or misuse them.
In short, “political correctness” has been with us for a long time. While the term came into use in the 1980s to describe a kind of extreme dogmatic liberalism, it was often used by people who were offended by challenges to their dogmatic, rigidly enforced prejudice and ignorance.