What do Americans think about history?
The New York Times asked American parents what they thought about history. How do their ideas fit with national trends?
Last week, the New York Times published an article—“11 Parents on How They Want Kids to Learn About History, Racism and Gender"—offering perspective direct from American parents about how they thought history should be taught in schools. Participants came from across the country, representing a range of political, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Through their comments about what kinds of subjects they wanted their children to learn in history class and how they should be represented, the panel offers a unique view into Americans’ perceptions of history.
History and “just the facts”
One thing that immediately struck me about the participants’ comments was their repeated use of “facts” as a way to frame what history is. As the piece points out:
the focus group wrestled in particular with the idea of facts versus interpretation, with some wanting interpretation taught strictly at home. Others felt interpretations needed to be updated.
Peter, an Oklahoma Republican, for example, in his comments about how the “Founding Fathers” are taught to high schoolers, expressed the sentiments of several of the respondents:
My major concern is that we’re sometimes teaching more of an opinion of what those people were like instead of the facts.
Recent national research has revealed that this insistence that good history offers “just the facts”—and that “interpretation” can somehow be separated from the teaching of history—is widely shared among many Americans.
A national survey conducted by the American Historical Association and released last year, for example, found that two-thirds of Americans defined history as “names, dates, and other facts about what happened in the past.” Similarly, “Reframing History,” a two-year project I led at the American Association for State and Local History, found a widely shared belief that history is strictly about names, dates, and facts. Through focus groups, in-depth interviews, and a major national survey, our research revealed that many Americans believe history is about finding an obvious, objective “truth,” and any interpretation beyond that is just someone’s biased “opinion.”
Though this emphasis on a just-the-facts framing of history is beside the main point of the Times piece, the repeated use of the phrase illustrates how predominant that conception of history is. The difficulty Americans find with the interpretive aspect of historical work—especially as our interpretations of the past change—has massive implications for our public conversations about history. The notion that anything that looks like interpretation is a sign of political bias is a major part of the reason current debates over history are so charged. It’s also why efforts to resolve them through strident calls to simply “tell the truth” fail to move the needle.
The Reframing History report described the problem like this:
Because [history] is assumed to be simple and straightforward, differing interpretations of the past are assumed to be illegitimate—a sign that someone is inserting subjective opinion and bias into the conversation. This thinking contributes to the currently polarized cultural climate in which ideological camps argue about who has the most authority over the “truth” about the past.
Despite how intractable this problem seems, however, research also offers a way forward. Reframing History didn’t just identify challenges; it also developed and tested solutions for and building a wider understanding of what history involves. In particular, our research experiments found that comparing history work to detective work can get people to move beyond this “just the facts” view of history and instead understand that, like detectives, historical interpretation is central to the work of history, and involves using a range of methods, consulting a wide variety of sources, and updating our stories as we learn new information.
Additionally, when it comes to what kinds of subjects Americans think people should learn, both the Times focus group and other recent surveys reveal some pretty wide agreement.
Teaching the good and the bad
All eleven participants in the Times focus group agreed with the statement “I believe American history should be taught in high school in a neutral way that has both the good and the bad.” No participant, meanwhile, agreed with the statement “I believe high school American history should be taught in a positive way that highlights America’s best qualities.”
This unanimous response should be at least a little surprising. Most obviously, these responses are at odds with the overwhelming push among Republican legislators across the country to limit the scope of history education in American classrooms by outlawing how (or if) subjects like racism and slavery can be taught, under the guise of protecting students from “critical race theory” and '“divisive concepts.” That such a diverse group agrees teaching the full scope of U.S. history is important calls into question (if we’re being generous) who exactly these educational gag orders are serving.
More broadly, this agreement on the necessity of teaching America’s history “warts and all” also presents a mixed bag when we compare it against broader national research. On the one hand, multiple studies have found a stark partisan split when it comes to what history is taught and how it’s framed. A Pew Research Center study published last summer, for example, found that while 53 percent of Americans believed increased attention to the history of racism was good for society, that belief was largely split on partisan lines: just 25 percent of Republicans thought it was “very good” or “somewhat good,” compared to 78 percent of Democrats. Similarly, the American Historical Association survey mentioned above also found deep partisan splits in assessments of whether historically oppressed groups like women, LGBTQ+ people, or racial and ethnic minorities receive too much or too little attention in history classes. Additionally, the AHA survey revealed that 84 percent of Republicans believed that history should “celebrate” the nation’s past, while 70 percent of Democrats believe history should “question” it.
Other data points, however, align with the focus group’s broad agreement. The AHA, for example, found that about three-quarters of Americans thought it was “acceptable to make learners uncomfortable by teaching the harm some people have done to others.” That feeling was shared among both Democrats (78 percent) and Republicans (74 percent). A recent Ipsos survey found that 64 percent of Americans reported feeling that U.S. history was being taught in schools “in a way that is consistent with [their] values.”
What this research makes clear, and what the Times piece helps illustrate, is the degree to which there is agreement about how history should be taught in American classrooms—and that widespread efforts to restrict the teaching of history don’t really reflect how most people feel. Despite the spread of educational gag orders and history’s continued status as a partisan lightning rod, there is consensus among most Americans that students should be taught about both the good and the bad in U.S. history—even if that leads to some uncomfortable conversations. As Kevin M. Levin pointed out in his piece earlier this week, the reasons for this disconnect between what people say should be taught in schools and the efforts of Republicans to restrict the teaching of history are both obvious and disheartening:
it suggests what many of us have claimed from the beginning. Republicans are stoking the culture wars and dividing Americans for their own political self interest, by claiming that history teachers are encouraging their white students to hate their country and themselves for the injustices of the past.
I hope, however, that people who care about history will continue to remind both policy makers and one another that we hold a lot in common when it comes to our view about history. The majority of people believe we must know both the good and the past about our history, even when it’s difficult. With the right framing, there’s agreement that students should learn it in a way that involves thinking and engagement, not “just the facts.”
Don’t let bad faith actors try to convince you otherwise.