|
|
|
What to Teach About Asia: Howard Wilson and the Committee on Asiatic Studies in the 1940s
Robert Shaffer
Shippensburg University
|
IN THEIR ACCOUNT of the recent battle over "national standards"
in the teaching of history, Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross
Dunn emphasize that conflicts over the study of history are nothing
new. A critical approach to American history in the textbooks by
Harold Rugg in the 1930s, for example, incited debates no less impassioned
than the 1990s "history wars."
1
Those who teach about Asia today, and who are trying to integrate
such teaching into a truly global history, should know more about
efforts in the 1940s, by an earlier generation of academics, public
school teachers, and others interested in Asia to do the same thing.
Their story, including the obstacles they faced, constitutes a chapter
in the larger history of curriculum battles that has important relevance
for today's educators.
|
1
|
|
In 1942 Howard Wilson, a professor
at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the editor of the
Harvard Educational Review, called for the "easternization
of America," in reaction to what he called the "glib" talk for years
about the "westernization of Asia." Wilson, who also chaired the
newly established Committee on Asiatic Studies of the American Council
on Education, used this startling phrase as he launched the opening
salvo in the Committee's work in an article in the bulletin of the
East and West Association, an organization led by novelist Pearl
S. Buck. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Wilson's Committee,
whose members included such Asia specialists as Dorothy Borg of
the Institute of Pacific Relations and John King Fairbank of Harvard,
devised model syllabi for colleges and high schools, sponsored training
sessions for teachers and curriculum specialists, and monitored
the progress of textbooks in adopting these ideas.
2
|
2
|
|
Although these educators were broadly
committed to the future need for a revision of the overall relationship
between the "West" and the "East," they also had frankly "presentist"
motives. In 1942 the United States faced war in Asia, and Wilson
and his colleagues believed that understanding Asia would be important
to winning the war. Our ally, China, occupied a strategic position
in the fight against our common Japanese foe. China had been at
war with Japan for a full four years as the United States was just
entering the war at the end of 1941. While the effectiveness of
China's army was not very great, in the end, its refusal to surrender,
along with guerrilla fighting by Chinese Communists and other resistance
forces, tied down large numbers of Japanese troops in that huge
country. For most of the war, American military planners and political
leaders also believed that China would be one major staging ground
for any Allied assault on the Japanese home islands. Moreover, the
geography of the western Pacific and of East Asia garnered unprecedented
attention in the U.S. during the war as millions of American soldiers
and sailors were stationed in those parts of the world.
3
|
3
|
|
This relationship of East and West
at that time was characterized by Western imperialist control, and
what Wilson called the "placid assumption of the superiority of
western ways." The loyalties of many Asian peoples, from (British)
India to (French) Indochina to the (Dutch) East Indies, were very
much in play between their European rulers, allied to a greater
or lesser extent with the United States, and the rising Japanese
empire.
4
Thus, American sensitivity to the needs and aspirations of these
peoples was necessary to win them firmly to the Allied cause. In
the progressive education language of his day, Wilson described
the needed overhaul of American education as it applied to Asia
as "a major task of democratic education," and as "a continuing
element in planning for national welfare in a world order." |
4
|
|
Wilson bemoaned first and foremost
the paucity of attention to Asia in American schools at the time.
Citing a 1938 Harvard School of Education study by Alfred Church,
he noted that world geography textbooks allocated less than six
per cent of their pages to Asia. World history texts were worse,
devoting just three per cent of their space to Asia, and United
States history texts discussed relations with Asian peoples in less
than one per cent of their pages.
5
|
5
|
|
Of course there had been some previous
efforts to include Asia in the American school curriculum. At the
conclusion of World War I, in 1919 the China scholar Kenneth Latourette
had begun to plead with his fellow historians for the inclusion
of the study of Asia in American schools. Latourette had even suggested
some of the same points about Chinese achievements in comparison
with Europe that Wilson and his associates would later raise. He
had also argued specifically that the Chinese state began to fall
behind European states in power only in the late 1700s, an issue
that is at the center of much debate among world historians today.
6
But Latourette's writings in The Historical Outlook not only
had to contend with the far greater coverage given to the war and
its outcome in Europe, and what it would mean for the American curriculum,
and also with a veritable barrage of paeans to British imperialism.
For example, undoubtedly influenced by the idea that our World War
I ally would help the United States make the world safe for democracy
in the postwar era, Arthur Scott of the University of Chicago characterized
British relations with its colonies as "a great experiment in democracy."
George Zook, who would head the American Council on Education in
the 1940s when it sponsored Wilson's committee, in 1919 specifically
lauded Britain's conduct in India, which, he claimed, had won the
loyalty and gratitude of the Indian people. Zook argued that modern
Britain was no longer the country the United States had rebelled
against, and so rebellions by its colonies were unwarranted.
7
Consequently, events and attitudes in the aftermath of World War
I, as Nash, Dunn, and Crabtree note, led American high schools and
colleges to add the study of modern Europe to their social studies
and history curricula, culminating in the soon-to-be ubiquitous
"Western Civilization" courses. Asia and Africa were not added to
the curriculum, however, nor did Western imperialism come in for
much criticism.
8
|
6
|
|
Ineffective as they were, Latourette's
efforts were not the only efforts to bring more attention to Asia.
The prolific and controversial Harold Rugg produced a world geography
textbook in 1930 which did provide far better coverage of the non-Western
world than did most of the textbooks reviewed by Church and Wilson,
with 50-60 pages each devoted to China, Japan, France, Germany,
and Russia, with more provided only for Britain and its empire,
which were considered together. Nash, Dunn, and Crabtree conclude
that Rugg "gave fairly balanced and respectful treatment to all"
of these countries. Indeed, Rugg thoughtfully addressed the overall
themes of increased global interdependence, and the positive and
negative consequences of industrialization. Rugg's contrast of powerful
and dynamic Asian and Moslem societies with a more backward Europe
in the medieval period, echoing Latourette's earlier work, was one
of many reasons that conservatives attacked his works in the late
1930s and early 1940s. Nevertheless, Rugg's portrayal of imperialism
was decidedly uncritical. His textbook included only benign descriptions
of the plantation system of production for cash crops of rubber
and coffee in colonial territories, and there was no discussion
of demands for political independence in the sections on India.
Rugg mentioned Gandhi as a critic of industrial society but not
as a critic of British imperial rule.
9
|
7
|
|
Looking at the state of textbooks
and classroom practices in l942, however, Wilson found the treatment
of Asia totally inadequate in spite of the efforts of Latourette
and Rugg. Not only did he call for more coverage, however, he called
for coverage that would change the way Americans thought about Asia
and Asians. In his broad recommendations for reform, Wilson suggested
that education about Asia should not only allow Americans to understand
current events in the region, but should develop respect for indigenous
Asian cultures. Conscious of the problems in teaching about "other"
peoples, Wilson warned against "overemphasis of the sentimental
and exotic and unusual" in teaching about Asia. At the same time,
however, he argued that such study should not simply show Asian
societies as identical to Western societies. Rather, educators "should
present the distinguishing characteristics of Asiatic cultures as
remarkable achievements in themselves." |
8
|
|
Turning to specifics, Wilson suggested
that biographical subjects, a major feature of elementary education
especially, be drawn from Asia as well as Europe: pupils could learn
of Confucius as well as Socrates, for example. World history courses
should become just that, rather than European history courses. Comparative
literature classes should discuss Asian writers as well as the influence
of Asian ideas on European and American writers. Wilson emphasized
the need for United States history classes to pay attention to past
and present American relationships "which extend out from the Golden
Gate, even at the expense of time traditionally spent on relationships
which have extended out from New York harbor." He wanted to include,
for example, the ways the maritime trade with Asia in the late 18th
and early 19th centuries led to changes in American art, furniture,
architecture, agriculture, and the flowering of New England literature
and philosophy. All of these proposals will be familiar to educators
who have been involved in devising curricular reforms regarding
Asia in these last few years, over fifty years after Wilson's article
had appeared. |
9
|
|
The Committee on Asian Studies of
the American Council on Education, of which Wilson was the chairman,
worked directly with classroom teachers to try to implement these
ideas. A summer workshop at Cornell University in 1942 prepared
a syllabus for a revised world history course that took into account
"the rise of such nations as China, Japan, and India." It also called
for "revision of the customary study of imperialism" in order to
emphasize the problems that imperialism posed for the colonized
peoples.
10
To help teachers and school districts design new curricula, the
Committee published two pamphlets by Derk Bodde, a specialist in
Chinese language and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania,
who also served with the China section of the United States Office
of War Information during World War II. These pamphlets might still
be read with profit by educators today, and indeed they were included
in a curriculum package on Asia produced by Columbia University
in the 1980s. Bodde's first pamphlet, published in 1942 as American
public support for its Chinese ally neared its height, outlined
the material contributions of China to the West. As Wilson noted
in his introduction, "We have all read about 'our debt to ancient
Greece and Rome' and about 'our heritage from Europe.' We need to
think also about our gifts from the cultures and peoples of Asia."
Bodde described the Chinese role in the development of silk, porcelain,
paper, printing, and coal, among other things, asserting that "for
the two thousand years between 200 B.C. and A.D. 1800, China gave
to the West more than she received in return." A second pamphlet,
published after the war in 1948, focused on "intellectual contributions"
of the Chinese, in which Bodde discussed, for example, the origin
of European and American civil service procedures in the Confucian
examination systems, and the Chinese influence on Voltaire, Leibnitz,
and other Enlightenment thinkers.
11
|
10
|
|
The work of the Committee on Asiatic
Studies was part of a broader effort to make such changes in the
schools' teaching about Asia and public attitudes toward Asia at
the time. The Harvard Educational Review itself (under Wilson's
editorship) devoted more space during World War II than it had previously
to articles on Asian culture and on American political and cultural
relations with Asia. Most of these articles, such as the overview
by Clarence Hamilton of Oberlin College of the divergent overarching
philosophies of China, Japan, and India, had initially been presented
as talks to social studies teachers or to other educators. Many
of these articles, naturally, were quite laudatory of our Chinese
ally, providing an upbeat picture of its culture, its conduct during
the war, and of American-Chinese relations.
12
The Harvard Educational Review, during the war, also greatly
increased its coverage of educational issues in other parts of the
world, and promoted "intercultural education" (a forerunner of multicultural
education), African-American history, and cultural pluralism, often
with forthright critiques of United States racism and segregation.
13
|
11
|
|
Derk Bodde's scholarly expositions,
sponsored by the Committee on Asiatic Studies, influenced more popularly
written treatments, such as two books by Grace Yaukey, Made in
China and Made in India. Yaukey, who wrote under the
pseudonym Cornelia Spencer, was the younger sister of Pearl Buck
and the leader of the East and West Association in the Washington,
D.C. area.
14
Made in China [1943], directed to high school age readers,
followed Bodde's example in portraying the Chinese as a long-civilized
people, who had perfected the manufacture and use of silk, porcelain,
jade, ink, paper, books, and printing. Yaukey discussed Chinese
culture both on its own terms and in its impact on the West and
the world more generally. For example, she described the development
of tea-drinking in China and its export to England, where it was
virtually unknown until the late 1600s but subsequently became a
national institution. Yaukey also noted less well known developments
by the Chinese which had or could substantially influence Western
societies, such as the domestication of roses and chrysanthemums,
and the cultivation of soy beans, "the wonder bean."
15
|
12
|
|
Made in India, which appeared
two and a half years later and was also geared to a high school
readership, was less a point by point description of material contributions
of the Indians to world civilization, and more a review of classical
Indian literature, religion, and philosophy. Nevertheless, Yaukey
included brief discussions of the Indian origins of woven cotton,
chess, the harp, the violin bow, many of the stories the West knows
as "Aesop's fables," and certain mathematical concepts. She also
described the remarkable systems of sanitation and city planning
in India's ancient "lost cities" in the Indus Valley, which archeologists
had recently rediscovered. Made in India emphasized change
over time, as any review of Indian civilization must, because of
the numerous invasions from outside the subcontinent. Yaukey, the
daughter of Christian missionaries, presented Hinduism sympathetically,
asking her readers, for example, to try to leave behind the Judeo-Christian
opposition to "idols."
16
|
13
|
|
Both books received positive reviews.
The New York Times called Made in China "a valuable
and stimulating contribution" to the record of China's achievements,
while Library Journal gave it a rating of "highly recommended."
Another reviewer noted that while the book was appropriate for young
readers, it would open "wide fields of thought" for adults as well.
17
Reviewing Made in India, Ruth Hill in the Saturday Review
employed terms that would fit right into discussions of multiculturalism
in the present. The book, she wrote, demonstrated "how much of our
Western civilization, even to our language, has been influenced
by India." Jean Bothwell in the New York Times highlighted
Yaukey's anti-colonialist conclusions.
18
The influence of Made in China, at least, extended beyond
its readership and the positive reviews. The Children's Museum of
Detroit, working with the East and West Association, designed an
exhibit based on the book, which subsequently traveled around the
Midwest.
19
|
14
|
|
Similar ideas were explored in greater
depth in a 1945 volume, The Asian Legacy and American Life,
edited by Arthur Christy, published under the auspices of the East
and West Association. Christy, who died at the age of forty-six
soon after the book was published, stated that the essays focused
on ideas rather than on the "commodities or bric-a-brac which cross
the oceans in the bottom of ships." Christy's purpose, thus, was
to show the achievements of Asian culture in order to deflate Western
attitudes of superiority, and to avoid contributing to a colonialist
mentality of viewing Asia merely as a source of commodities. "That
this emphasis needs to be made in American relations with Asiatic
peoples cannot be too strongly stated, if we are ever to be fully
absolved from the charge of being essentially a materialist people,"
Christy declared.
20
|
15
|
|
Contributors to The Asian Legacy
and American Life included the noted Anglo-Indian art historian
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy of Boston's Fine Arts Museum, Harvard philosopher
William Hocking, who had written a controversial report in 1932
highly critical of American missionaries in Asia, and Laurance Roberts,
the director of the Brooklyn Museum. Chapters described the Asian
impact on everything from agriculture to transcendentalism, and
included specific discussions of Oriental influences on Western
artists and writers such as Toulouse-Lautrec and William Butler
Yeats. Christy's own chapter argued, as had Bodde, that such European
phenomena as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment could only be
understood as responses to Asian influences. |
16
|
|
Christy, it must be noted, as well
as several of his contributors, had not simply begun to notice this
Asian impact on the world as the result of World War II. In 1932
Christy had written a scholarly monograph on the influence of Asian
culture on the American transcendentalists of the 19th century,
and he broadened this discussion in a series of articles in the
late 1930s.
21
But it is fair to say that the activism engendered by the war, which
resulted in the creation of the Committee on Asiatic Studies and
the East and West Association, provided a new public context for
his work and enabled his scholarly pursuits to reach new audiences. |
17
|
|
Christy, Bodde, Wilson, and their
colleagues in essence outlined the framework of Asia's role in the
world that present-day scholars, such as Ainslie Embree, Carol Gluck,
Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Lynda Norene Shaffer, are urging classroom
teachers to address.
22
These teachers and scholars of the 1940s also anticipated the ideas
of recent advocates of multiculturalism, such as James A. Banks,
Christine Sleeter, and Carl Grant, that a revised curriculum cannot
simply add to the original curriculum but must transform it.
23
Contemporary reviews of The Asian Legacy and American Life,
which were generally quite favorable, got the point. Randall Gould,
who had been a journalist in China for over two decades, declared
that the West's indebtedness to the East in religion, art, culture,
mathematics, and technology constituted "a staggering record, calculated
to shake the complacency of the most provincial." And Eleanor Lattimore
noted that the book's elaboration of the Asian background of so
much of modern American material and intellectual culture demanded
that schools abandon their near-total emphasis on ancient Greece,
Rome, and the Near East as the sources of American culture.
24
|
18
|
|
Meanwhile, the East and West Association
in 1943 and 1944 sponsored in-service courses for teachers in New
York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities, in conjunction
with the local boards of education, along the lines of the Committee's
summer workshop. The first of these courses, in New York City, included
lectures by several Indian scholars resident in the United States
who were all involved actively in the movement for Indian independence.
These included Anup Singh, of the India League of America, and Krishnalal
Shridharani, author of Warning to the West, who spoke on
"What the Indians Are Thinking" during World War II. Coomaraswamy
spoke on Indian philosophy and religion in terms that frankly challenged
any ideas of Western cultural superiority.
25
The Claremont Colleges in California sponsored similar seminars
for teachers, and Social Education, the journal of the National
Council for the Social Studies, published several articles which
called for both increased attention to Asia in the schools and a
reevaluation of the traditionally Eurocentric curriculum.
26
The fund-raising organization, United China Relief, also produced
educational materials on that country, although one recent study
concludes that they were overly simplistic and uncritical.
27
And the United States State Department itself developed a "cultural
relations" program with China during the war. According to one of
its administrators, Wilma Fairbank, the wife of John King Fairbank,
the goal of the program, which was only partially fulfilled, was
"creative mutual borrowing." That is to say, the program consciously
sought to avoid the impression of a superior United States teaching
an inferior China, in favor of the mutual transfer of knowledge
between the two nations, as in the translation efforts of important
manuscripts and articles from Chinese to English, and from English
to Chinese.
28
Needless to say, these wartime teacher workshops and their model
syllabi did not urge a more sympathetic approach to the Japanese.
29
|
19
|
|
The most ambitious activity of the
Committee on Asiatic Studies in American Education, and the most
interesting for educators today looking back on that period, was
a comprehensive, one hundred page review of the treatment of Asia
in American high school and grade school geography, world history,
United States history, and civics textbooks. The study was produced
in cooperation with the Institute of Pacific Relations, and released
in 1946, just after World War II ended. Consultants who analyzed
the textbooks or helped in preparing the report included some of
the top academic experts on Asia: W. Norman Brown (India), Raymond
Kennedy (East Indies), Kenneth Latourette (U.S.-China relations),
and others.
30
|
20
|
|
The report reiterated Wilson's 1942
critique of inattention to Asia, even in texts revised after the
United States entered World War II. The wartime context of the report
is clear throughout. One author called for much more attention to
the history of friction between the United States and Japan to help
students understand the background of the war. Another criticized
the texts for ignoring the long history of Japanese militarism,
but also noted that Japanese victories in Southeast Asia early in
the war could not be explained without discussion of the resentment
felt by Asians against European imperialism. The language of the
report exemplified the "One World" ideology popularized by the former
Republican Presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, who urged that
American students must be able "to see that the future of the Far
East, Europe, the Americas and other areas of the globe are bound
up inextricably in 'one world,' whose peoples must work out their
mutual problems together."
31
|
21
|
|
Again, a major emphasis of the study
was on the need for a more honest appraisal of the role of European
and American imperialism in Asia. As Wilson wrote in his introduction: |
22
|
There is in many texts a certain degree of imperialistic bias....The
"white man's burden" is an insidious theme in many texts, conveyed
to pupils not alone by direct statement but by organization, by
vocabulary, and especially by omission of data.
|
|
While noting that some textbooks, particularly those created for
the elementary schools, treated achievements of Chinese and Indians
with respect, the study complained of passages which whitewashed
imperialism, such as this one: "The sun never sets on the British
Empire, yet her people around the world live together in peace and
understanding."
32
|
|
The effort to reevaluate modern imperialism
centered on the necessity to report the attitudes of the Asians
themselves, an issue that had taken on enormous significance when
decolonization became a major world issue as the war was ending.
But a reevaluation of American imperialism, not just European imperialism,
was also essential, the authors agreed. They suggested, for example,
that the "Open Door" policy in China was not an example of the United
States as "the Good Samaritan," but a mixture of humanitarianism
and economic imperialism. One author noted that none of the world
history textbooks, in describing China's economic "backwardness,"
discussed "the effect, if not the intent, of imperialism" which
had been "to retard industrialization rather than to advance it."
33
Thus, the Committee's analysis shows some of the intellectual antecedents
of the "revisionist" diplomatic history of William Appleman Williams
and of the "underdevelopment" school of thought associated broadly
with Andre Gunder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Eric Wolf.
34
|
23
|
|
Another major theme of the study was
the need for improvement in the treatment of Chinese and Japanese
immigrants in the United States, which should emphasize the similarities
of ways of life of these immigrants with those from Europe, in order
to counter racist stereotypes. Discrimination against Asians in
immigration legislation, past and present, should not be excused,
and its role in increasing Asian resentment against the United States
should be explained.
35
|
24
|
|
The textbook review emphasized that
Asia should not be studied only in its relation to the West—through
"western eyeglasses"—but on its own terms, with coverage in
world histories commensurate to that given to European areas. For
example, the authors complained that a typical world history textbook
presented two pages on the geography of Greece as background to
its history, but nothing on the impact of geography in any Asian
country.
36
It may be noted that the study was not content with textbooks that
let "China" stand in for the whole of Asia. It also criticized the
scant coverage of Korea, Indochina, the East Indies, and even India
in many books. The authors also wanted frank treatment of then-current
political divisions between Communists and Nationalists within China
itself.
37
Today's reader will nevertheless be struck by the relative lack
of specific suggestions for additions to the world history textbooks
for the period between the classical epoch and the onset of Western
imperialism. |
25
|
|
If Asian culture were presented in
a more respectful light, the authors believed that a more sympathetic
feeling toward Asians would result, as well as deeper and more critical
reflection on "Western" institutions. Thus, discussion of the openness
of Confucianism and Buddhism to other religious expressions or creeds
would help students understand Asians, and, through the contrast
with more doctrinaire Western religions, might also give "the American
student a new meaning for the principle of freedom of worship."
38
|
26
|
|
Initial signs indicated that the study
would serve as a prod toward future progress in textbook discussion
of Asia. One publisher promised that its next editions of geography
and history texts would meet with the Committee's approval. And
while the study did not receive wide public attention outside of
the educational community, an editorial in the San Francisco
Chronicle lauded the report, even proclaiming (without being
sarcastic): "to the junkpile with these patronizing, chauvinistic
school textbooks!"
39
|
27
|
|
But the Committee on Asiatic Studies
did not make a radical difference, as John King Fairbank has acknowledged.
40
Its early promise ran into two main obstacles: the contrary wartime
pressures to avoid introducing complexities and new paradigms, and
the Cold War pressures so soon after the war to mobilize history
and social science in an ideological crusade very different from
the one Howard Wilson and his colleagues envisioned. The Cold War,
of course, took a heavy toll on advocates of the new approaches,
such as the Institute of Pacific Relations, which eventually disbanded
after being hounded and harassed by investigative committees and
the Internal Revenue Service.
41
Howard Wilson himself, who went on to become a founder of UNESCO,
a program officer for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
and later the dean of the School of Education of the University
of California, Los Angeles, continued to advocate greater attention
to Asia in the formal curriculum and informal activities of American
education, especially universities. But his later work was not as
challenging to mainstream practices as his work up until 1948 had
been.
42
|
28
|
|
The obstacles faced by the advocates
of new educational initiatives about Asia were encapsulated in the
context of Derk Bodde's second pamphlet for the Committee on Asiatic
Education, published in 1948. In Chinese Ideas in the West
Bodde largely steered clear of any discussion of United States policy
toward China, or of contemporary Chinese politics. It was at this
time in the late 1940s that the anti-Communist Guomindang regime
was crumbling. But he concluded the pamphlet with a thinly-veiled
critique of United States government opposition to a world food
policy. Two years later Bodde offered his own biting critique of
the Guomindang, and of the United States alliance with this unpopular
regime, in his account of the year he spent in Beijing as one of
the first—and last—visiting scholars in China on the new
Fulbright exchange program.
43
|
29
|
|
The enthusiasm for a reevaluation
of American ideas about Asia had coincided with the wartime alliance
between the United States and China, and the over-optimistic expectation
that China would become a stable and powerful partner of the United
States on the world stage. The public constituency for such a reevaluation
withered as China first descended into civil war and then became
a Communist nation. At the same time, those who advocated the new
educational approach to Asia, such as Bodde and the Fairbanks, still
resisted the growing tendency in the United States government and
American education to view Asia primarily through a Cold War lens.
However, their influence was far less than it had previously been. |
30
|
|
Despite the failure to institutionalize
this new approach to Asia in American schools, this survey of the
activities of the Committee demonstrates that these efforts prefigured
much of the more recent efforts on behalf of multiculturalism and
world history. Present-day classroom teachers and other educators
can learn a good deal from looking at the work of these pioneers,
and we can use their work in our classrooms in a number of ways.
First, teachers of advanced high school classes and college professors
may want to explore these activities with their students as an example
of the intellectual ferment which occurred in the United States
during World War II. Educators are familiar with the rise of anti-Japanese
racism during the war, described so forcefully by John Dower.
44
But a fuller consideration of the movement for greater sensitivity
toward other areas of Asia should also be a part of our discussions
on World War II. Of course, students should be encouraged to critically
analyze these documents as well, to see how their perspectives on
the war shaped their prescriptions for American education in ways
that may seem outmoded, or even shortsighted, today. |
31
|
|
Moreover, consideration of what earlier
generations of students were (or were not) doing in the classroom
can be a powerful motivational device for students at all levels
of education. My experience with high school and college students
is that they appreciate the links between wider events and demands
for change in the school curriculum. Even in earlier grades, students
can relate to the kinds of reforms or classroom activities that
Howard Wilson proposed in conjunction with the ideological needs
of the war. Recognizing such causes for change in the past can help
students to see why the school curriculum is contested terrain today,
as well. |
32
|
|
Discussion of the ideas presented
in Treatment of Asia in American Textbooks about how restrictions
on immigration, or white supremacy over Asians, may have contributed
to the tensions that caused World War II or helped Japan win allies
in Asia, would be a useful exercise at a variety of grade levels
in providing a richer and more nuanced student understanding of
what has often been simplistically called "the good war." Knowing
that some people raised these issues during the war itself gives
greater immediacy to the issues, and helps avoid the charge that
we are imposing our present-day values on an earlier American "consensus." |
33
|
|
Treatment of Asia in American Textbooks
may also serve as a model for educators to engage in textbook analysis
with students. With its exhaustive review of a range of texts and
a sophisticated methodology which paid attention to what was included
and excluded, to the treatment of Asia compared with Europe, and
to the sometimes subtle impressions given by photographs, maps,
and language, this model could help students begin to engage in
similar analyses of their own texts. Such activity is particularly
appropriate in interdisciplinary high school humanities classes,
extended period social studies classes, and methods classes in teacher
education. In most places actual 1940s-era textbooks will not be
available for comparison, but students can be encouraged to see
whether their current textbooks meet the standards which the Committee
for Asiatic Education proposed, or perhaps even exceed them. Students
could also compare their current textbooks with those fifteen or
twenty year old texts still in bookrooms or on faculty shelves,
and measure the changes. Again, I have found high school as well
as college students to be interested in seeing how textbooks have
changed over time, and in analyzing the images and impressions of
earlier textbooks. |
34
|
|
Similarly, comparisons of the material
in Bodde's pamphlets on China's influence on the West with what
is in present-day textbooks may be useful. In addition, Bodde's
pamphlets and Yaukey's books can provide lively and worthwhile material
for teacher use at all levels in lectures, class discussion, or
projects. |
35
|
|
As an example of earlier efforts to
teach a more accurate picture of Asian history and culture, the
work of the Committee on Asiatic Studies in the 1940s corroborates
the idea that the school and college curricula have long been subject
to both criticism and change. That such efforts developed as an
effort to help the United States during wartime may be useful as
an argument against those who believe that it is somehow un-American
to tamper with the curriculum or to devote more attention to Asia
at the expense of Europe. The movement for a multicultural curriculum
itself can only benefit from a more historicized picture of the
efforts made by advocates of this movement, efforts which long predate
the battles of the 1980s and 1990s.
45
|
36
|
|
Notes
1 Gary Nash, Charlotte
Crabtree, and Ross Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and
the Teaching of the Past (N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), esp.
73, 89.
2 Howard Wilson, "Asiatic
Studies in American Schools," in "East and West Association Bulletin,"
in Asia and the Americas 42 (Nov. 1942), 654-57. Quotations
in the next several paragraphs are from this article. For general
information about the activities and personnel of the Committee
on Asiatic Studies in American Education, see John King Fairbank,
Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (N.Y.: Harper & Row,
1982), 167 and passim.
3 While President
Franklin Roosevelt's wartime policy emphasized a "Europe First"
approach, he faced insistent public demands for action in the
Pacific, to avenge the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and to
aid the Chinese. See, e.g., Mark Stoler, Allies and Adversaries:
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy
in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000), esp. 79-87, and Christopher Thorne, Allies of
a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan,
1941-1945 (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1978), esp. 305-07.
4 On the complicated
alliances of World War II in Asia, see, e.g., Christopher Thorne,
The Far Eastern War: States and Societies, 1941-45 (London:
Unwin Paperbacks, 1986), and Thorne, Allies of a Kind.
5 Alfred Church, "The
Study of China and Japan in American Secondary Schools," Ph.D.
diss., Harvard Gradate School of Education, 1939. Published articles
drawn from that thesis include Church, "What Should Americans
Know About the Far East?" Harvard Educational Review 10
(Oct. 1940), 454-65. and Church, "The Schools and the Far East,"
Harvard Educational Review 11 (Oct 1941), 431-46.
6 Kenneth Latourette,
"The Far East: A Suggested Addition to Our Reconstructed History
Curriculums [sic]," The Historical Outlook 10 (March 1919),
131-32; idem., "Synchronization of Chinese and Occidental History,"
The Historical Outlook 10 (May 1919), 238-39; also idem.,
"China Since 1914," The Historical Outlook 10 (Nov. 1919),
428-31. (The Historical Outlook later became The Social
Studies, which still publishes today.) For present-day historians
who share and extend Latourette's ideas about the relative power
and importance of China in world history, see Andre Gunder Frank,
ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1998), and Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great
Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); for a historiographical
overview which evaluates these and other perspectives, see Gale
Stokes, "The Fates of Human Societies: A Review of Recent Macrohistories,"
American Historical Review 106 (April 2001), 508-525.
7 Arthur Scott, "British
Colonial Policy," The Historical Outlook 10 (Jan. 1919),
14-17; George Zook, "The British Empire and What It Stands For,"
The Historical Outlook 10 (March 1919), 127-131; C.C. Crawford,
"India To-Day," The Historical Outlook 10 (March 1919),
117-20.
8 Nash et al, History
on Trial, 49-52.
9 Harold Rugg, Changing
Civilizations in the Modern World: A Textbook in World Geography
with Historical Backgrounds (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1930),
esp. 570-73, 106-32, 608-10; Nash et al, History on Trial,
42. In Rugg's textbook, Latin America, considered as a whole,
is provided about 60 pages, and India, considered only as part
of the British Empire, about 25 pages. Africa is considered only
as an object of European imperialism, as illustrated by the subheading,
"Africa is a land marvelously rich in resources" (p. 141). For
one contemporary critique of Rugg's ideas as too radical and anti-European,
see Harold McKinnon, Changing Our Children: Harold Rugg's Crusade
to Remodel America (Berkeley: Gillick Press, 1943), esp. 11-16;
but cf. Harold Rugg, That Men May Understand: An American in
the Long Armistice (N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1941), and Peter
Carbone, Jr., The Social and Educational Thought of Harold
Rugg (Durham: Duke University Press, 1977), 26-28.
10 See Wilson, "Asiatic
Studies in American Schools," which discusses the workshops. See
also the Committee on Asiatic Studies in American Education
Bulletin #1-6 (June-Dec. 1942). For announcements of other
Committee publications, see "East and West Association Bulletin,"
in Asia and the Americas 43 (Apr. 1943), 247.
11 Derk Bodde, China's
Gifts to the West (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education,
1942), quotations at iii, 2; Bodde, Chinese Ideas in the West
(Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1948), esp.
15-18, 30; China: A Teaching Workbook, Roberta Martin,
ed. (N.Y.: Columbia University East Asian Institute, 1983).
12 See Clarence
Hamilton, "The Present Conflict of Eastern Ideals," Harvard
Educational Review 12 (Oct. 1942), 353-360; Bodde, "Dominant
Ideals in the Formation of Chinese Culture," Harvard Educational
Review 12 (Mar. 1943), 127-139; Haldore Hanson, "Building
Our Relations with the Far East," Harvard Educational Review
13 (May 1943), 222-228; Lin Mou-sheng, "China Today and Tomorrow,"
Harvard Educational Review 13 (May 1943), 229-234.
13 See, e.g., the
special issues on Latin America and on intercultural education,
Harvard Educational Review 13 (Oct. 1943) and 15 (Mar.
1945), respectively, and James Duckrey, "The White Problem in
Relation to the Negro," Harvard Educational Review 15 (Oct.
1945), 270-277. On intercultural education, and for a case study
of how these ideas were implemented in the schools, see Robert
Shaffer, "Multicultural Education in New York City During World
War II," New York History 76 (July 1996), 301-32.
14 Cornelia Spencer
[Grace Yaukey], Made in China: The Story of China's Expression
(N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943); Spencer [Yaukey], Made in India:
The Story of India's People (N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946).
15 Spencer, Made
in China, esp. 58-62, 194, 208-14.
16 Spencer, Made
in India, esp. xi-xii, 3, 50-54, 114-17.
17 Ellen Lewis Buell,
"Boys and Girls in the East," N.Y. Times Book Review (14
Nov. 1943), 14; Ruth Bostwick, review, in Library Journal
68 (15 Nov. 1943), 965; "Books of Interest to All Ages," N.Y.
Herald-Tribune Weekly Book Review (14 Nov. 1943), 12.
18 Ruth Hill, "Ways
of Traveling: India," Saturday Review 29 (13 July 1946),
30; Jean Bothwell, "For the Young Reader," N.Y. Times Book
Review (5 May 1946), 30. The New York Herald-Tribune Weekly
Book Review (19 May 1946), 9, placed the book under the headline,
"These Books Chosen for Special Honor." See also Ruth McEvoy,
review, in Library Journal 71 (15 April 1946), 589.
19 East and West
Association Bulletin, in Asia and the Americas 44 (Nov.
1944), 522, and 44 (Dec. 1944), 568.
20 The Asian
Legacy and American Life, Arthur Christy, ed. (N.Y.: John
Day, 1945), vii, ix, 52, 189-90, and passim. On Christy's untimely
death, see "Dr. Arthur E. Christy," N.Y. Times (9 July
1946), 21.
21 Arthur Christy,
The Orient in American Transcendentalism: A Study of Emerson,
Thoreau, and Alcott (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1932);
Christy, "On the Study of Intercultural Relations," Amerasia
1 (Jan. 1938), 521-27, 532; Christy, "More Comments on the Study
of Intercultural Relations," Amerasia 1 (Feb. 1938), 564-70.
22 See, e.g., Asia
in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching, Ainslie
Embree and Carol Gluck, eds. (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997),
esp. the following articles: Embree, "Asia in Western History,"
1-13; Cho-yun Hau, "Asian Influences on the West," 22-30; Leonard
Gordon, "Some Suggested Readings," 117-26; Frederic Wakeman, Jr.,
"China in the Context of World History," 710-17; and Lynda Norene
Shaffer, "A Concrete Panoply of Intercultural Exchange: Asia in
World History," 810-66.
23 James A. Banks,
Teaching Strategies for the Social Studies (Reading, MA.:
Addison-Wesley, 1977), 195-201; Christine Sleeter and Carl Grant,
Making Choices for Multicultural Education: Five Approaches
to Race, Class, and Gender (Columbus, OH.: Merrill, 1998),
esp. chap. 5.
24 Randall Gould,
"The West's Debt to the East," Christian Science Monitor
(18 June 1945), 18; Eleanor Lattimore, "From Umbrellas to Philosophy,"
New York Herald-Tribune Weekly Book Review (29 July 1945),
5. See also Winfred E. Garrison in The Christian Century
62 (29 Aug. 1945), 980-81.
25 "Toward Teaching
About the Orient," in "East and West Association Bulletin," in
Asia and the Americas 43 (Mar. 1943), 181, and later reports
in that bulletin. Coomaraswamy's talk was published in his collection
of essays, Am I My Brother's Keeper? (N.Y.: John Day Co.,
1947).
26 Meribeth Cameron,
"Young Americans Must Learn About Asia," Social Education
9 (Aug. 1945), 165-66. See also Robert Alexander, "New Vistas
for World History," Social Education 8 (Dec. 1944), 351-52.
27 T. Christopher
Jespersen, American Images of Asia, 1931-1949 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1996), chap. 3.
28 Wilma Fairbank,
America's Cultural Experiment in China, 1942-1949 (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs, 1976), esp. 204-05, and chapter 4.
29 For one study
of American scholars who advised the U.S. government about Japan
during the war, see Richard Minear, "Cross-Cultural Perception
and World War II: American Japanists of the 1940s and Their Images
of Japan," International Studies Quarterly 24 (December
1980), 555-80.
30 Treatment
of Asia in American Textbooks (N.Y.: American Council, Institute
of Pacific Relations and American Council on Education), 1946.
31 Treatment
of Asia in American Textbooks, 48, 49, 67, 75, 96, 99. On
Willkie's ideas and influence, see: Wendell Willkie, One World
(N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1943); John Morton Blum, V Was
For Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II
(N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 262-79; Wendell Willkie:
Hoosier Internationalist, James Madison, ed. (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1992).
32 Treatment
of Asia in American Textbooks, 7-8, 53.
33 Treatment
of Asia in American Textbooks, 46, 69-70, 98.
34 William Appleman
Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (N.Y.: W.W.
Norton, 1972 [1959]); Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment
in Latin America (N.Y.: Monthly Review Press, 1967); Immanuel
Wallerstein, The Modern World System (2 volumes) (N.Y.:
Academic Press, 1974, 1979); Eric Wolf, Europe and the People
Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1982).
35 Treatment
of Asia in American Textbooks, 72-73, 86-87, 95, 96. One might
note here that recent historians of immigration emphasize similarities
in the motives and patterns of European and Asian immigrants to
the U.S. See, for example, Roger Daniels, Coming to America:
A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (N.Y.:
HarperCollins, 1990), 238-240 and passim; Sucheng Chan, "European
and Asian Immigration into the United States in Comparative Perspective,
1820s to 1920s," in Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology,
and Politics, Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, ed. (N.Y.: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 37-75; Major Problems in American
Immigration and Ethnic History, Jon Gjerde, ed. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1998).
36 Treatment
of Asia in American Textbooks, 40.
37 Treatment
of Asia in American Textbooks, 6, 15, 23, 32-3, 45, 76.
38 Treatment
of Asia in American Textbooks, 40, 44, 47, 98.
39 East and West
Association Bulletin, in Asia and the Americas 43 (April
1943), 247; Arleigh Hough, Rand McNally, to Marguerite Ann Stewart,
IPR, 5 June 1946, Box 208, Institute of Pacific Relations Papers,
Butler Library, Columbia University, New York City; editorial,
"The Unknown Continent" (retyped copy), S.F. Chronicle
(27 May 1946), in Box 208, IPR Papers.
40 Fairbank, Chinabound,
167.
41 Nash et al, History
on Trial, 66-67; David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist
Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower (N.Y.: Simon and Schuster,
1978), 314-17; Bruce Cumings, "Boundary Displacement: Area Studies
and International Studies during and after the Cold War," Bulletin
of Concerned Asian Scholars 29 (Jan.-Mar. 1997), 6-26, and
see also the response by George McT. Kahin, "The Making of Southeast
Asian Studies: Cornell's Experience," ibid., 38-42.
42 See Howard Wilson,
American College Life as Education in World Outlook (Washington:
American Council on Education, 1956); Howard Wilson and Florence
Wilson, American Higher Education and World Affairs (Washington:
American Council on Education, 1963). See also Howard Wilson,
"UNESCO and the Universities," Harvard Educational Review
17 (Winter 1947), 45-56, and Wilson, United States National
Commission for UNESCO (N.Y.: MacMillan, 1948).
43 Bodde, Chinese
Ideas in the West; Bodde, Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution
(N.Y.: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1950). For an account of how Bodde's
sojourn in China came to be, and the deteriorating circumstances
in which it occurred, see Wilma Fairbank, America's Cultural
Experiment in China, 174-184.
44 John Dower, War
Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (N.Y.: Pantheon,
1986).
45 Two recent works
which help to provide a historical context for the emergence of
world history, but which came to my attention after this article
was in production, are Asia in the Undergraduate Curriculum:
A Case for Asian Studies in Liberal Arts Education, Suzanne
Wilson Barnett and Van Jay Symons, eds. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe,
2000), and The New World History: A Teacher's Companion,
Ross Dunn, ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000).
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for
personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce,
publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or
sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any
way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part
without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|