Historian, Reporter Team Up to Examine How U.S. Defines Itself Through Its Schools

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The brand of American history taught to the nation's school children once again is at the heart of a heated and often-explosive nationwide debate. This time around, it pits "neo-nativists" against "multiculturalists" from New York to California.

"The Great Speckled Bird" (St. Martin's Press, 1995), a new, widely heralded and immensely readable book by an East-Coast historian and a West-Coast journalist looks at how battles over national values and priorities are currently being fought out in the arena of school curriculum and textbook selection. At stake is what it means to be an American in the 1990s and which vision of America is to be transmitted to the next generation.

Authors Catherine Cornbleth and Dexter Waugh note that a pre-1960s version of history that still prevails emphasizes kings and presidents and statesmen, plus a few scientists and inventors, while minimizing or ignoring the historical experience of ordinary people. They argue that history should be re-written to restore the history of ordinary people that has been omitted from school curriculum and textbooks and increase the possibilities for realizing American's democratic ideals.

"The 'great speckled bird' is our 'counter symbol' to the bald eagle," say Cornbleth and Waugh.

"To us it represents the racial-ethnic-cultural diversity that has characterized the United States from its beginnings," says Cornbleth. "It is our metaphor for both the multicultural reality of American society today and for its as-yet-unrealized expression in our schools' social studies curricula."

Cornbleth, a professor in the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education, is a former high-school history teacher. Waugh is a reporter with the San Francisco Examiner who helped report the paper's lengthy series on California's "curriculum wars." Their book is not only an examination of disputed values and critical issues, but a behind-the-scenes look at the politics and personalities of education policymaking in action.

Among those whose thinking and actions they scrutinize are historian Arthur Schlesinger, former education secretaries Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn, former National Endowment for the Humanities director Lynne Cheney, New York State Education Commissioner Thomas Sobol, Charlott Crabtree and Gary Nash of UCLA and Bill Honig, California's former superintendent of public instruction.

They also look at links between these educators and policymakers and such groups as the conservative Olin Foundation; American Textbook Council; the Educational Excellence Network, which spawned the Bradley Commission on History in the Schools; the National Center for History in the Schools, and the National Council for History Education.

In addition to providing the historical context in which the American debate has taken place, the authors take readers to two of the major battlegrounds of this often-acerbic national contest -- the history and social studies curriculum wars waged in New York and California since the late 1980s.

Cornbleth served on two committees appointed by New York's Board of Regents to review and revise the social studies curriculum consistent with the multicultural realities of U.S. history and contemporary society. As a reporter, Waugh covered the bitter social studies textbook adoption controversy in California.

Its insider-outsider perspective and their rich case studies of the largest, most ethnically and racially diverse states set "The Great Speckled Bird" apart from books that oversimplify the American debate as a choice between pluralism and unity.

"We've gathered the evidence and told the stories of how neo-nativist opponents of multiculturalism have tried to caricature multicultural representation and then dismiss it," says Cornbleth.

"By 'caricature' I mean equating multiculturalism with extreme forms of political correctness or with Afrocentrism," she adds. "To us, 'multicultural' history means including more than the experience, perspective, history and culture of one group. It means full inclusion and the presentation of multiple perspectives."

The authors coined the term "neo-nativist" to describe the master historical narrative that flattens social hierarchies, fades away race and racism, and represents all players as immigrants of similar experience and fortune.

"Neo-nativism" is both an ethos and a version of history, they say, that claims to multiculturalize history "by simply adding more historically excluded people to the old immigrant diorama of America and minimizing serious examination of racial and ethnic conflict."

The authors claim that contemporary neo-nativism has the same exclusionary effects as the "nativism" that precedes it historically because it treats Native Americans, enslaved Africans, conquered Mexicans, Asian immigrants -- all of us -- as if we were European immigrants.

Although the issues are complex and multi-layered, the book informs the continuing debate on the nature of America in a number of ways. Education policymaking in New York and California are windows through which readers can view and make better sense of the pitched battles over definitions of "America" and "Americanism." The authors demonstrate, for example, how the call by minorities for inclusion has been turned on its head by neo-nativists and redefined as a problem of fragmentation or separatism.

Further, they show how neo-nativists' minimizing of historic struggles to realize America's ideals mask configurations of political and economic power that privilege some racial-ethnic groups, classes and genders over others.

Cornbleth explains that what we are seeing today is less a traditional, liberal-conservative division than a divide between "elitists" and "the people." An "elitist" version of history, she explains, "seeks to maintain a pre-1960s view of the world that emphasizes kings and presidents and statesmen, plus a few scientists and inventors. It minimizes or ignores the historical experience of ordinary people."

Updating the academic content of school programs to accommodate the last 30 or 40 years of historical research means making room for the experiences and perspectives of lesser knowns who have been the focus of much recent scholarship, she says.

Cornbleth acknowledges that such an update would change what is taught significantly and in ways that are likely to make certain people uneasy, principally those who are currently well-represented and prefer to maintain the historical, political and economic status quo.

She points out that the so-called "minorities" who challenge neo-nativists and elitist claims to ownership of America in the 1990s frequently can claim equally deep generational title to this country.

In their concluding chapter, "America Not Yet," the authors call for "dialogue among differences" instead of debate. Dialogue, they say, would increase the chances of realizing the promise of America -- of freeing, rather that trying to cage, the "great speckled bird" of their title.

"Coming together and talking things out is the American way," says Cornbleth. "It's the way to get to know ourselves and one another better. It's the way to work out the differences that divide us, rather than letting one group impose its version of America on the rest of us."