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Surviving History: Gary Nash and the National Standards
Marjorie Bingham
St. Louis Park High School, Minnesota
| I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I met Gary Nash. He came to speak at a Bradley Commission meeting at the request of our chair, Kenneth Jackson.1 I had known his writing and used excerpts from his Red, White, and Black for my AP American history class. But I was rather surprised to see him appear and to find out that he, along with Charlotte Crabtree, was involved in a National Center for History. |
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There were three reasons for my surprise and these may tell aspects of Nash's remarkable career. First, he was in a room already loaded with notable, mainly older, scholars. Did we really need yet one more? But hearing Nash speak about the need for more diversity in history, John Arevalo and I looked at each other. As high school teachers, John was representing Hispanic history and I women's history and it was great to have an "outside" voice bolstering our views. |
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The second surprise was Nash's age. He was too young to be involved in history education. One of the first things you learn as a teacher trying to organize workshops or speakers for social studies conventions is that you do not ask young professors. Their focus is on tenure and building up an academic profile. Instead, you ask senior professors, the best in the field, who are more generous with their time and more interested in a wider audience. But here was this young historian, already making a solid reputation, about to enter the realm of history education. There was, at that time, a kind of iron curtain between many history and education departments and anyone crossing the barrier was at risk of being seen as intellectually suspect. (My history professors, for example, were rather reluctant to approve a course in the Philosophy of Education—it proved to be one of the most challenging I had in graduate school.) Did Nash know what a disastrous career move this might be? I could understand Kenneth Jackson and Leon Litwack and their commitments to public education—both had experience in the schools. Nash had not. |
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Therefore, I was surprised in a third way. Did he really know what he was getting into? As part of a movement for history reform, I could only imagine the number of hours he would be sitting in committees, handling criticisms, trying to negotiate with the National Council of Social Studies (NCSS), and encouraging teacher workshops. The twenty pages at the back of the National Standards in American and World History are filled with names of people eventually involved in these projects. Did he really know what minefields there were in the field? If so, he was a man of real courage—and so he turned out to be. |
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The minefields I foresaw for him, however, were not necessarily the ones he faced. Perhaps an example from my own high school, Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, is fairly typical of a social studies curriculum in the 1970s and early 1980s. Ninth grade was devoted to drivers training, careers, and civics. Tenth grade was American history from the Civil War—earlier history was in the seventh grade. So the Federalist Papers or issues of Native Americans or slavery were unlikely to be taught in depth. In the eleventh grade, students chose from "areas studies"—might be Latin America, U.S.S.R., Western Civilization, or China depending on the teachers available. Twelfth grade was a semester each of economics and political behavior. Four years of required social studies was rather unusual—state requirements only included American history. Working to push history to the center of the curriculum was very difficult. What I did not expect was that Nash's mission would be undercut by the very people who claimed to be supporting history. |
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By the time the Standards appeared, there had been some clear signs that a history-centered curriculum was gaining support. The California Standard, developed by Crabtree and Diane Ravitch, had been a model for other states. The Bradley Commission published its Building History Curriculum and copies were widely distributed. NCSS had moved, despite controversy, in its "Charting A Course" to a curriculum that included a strong history component.2 The Organization of History Teachers (OHT), urged on by Earl Bell, had also developed its guidelines for history. There was much in Lynne Cheney's American Memory for history teachers to support. Particularly apt was her criticism of courses like "Introduction to Careers" and "Business Communications" as substituting for history requirements.3 What teacher could not agree that "Teachers must be relieved of too-heavy classloads and of the many non-teaching duties that clutter their days"?4 |
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When the National Standards appeared, I was, frankly, heartbroken by the controversy. Of course, I had expected that there would be criticism. I had been on enough curriculum committees from our local district to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to know there was no pleasing everyone. Speaking to a group of historians of women's history, I tried to moderate their criticism that more women should have been included in the Standards. I urged patience; it would be much easier to include women in American history than in driver's training classes. Like many other teachers, however, I was not prepared for the fury of the attacks on the Standards and on Nash personally. While I had not served on any committees developing the Standards, I knew many of the teachers, often drawn from the OHT, who had. They were an exceptional group and deserved respect, as did the other professionals who devoted so much energy to the telling of history. |
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The conflict over the Standards has been well-told elsewhere, most noticeably in Linda Symcox's Whose History? and Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn's History on Trial. I do not agree with Ronald W. Evan's view, however, that the authors of the Standards "wisely deleted" the teaching and class activities from later versions of the Standards.5 Politically wise, perhaps, but the original version of the Standards is a rich treasure for any teacher of history. I often encourage young teachers to find an original copy of the Standards and just random through the pages, looking for new ideas and techniques. |
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The Center for History in the Schools, directed by Nash, has since published some wonderful lessons for teachers on significant subjects. In some ways, these lessons and the Standards represent the differences between Tolstoy and Emerson. Tolstoy gives significant detail after detail to create a picture for the readers. In much the same way, the Center's lessons provide original documents and interpretation that enlist students in a thorough examination of the subject. Emerson, as a Transcendentalist, however, believed in flashes of insight, quick images to inspire. The first version of the Standards is full of brief questions that spark new ways of looking at things. One from the American History Standards reads: "Use children's trade books such as Nelda by Pat Edwards and Elderberry Ticket by Joan Zeier to illustrate the effects of the depression on families."6 The suggestion gives sources probably unknown to teachers, a different way of handling the depression, and insight into how other children's books might be used for more sophisticated classroom activity. Another example from the World History Standards reads: "Compose a letter from a scholar in Muslim Spain to a colleague in Baghdad describing economic and cultural conditions in his city."7 A student has to take into account not only what is going on in Spain, but also how these conditions might appear to those in sophisticated Baghdad. Of course, not all the activities were creative. Pity the poor student asked to "Compare the role played by Confucianism in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam."8 For the most part, however, the original Standards are a major achievement in sequencing history, integrating political, economic, and social history, and providing insight for classroom creativity.9 |
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This achievement has had influence far beyond the controversy of a decade ago. Nash is to be admired for sticking it out in education, continuing with the Center, engaging professional organizations in the schools, and continuing to produce textbooks and scholarship which provide teachers with the materials to update the field of history. He took the fire that many of us later learned to handle. Let me give a few examples. Linda Symcox makes the point in Whose History? that "somehow" the NAEP standards, which included much social history "went undetected during the entire debate over the Standards."10 I chuckled reading that sentence. As a member of the NAEP committee, I was recalled to Washington after our committee work was finished. There, I was asked to sit in a room for a day, placing significant people or events into the framework. Douglas MacArthur and Inchon here; McClellan, Lee, Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation there. We learned from the Standards controversy. |
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A 2003 failed attempt to create a set of historical standards in Minnesota provides another example of lessons learned. Sara Evans and Lisa Norling described how a network of support that included teachers, history and education professors, and local organizations worked with the state legislation to provide a different set of guidelines. Evans and Norling state that the Standards were a major part of the story. "Fortunately, we did not have to start from scratch; we were able to draw on the excellent work of our colleagues under the leadership of Gary Nash in the creation of a national history standard a decade ago."11 They also had a model for drawing an involved community together. |
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Symcox ends her book on the Standards in pessimistic tone, seeing "the reform process stalled" and the "moral high ground" as "contested and untenanted."12 I do not see the issue quite that way. The Standards are still used as the central aid in history curriculum thought. Gary Nash once wrote that the bridges created between groups working on the Standards "may even outlast the standards themselves."13 Howard Shorr, an Oregon teacher, felt his experience with the American history AHA Focus Group "helped each group start to understand one another."14 Often, these associations led to workshops, joint curriculum projects, and further research. Julia Stewart Werner, on the AHA Focus Group for world history, said her teaching changed after her involvement with the Standards, which was one of the most stimulating in her career.15 As Wisconsin professors found out, despite their expertise in a selected field, they were not necessarily the smartest persons in the room, nor the ones with the largest obstacles in teaching. It is probably time to look not merely at the controversy of the 1990s, but also at the long-range influence of the Standards and the networks it helped to create. |
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And to look at the role of Gary Nash in the history of education. Thinking back to the first time I met Nash, when he wanted to get involved in the seemingly thankless task of history education, I wondered if he knew what fame—or infamy!—it would bring him. Nash's career reminds me a bit of another controversial educator who worked with the schools, had an outstanding academic career, and was involved in public policy—John Dewey. One of my professors intended to write a biography of Dewey, but he gave it up—there were so many multiple roles, "just too much there." I hope Nash's biographer will persist, however, even though there is also much "there." He is important, especially to the teachers whom he gave such voice, for his courage, persistence, and—above all—his care for history, in all its richness. |
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Notes
1. This paper is an expanded version of a talk given at the conference "A Life in Public Education" honoring Gary Nash, May 10, 2008, at California State University, Long Beach. After my talk, a young teacher asked what the Bradley Commission was. Briefly: The Bradley Commission on History in the Schools, 1987–1988 was made up of history and education professors and teachers to encourage history as the center of the social studies curriculum. Members included John Arevalo, Marjorie Bingham, Louise Byron, Charlotte Crabtree, Gordon Craig, Robert Ferrell, Hazel Hertzberg, Claudia Hoone, Nathan Huggins, Kenneth Jackson, Michael Kammen, William Leuchtenburg, Leon Litwack, William McNeill, Diane Ravitch, Charles Shotland, and C. Vann Woodward.
2. For the controversy, see whole issue: "Charting a Course: A Debate," Social Education 54.7 (November/December 1990).
3. Lynn Cheney, American Memory: A Report on the Humanities in the Nation's Public Schools (Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Humanities, 1987), 9.
4. Ibid., 25.
5. Ronald W. Evans, The Social Studies Wars (New York: Teachers College, 2004), 168.
6. National Standards for United States History (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1994), 190.
7. National Standards for World History (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1994), 110.
8. Ibid., 198.
9. See also: Barry W. Bierstock, "Everything Old is New Again: Social History, the National Standards and the Crisis in the Teaching of High School American History," Journal of Social History 29 (Suppl. 1995): 62. "The achievement of the National Standards is that they integrate social history into the larger political and economic narrative, in the process asking students to formulate questions, interpret data, and assess sources in a way that should satisfy critics who think social history is simply fluff."
10. Symcox, 132.
11. Sara Evans and Lisa Norling, "What Happened In Minnesota?" OAH Newsletter 32.4 (November 2004): 4 <http//www.oh.org/pubs/nl/2004nov/evans-norling/html>.
12. Symcox, 165.
13. Gary B. Nash, "Reflections on the National History Standards," National Forum: Phi Kappa Phi Journal (Summer 1997): 5.
14. Howard Shorr, correspondence with author, 25 June 2008.
15. Phone conversation with author, 24 June 2008.
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