According to the scholar, the book contains” a lot of determination assigned to historic characters that we just don’t have no data for,”
The curriculum,” A Women’s Story of the United States”, used in as many as one and four high school history schools, misinforms learners and borrows from Karl Marx to provide American history as a” discord between investment and labor”, according to a new record.
The later Howard Zinn’s” A Women’s Story” is comparable to Hillsdale College Professor Wilfred McClay’s less popular text” Land of Hope: An Offer to the Wonderful American Story,” according to the report from the Goldwater Institute. The Institute is a conservative consider reservoir in Arizona that is concerned with American constitutional rights and completely business plan.
Author Tyler Bonin stated in a recent interview that the idea that “fewer and fewer Americans are glad to be Americans” serves as the underlying justification for writing and publishing this document.
He cited a 2024 Gallup poll that found the number of Americans who are “extremely/very glad to be an United” has fallen from 90 percent to 67 percent since 2004.
Kids need to be given a well-rounded tale, Bonin said, but they also need to find trust in the fact that we have little to strive for and that our foundation is founded on the principles of liberty and flourishing. He worked at Goldwater as a civics learning consultant before becoming a history teacher.
Zinn, a previous teacher and self-proclaimed “democratic socialist”, published” A Women’s History” in 1980. Since then, it has grown to be one of the most widely used past textbooks in British education, both in high school and college.
Zinn’s text in” connection with the affiliated online Zinn Education Project” is used in nearly one in four past classrooms at U. S. open schools, according to Bonin’s study, citing an American Historical Association report.
The College Fix sent two letters to The Zinn Education Project asking for its response to the report that were sent over the past two months. The job provides training programs and other training materials that” [b]eached on the approach to history highlighted in” Zinn’s text.
According to the site’s site,” We believe that by giving a more interesting and truthful look at the past, we can support equip students— and all of us— with scientific tools to make sense of and improve the world today.”
Bonin, however, claimed that Zinn’s text contains” a lot of determination assigned to historical characters that we simply don’t have any proof for.”
For instance, the record referenced a passage where Zinn criticized Thomas Jefferson for “disapproving servitude even while being a slaveowner.” Zinn’s text suggests Jefferson’s reading was “underhanded” and “merely concealed hidden motives”, according to the document.
In another example, the report discovered that Zinn had a “belief that the American Revolution was a venture of financial manipulation and political persecution perpetrated by powerful rulers at the price of the bad.”
Professor McClay’s alternate text, on the other hand, presented it as” a previously unprecedented progress in declaring and securing liberty, justice, and self-determination advanced by flawed but extraordinary numbers”
In the report, Bonin wrote,” Works like Land of Hope avoid these traps, instead highlighting the virtues of America while not reluctanced to acknowledge its vices and shortcomings.”
MORE: Howard Zinn lied about Christopher Columbus. Here’s how.
According to the report,” A People’s History” also contains a strong Marxist bias.
According to the report,” The book has a nearly exclusive focus on understanding every major event as a conflict between capital and labor, borrowing from Marx to strip individual actors of all principles besides greed and economic exploitation.”
It also quoted Zinn himself, who once said,” Marx’s Communist Manifesto was … immensely useful and inspiring” in influencing his view of history.
Bonin’s report ultimately concluded that Zinn’s book “advances misrepresentations, lacks nuance, and aims to misinform our young people about landmarks of American history”.
Speaking with The Fix, Professor McClay said he wrote” Land of Hope”, in part, as a response to books such as Zinn’s.
” The widespread use of Zinn’s book in secondary schools and colleges throughout the nation for many years has been a horrifying spectacle. Even very left-wing historians acknowledge that Zinn’s book is bad history”, he said.
According to McClay, Zinn’s success is attributed to the fact that “his book is very readable and accessible, in a way that so many of the leading mainstream textbooks are not.”
” In writing Land of Hope I thought it was important not only to counter Zinn’s shallow, comic-book-like telling of the American past, but also to provide an alternative to the turgidity of the major texts”, he told The Fix. The issue with our major textbooks is not just the authors ‘ ideological biases, but also the writing itself.
Another problem, McClay said, “is that they are reluctant, to the point of squeamishness, to risk sounding proud of their country. However, if that is going to be your place of origin, you will struggle to provide a compelling justification for even studying the matter.
When McClay was questioned about the effect of Zinn’s textbook on the college setting, he said he had observed more student skepticism in recent years.
Often now, students” come out of high school suspicious of nearly all received narratives, which is both good news and bad news”, he said.
McClay mentioned influences like Zinn’s book and the New York Times ‘ “1619 Project” – which he said promote a “highly critical” and “highly inaccurate” view of American history.
It’s unfortunate that high schools don’t consistently give their students a clear and accurate understanding of their own history. But it’s good that they’re suspicious of what they’re getting, he said to The Fix.” A lot of what they’re getting is suspect,” he said.
It implies that those of us who teach in colleges have a job to do, McClay said.
MORE: 1619 Project releases ‘ reparations math ‘ curriculum for high school
IMAGE: Goldwater Institute, Zinn Education Project
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