Wisconsin has now a unique law on the subject of school history texts.
That law provides, section 1:
No history or other textbook shall be adopted for use or be in any
district school, city school, vocational school or high school
which falsifies the facts regarding the War of Independence or the
War of 1812 or which defames our nation’s founders or misrepresents
the ideals and cause for which they struggled and sacrificed, or
which contains propaganda favorable to any foreign government.
The method provided in other sections of the law for banishing
textbooks which have been adopted but which are repugnant to the above
provision is as follows: Upon complaint of any five citizens, filed
with the state superintendent of public instruction, a hearing shall
be arranged, to be held before the state superintendent or his deputy,
in the county from which the complaint came. Previous notice must
have been given through the press to the public and by mail to the
complainants and to the publishers of the textbook complained of. A
decision must be rendered within ten days. If the book shall be found
obnoxious to the provisions of the law, that fact shall be noted by
the state superintendent in the list of books for schools which he
publishes annually. Thereafter the book so listed may be used only
during the remainder of the year in which the state superintendent
publishes it as proscribed. The penalty for retaining it beyond the
time limit, shall be the loss to the school or district concerned of
the state aid normally falling to its share.
The passage of this bill in the senate with only one vote against it,
created a good deal of surprise, which changed to admiration for the
oratorical powers of its author and sponsor, Senator John Cashman of
Manitowoc County, when it was learned that his impassioned appeal to
patriotism figuratively swept senators “off their feet.”
History students can have no quarrel with the motive assigned by
Senator Cashman for the passage of this law. He says: “The history
of a nation is its proudest asset. It includes the record of its
great men, their ideals, sacrifices, and achievements. To preserve
that history in all its original purity and teach it to the rising
generations is a nation’s first duty.” With every word in that stirring
exordium the historically minded man or woman will cordially agree.
Thoughtful persons, whether historians or not, will also sympathize
with Senator Cashman when he undertakes to rebuke anything approaching
levity in characterizing the fathers of the Republic or captiousness in
criticizing their policies, motives, and achievements. Unfortunately,
there always have been among writers some who display a certain air
of “smartness” or superciliousness which hardly comports with the
inherent dignity of the historian’s office, or with the aim of doing
equal and exact justice to all persons and to all causes discussed.
Yet it will probably be no light task to convince an impartial umpire
that writers of textbooks which have been adopted for use in the
schools, after careful scrutiny by boards of education and other school
officers responsible to the people, have been guilty of “treason
to the nation,” as Senator Cashman seems to think has often been
the case.[88] The framers of the constitution, with wise prevision,
limited the application of the word “treason” in such a way as to
exclude that indefinite class of crimes known elsewhere under the name
of _constructive treason_, which in England and other countries had
provided a favorable soil for plotters of revenge against individuals
and in times of high tension always yielded a sinister harvest of
oppression and suffering. So they defined treason against the United
States narrowly as consisting only in “levying war against them or
in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort,” and they
also provided that conviction under a charge of treason could be
secured only on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or
confession in open court.
This view of the fathers as relates to treason was of course lost sight
of during the Civil War, when in the North it used to be fashionable
for men to pillory as “fool” or “traitor” (with an emphatic expletive)
anyone who had the temerity to vote the Democratic ticket; it was
lost sight of in the recent war when men were called traitors because
they refused to buy liberty bonds or because they declared the draft
a violation of the rights of the individual; and it is likewise
lost sight of when we condemn under the term treason opinions on
history which we may regard as too favorable to our nation’s one-time
enemies, or too contemptuous of the characters or the acts of our own
distinguished men of a past age. It would be strange if the impulses
engendered by the war and the peace were not reflected more or less in
editions of books prepared since 1917. It is probably true that some
authors have overstressed the “hands across the sea” sentiment, while
others perhaps lean unduly in an opposite direction. But that any of
them have been guilty of treasonable acts or even intentions is what no
one who knows the historical profession can believe without the most
explicit proof.
But this question of treason aside, the problem still remains to
determine what is the history of our country “in all its original
purity.” What shall be the test of purity inasmuch as, happily, there
is no established list of authorized books or records from which
writers must derive their facts? Are they not compelled either to
investigate each point for themselves or to accept as probably correct
the results of other men’s investigations? To be sure, every important
event creates its own legend or tradition, and such legends tend to
be preserved and to be handed down from generation to generation. But
legends are not history. No one worthy to rank as a careful historian
would presume to write the history of the Great War on the basis of
legends now crystallizing about it. No more can one write the history
of the Revolution on such a legendary basis. This view, that much
which once was thought to be history but was in fact mere legend, is
not in any sense new. James Russell Lowell, who ranks among the very
distinguished Americans of the last generation, wrote, in 1864, that
the early reports of the battle of Lexington claimed for the Yankee
minutemen a non-resistant attitude.
The Anglo Saxon could not fight without the law on his side. But
later, when the battle became a matter of local pride, the muskets
that had been fired at the Red coats under Pitcairn almost rivalled
in number the pieces of furniture that came over in the Mayflower.
Indeed, whoever has talked much with Revolutionary pensioners knows
that those honored veterans were no less remarkable for imagination
than for patriotism. It should seem that there is nothing on
which so little reliance can be placed as facts, especially when
related by one who saw them. It is no slight help to our charity to
recollect that, in disputable matters, every man sees according to
his prejudices, and is stone blind to whatever he did not expect or
did not mean to see. Even where no personal bias can be suspected,
contemporary and popular evidence is to be taken with great
caution, so exceedingly careless are men as to exact truth, and
such poor observers, for the most part of what goes on under their
eyes.[89]
It is hardly necessary at this late day to insist that no writer is
justified in building his narrative of events on unverified tradition.
He must try to penetrate to the truth that lies behind the legend
(which in some cases will differ very widely from the legend itself).
It is no easy task at best to perform a successful piece of historical
research, and the questions on which final agreements have been reached
are not numerous. Accordingly, if the law should be so construed
as to enforce banishment from the schools of any book which can be
proved incorrect in some of its alleged facts without regard to their
importance, no textbooks will be left in the schools, for none are
impeccable. True, the Cashman law would condemn only for falsifying
the history of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, leaving four
other foreign wars in which our country has engaged, and the great
Civil War, to be treated without other restraint than that contained
in the last clause of section 1, denouncing propaganda in favor of any
foreign government. But under that sole provision it might still prove
embarrassing for a writer to tell the truth about the Mexican War and
possibly the others also, for the term propaganda--as the whole world
has learned lately--is a most elastic one. Presumably, the propaganda
test applies as well to other phases of history as to the military
phases, wherefore an author of a textbook is apt, under a strict
construction of this law, to be hauled into court on the charge of
propaganda if he should consider it his duty to say a single thing in
commendation of any other nation. For, will there not always be found,
in any school district, five citizens whose views collide with those of
the author; and if so, what is to prevent a case being called? Surely a
word in favor of France would be resented by some; a word in favor of
Great Britain would be resented by others; a word in favor of Germany
would offend still others; and so on through the list. In the present
mournful state of general unrest and want of confidence among nations,
an author would tread unsafely on any ground outside the “three-mile
limit.”
It does not follow from the fact that under the law it is easy to
bring cases, that convictions would be equally easy. Presumably the
state superintendent has had knowledge of all books now in use in the
schools and, in effect if not in form, has approved them. This he would
not have done had he considered any of them purveyors of treason or
excessively faulty in statement. Moreover, as judge in cases that may
arise under this law, the superintendent will be bound to take judicial
notice of some things. For example, it is common knowledge that no
history text is perfect either on its factual side, in its literary
qualities, or in the author’s perspective of events; that few writers
display at all times perfect taste, and none perfect judgment, in
their criticisms of men and their comments on historical actions and
movements; that a given textbook may be valuable, despite minor defects
in all of the above points, by reason of its superior arrangement, its
psychological adaptation to children’s needs, and the success with
which it communicates to them the main features and the spirit of
American history. He will also be obliged to rule that the truth is not
malicious propaganda and he is bound to maintain an author’s right to
liberty of research.
It goes without saying that if a book is palpably and grossly
inaccurate; if it gives the child a wholly erroneous view of history;
if it is crassly censorious of America’s great men; if it is written
in a spirit tending to destroy American ideals; if it tends to make
boys and girls ashamed of American character and achievements, not
in exceptional instances here and there, but generally; then there
would hardly be a question about the duty of getting rid of it with
all convenient promptness. But would it not be strange if, with the
superintendent and other educational experts on guard, such a book had
got itself adopted? On general principles one would expect that only
in the rarest cases would this law come into operation; for it ought
not to be easy for a thoroughly unworthy book to elude the critical
eyes of publishers, editors, school superintendents, teachers, and
school boards, to be finally detected and exposed by some school patron
or other private citizen. No doubt such cases are possible, but one
could hardly conceive them to be of common occurrence. Misgivings are
aroused, therefore, by the report that at the legislative hearing
Senator Cashman denounced, by name, five well known and widely used
textbooks.
If the Senator’s historical views, as published in the _Senate Journal_
under date of March 1, 1923, are intended to be made the platform in
a campaign to purify the history teaching of our schools, the upshot
may prove widely different from what is now anticipated; for among
those views, the derivation of which is not indicated, are some which
it would be difficult to find expressed in any existing textbook. For
example, Senator Cashman holds that our country is indebted to Holland
“for town and county representation in a legislature.” Americans
have long been taught that, in the picturesque phrase of John Fiske,
“self-government _broke out_ in Virginia” in 1619 by reason of the
fact that these people were English. We are aware of no investigations
which have brought forth evidence compelling the abandonment of that
view, though some very extravagant claims have been made for the
Dutch influence upon both colonial politics and colonial education.
He also holds that “our free public school system came from Prussia.”
If by this were meant merely that Prussian influence has been felt in
the creation of a system of state supervision of education, and in
the strengthening of a school system already in existence, we would
gladly concur. But the statement is too sweeping to admit of such an
interpretation. Wisconsin Germans ought to be very glad to assign to
New England colonies and states the chief influence in giving us the
public school system because, in the present state of research, that
appears to be where the credit belongs. To all that the Senator says
about the selection of immigrants for America, the development in the
colonies themselves of a new and vivid love of liberty which found
expression in the Declaration of Independence, the stupid tyranny of
George III, and the heroic sufferings and achievements of patriots in
the Revolution, we utter a hearty Amen; realizing, of course, that his
statement is necessarily a crowded summary, cast in oratorical mould,
and not designed as a complete exposition of his views. But, in thus
concurring we do not yield up our sympathy with the aphorism of Edmund
Burke, that in their reaction to tyranny the colonists “are descendants
of Englishmen.”
The same reservations might be made with reference to Senator Cashman’s
statement on the constitution. And yet a fair interpretation of what
he says on that subject compels us to class him with those extreme
worshipers of that document who, like the authors of the New York
teachers’ test oath, would maintain the constitution, unchanged, at
any cost. Speaking of the fathers and their work, he says: “Then
they wrote and the states adopted the supreme law of the land, the
American constitution, the most sublime public document that ever
came forth from the mind and soul of man, establishing a system of
government based upon the consent of the governed, with religious
liberty protected, inherent rights guaranteed, _to be written in
indestructible letters into the pages of the nation’s laws_.” [Editor’s
italics.] It is a well known view of the present progressives, as
it was of the framers themselves, that, great as was the original
constitution, it was still far from being perfect. Also, most
progressives now accept in principle the conclusions of Charles A.
Beard, the historian whose recent investigations on this point are
now well known, that the constitution represents a partial reaction
from the democracy of the Revolution, and was designed in part to set
limitations upon the popular will. While venerating the constitution,
progressives in the main believe that such restrictions as the
legislative election of senators, the appointment and life tenure
of judges (some would include the mode of electing the president),
were intentionally anti-democratic, and that these and other defects
which time has revealed ought to be subject to modification whenever
the people desire the changes. The mode of amendment having been
designed to make changes difficult, or impossible (though in recent
years several changes have been adopted), leading progressives have
long held that that fundamental article ought to be amended first in
order to facilitate other changes. This was Justice John B. Winslow’s
opinion, put forth in 1912; it was the burden of an important plank
in the La Follette national platform the same year; that doctrine was
preached, at least in spirit, by the late President Roosevelt. In
short, it is a progressive principle that the constitution must cease
to be a fetish--a dead hand upon the present and the future--and must
be adjusted, from time to time, to existing social, economic, and
political conditions. The document represents, for the time, a mighty
triumph of constructive statesmanship, so progressive leaders believe,
and it should not be changed “for light or transient causes,” much less
revolutionized, but “it was designed for a rural or semi-rural state.”
The men who made it “however able could not anticipate or solve the new
problems of life and government which have come upon us in the last
half century.”[90]
To follow Senator Cashman’s outline of American history into the
recent period to the all-engrossing event of the World War and
America’s participation therein would be fruitless. Not one of us can
conscientiously claim to be an impartial investigator with respect
to things which have wrenched our souls. We cannot abdicate our own
personalities. In treating the war, all that any historian at present
could hope to do would be to state his views with becoming restraint
and concede that those views may ultimately prove to be quite wrong.
A censorship law of fifty years hence (if our people shall then still
adhere to the censorship idea) would be sure to condemn the teaching
of what some of us now piously believe with reference to this feature
of history; just as a censorship law of today, if it included in its
scope the Civil War, would condemn the teaching of some things which
nearly one-half the voters of Wisconsin sincerely believed in 1864.
“Time is the great sifter and winnower of truth,” and we must consent
to leave these matters to the investigators of our grandchildren’s
generation. Yet the gravest danger to be feared from the law we are
now discussing lies in the psychological probability that every second
man’s opinion of a given history will be based not on what the author
says about the Revolution, or the Constitution, or the War of 1812,
but on what he says about the recent war and the League of Nations. In
other words, the reader who is prejudiced against an author on account
of his last chapter, which is almost sure to be unsatisfactory to many,
will find the first, the middle, and all other chapters reeking with
faults, and this even while personally he may be unconscious of having
imbibed a prejudice at all.
There is a possibility that, as an engine for expelling books now
used, the law will become a dead letter, first, because it may prove
unexpectedly difficult for a dissatisfied citizen to persuade four
others to act with him in making complaint, which however is not
probable; second, because of the clamor of those in the district who
are not keen for or against the book, but who realize that if it is
thrown out all old copies will be worthless and they will have to pay
for new books at the opening of the next school year; third, because
the first cases brought may go against the complainants and discourage
others from multiplying complaints. But, the popular psychology
being what it is, there is an equal chance that the law may foster
a widespread disposition to attack history books, geography books,
civics books, and even readers; that it may keep educational matters
in a state of turmoil, engendering much social bitterness due to
the clashing of parties and interests over questions raised in the
school-book fights. In such controversies teachers would be the first
to suffer, because their opinions would be called for at once, which
would place them between two fires; and no surer way could be found
to degrade the social influence of our schools than by keeping the
teachers in a state of perpetual anxiety.
We have reason to think that Senator Cashman, an acknowledged friend
and promoter of education, would deeply deplore such a result. If he
had anticipated anything of the kind, doubtless he would have refrained
from offering his bill. But laws, like children, when they get out of
hand, have a way of surprising their progenitors. However, we have the
law and must use it to the best ends.
If every one in position of leadership or authority in relation
to it--and among those are members of this Society--shall feel a
responsibility for guiding discussion into proper channels; if debate
on school-book questions shall be kept not merely free but also
parliamentary in form and spirit; if we all insist that differences
of view must be treated tolerantly; if we can secure from the public
toward the arguments and facts in these cases a measure of that
openness of mind which characterizes the American juror sworn to try a
case fairly on the evidence, it may be possible to mitigate or prevent
the evils apprehended.
And if, without discouraging research, the law shall merely enforce
through future adoptions the idea that good taste is as obligatory upon
the textbook maker as good manners are upon the private individual,
one point will have been gained. We trust this may not be won at the
expense of a disposition to whittle down the truth to fit a supposed
demand, or that it will result in substituting books written by
dishonest or spineless persons for those written by men and women of
real character and scholarship.
In the midst of the late war the school supervisors of a western
state discovered what they believed to be propaganda favorable to one
of America’s enemies, and demanded the expulsion of the book from the
schools. The superintendent, being a wise and thoughtful man, prepared
and printed a page of corrective criticism, which all teachers were
asked to paste in the accused book and to teach to the children with
the regular text. By that simple device he saved the people of the
state many thousands of dollars which would have been paid for an
inferior text, if the book had been expelled. If the law shall permit
such a handling of the borderline cases, does it not seem that in a
time when we are at peace with all nations, we could act with equal
calmness, equal justice to authors or publishers, and equal regard for
the interests of the people who have to buy school books?