Institutionalized Bias: the times have indeed changed

How I've seen the subject I studied altered into something that is almost unrecognizable

from JoeUser Forums

Greywar wrote an article about a movie called Brainwashing 101, about the biases developing on American college campuses, and after watching the movie, I was reminded of my own time in college when I was getting my history degree. Even then I was seeing a shift... though not so much in campus politics.... but in what was "important" in my field. 

When I started, the first year courses were pretty much all General history-type courses, and as your progressed, you would get more and more targeted to a region/nation, with the focus sometimes being in a specific type of history... ie, intellectual, social, military. However, by my second and third years, I noticed that a lot of the first and second year general courses were becoming social history courses, which means that a lot of people were learning very specific things about a time period without having learned the context of the events they are studying. Names, dates and places ARE important.  

Let's put this in perspective. Let's say you were taking a course on the social history of France 1750-1871... and you had no real background in French history. Well, when looking at all the demographic data and personal letters about and from farmers, clerks and other professions and then trying to piece together the story of what was going on in the country at the time, I think you'd end up lost. Social history should be the basis of a deeper study in a time and place... not where you should begin studying. In any other field, it would be utter madness to start extremely deep in a subject and expect someone to pick up the basics later. Its like expecting someone who wants to learn about cars to start on their first day by rebuilding an engine... before they've even know how an engine works, or expecting someone who is taking computer science to debug C++ before they've had an overview of programming logic. As the old cliche goes... its like putting the cart before the horse. And this isn't a rant against social history... because it has its place in the field. I just think it is inappropriate to make it the focus of study for college freshmen and sophomores... it should be confined to higher-level study.

Another thing which brought me to the point of writing this article was the fact that I recently read that Stephen Ambrose, the famed historian, offered his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1 million dollars to set up a chair for military history and though they were cash-strapped, they refused the offer, which is sort of a subtle(and costly) way to imply the military history is not worth study. Some fields they did deem worthy of study were: "The History of Tourism," "American Business History," "Dimensions Of Material Culture," "Global Car Cultures," and a myriad of very, very specific courses on either race, religious or gender issues. Again, interesting topics... but should so much focus be on groups who had a marginal impact on history as a whole at best(discounting the modern era of course)? Let's look at the logic here by using two sample seconf year courses.. On one hand, we have a subject that we know a lot about (like the History of the Thirty-Years War (1614-1655)), and there is a lot to teach about it. We have another topic that there is relatively little information on(like Early 17th-century European Women's Studies). Which course do you think you would receive a more comprehensive picture of the events of that time? To me, the answer is obvious.

And then there is the little matter of trying to cover up past errors in judgment by changing histories to not discuss things in the context in which they happened. I don't mean that research changed the interpretation of what happened. I mean, bias changed the importance of events, obscuring what was once visible. This is especially prevalent in public and high school textbooks, but it is also a feature of college textbooks. The modern sensibility that because we don't AGREE with someone's actions in the past means that they are automatically condemned to be looked upon entirely unfavorably is contrary to a lot of the precepts of the study of subject. Colonialism is now looked at unfavorably, so now it is presented unfavorably many textbooks, when at the time it happened, that was not the prevailing wisdom. But of course, the context in which colonialism isn't important in the present intellectual climate. There is a difference between discussing a nation or person in context and condoning the actions of that person or nation.... but its a difference that some people can't see, and its disturbing to me that these kinds of reactions are being almost encouraged in colleges today.  So yes, there is bias at almost every university... at least in history.

politics
4,619 views 6 replies
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
This is a very thoughtful and interesting article. Having worked in education for over 10 years, but not on the college level, I see the bias. And it is not even left wing or right wing, but PC. At least on the Elelmntary and secondary level.

it is a shame taht children can not be taught history for fear of offending one group or another. And the worst part is that most of the teachers do not even realize they are brainwashed and doing it to the kids. When I was leaving education a few years ago, one of my friends, a librarian at a middle school, set me up with an interview with he husband. he ran a small company. It was a very interesting interview with most of it being about his wife's (and my former) employer.

he was so tired, as a parent and spouse, to see so many burned out teachers promoted to central administration positions to continue to work and then force their idiocy down the throats of the true heros, the line teachers! That statement has stuck with me ever since. Having worked at the state and local level, and dealt with the feds, I can tell you most of those bureaucrats never saw the inside of a classroom ,or got burned out and then promoted.

No wonder johnny cant read, and 'is' no longer 'is'.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
At my relatively conservative Christian college, exactly half the history faculty were liberal and half were conservative, and all of them taught war studies classes except the one who was into philosophy. The thing is, though, I worked for one of them and she had to lobby for three years (!) to get a Veitnam History course on the books. They weren't doing away with the Civil War and WWII, but they weren't exactly updating their courses to include Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War(s), or anything like that. Rather, they were expanding the history of Native American Studies, Women's Studies, Civil Rights studies--all of which are important, but none of which give the student much of a view outside the U.S. Moreover, nearly everyone has to take American History or Western Civ, but that leaves out so much--you don't get a world view of the East or of Asia, Africa, or much of the MIddle East. It's as if only the U.S. and the Western Hemisphere exist--and even then only above the equator. Makes me mad.

Good blog.

-A.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
Angloesque: See, I think this is what happened.

Let's say that a college has a set budget for their departments which adjusts for inflation.... well, as they add new departments which utilize the faculty of other departments(like the addition of Women's Studies would draw on History, a bit into Political science, Language and Literature, and Philosophy)... and since these professors are teaching in those subjects, other subjects in those disciplines get pushed aside. I think the academic environment might be a bit more robust if the addition of new studies became self-sufficient faculties rather than piggybacking on existing department positions.

To tell the truth, while I was in college, there was a clean demarcation between History and faculties like Southeast Asian, Caribbean and African Studies, which part of me thinks was a good thing. But I made up for the deficiency in my background with a lot of self-study though.

Dr. Guy: I think part of the problem is that states like Texas and California are the primary markets for textbooks, so publishers cater to their wishes and things that would be offensive to both the liberal and conservative sensibilities are not included in these books.

Myrrannder: Thanks for the compliment.


I might write another article about the changes in lit departments too.... but I am still unsure about that. Its a bit of different ground, so we'll see.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
historyishere:

Well, I guess the thing I don't agree with (and most of it I do) is the concept of personal viewpoints of people living during a time being important. Caesar's history of the Gallic Wars makes the history vibrant and real even if there were errors or contextual bias. Books like April Morning by Howard Fast based on diaries of teenagers at the battle of Lexington and Concord and 1776 the musical make history real. Once again, are they totally accurate? No, but they give a much better flavor of an event than Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, 1776.

I still read Lincoln's diaries from the Civil War which are fascinating and find that the true worth of the man can be seen, not so much from what he did day to day, but from what he thought.

Ultimately, isn't that what history comes down to? Lessons learned because someone else experienced them?
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
CrispE: I think I might have made a mistake somewhere above... could you tell me which passages led you to the conclusion that I don't think personal observation at the time events happening aren't important.

If you are refering to me mentioning letters as part of my critique of social history being taught too early in university, I wasn't speaking about letters and such written by people actually involved in the events as they are unfolding. I was talking about letters written by people that lived around the same time as these events were taking place... which is a legitimate form of historical study... but I think of that as being more a graduate school type activity rather than an undergraduate pursuit.

Let's put it in this perspective. Let's say in 20-30 years a professor was teaching a course on the current presidential election... which would be the easiest and most comprehensive way to teach the subject... a) using a third-party book that took tens to hundreds of sources to compile b) a book of correspondence by the principle actors in the drama c) a file of 40000 selected emails from taken from random ISP servers across America? I think #1 and #2 are better alternatives to #3 for someone looking to learn the general information about the subject, don't you?