The figures are staggering. The percentage of Americans who know what rights the First Amendment protects has plunged by as much as half in recent years. The share of adults who are “extremely or very proud” to be American dropped from over 90% in 2004 to just 67% in 2004. A crisis of civic literacy is getting worse with each new generation as Americans slowly forget their own history.
As a service to parents, school board members, and educators, the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy compares two of the most ambitious and prominent literary projects ever undertaken to teach high school-aged children the history of the United States of America: Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which is used in as many as 1 in 4 public school history classrooms nationwide, and Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.
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Both books offer extensive narratives of America’s history, yet their approaches are vastly different—the texts reflect discordant views on the American experiment. Such contrasts encapsulate and mirror much of the nation’s current divide in civic and political dialogue. Indeed, the adoption of one text versus the other will likely help determine which narrative about the American republican experiment future generations will adopt.
Zinn’s A People’s History has become a linchpin of critical perspectives on American history. Zinn, a self-identified democratic socialist, narrates the founding and development of the United States primarily through a lens of class struggle and oppression. A People’s History illustrates the United States as a nation built on the exploitation of marginalized groups. The country’s greatest advocates for liberty are painted as master manipulators with ulterior motives.
Compare this vision with that of Wilfred McClay, whose Land of Hope was published nearly 40 years after Zinn’s work. McClay, an academic historian with affiliations with such institutions as Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Hillsdale, seeks to provide an “accurate, responsible, coherent, persuasive, and inspiring” account of American history. Nevertheless, McClay does not minimize tumultuous points in American history. In fact, McClay highlights the moral and intellectual conflicts that have shaped the nation’s move forward, while also paying homage to the Founders’ ideals of liberty.
The stakes of these competing narratives could not be higher. As students are increasingly exposed to Zinn’s version of history, they may come to see the American system as inherently flawed—a nation built on exploitation. McClay’s account, however, encourages students to see the United States as a nation that has made great advancement toward the ideal of equality, despite dark points and struggles along its timeline.
These contrasting narratives shape the way students see and comprehend their country. Zinn’s work is poised to foment within students a sense of disillusionment and frustration with their country; McClay’s Land of Hope offers a balanced, yet inspiring account that informs students’ sense of citizenship and hope for the future. The widespread adoption of Zinn’s A People’s History in classrooms is troubling not because it offers a critique of the United States, but because it disingenuously reduces all American history to acts of oppression.
In an era when civic knowledge is on the decline, it is incumbent upon schools to review which historical texts they are presenting to students. Rather than provoke division and distrust within students, we must help our students to engage with the nuanced history of the United States with both honesty and high expectations for the future. Land of Hope is more than a text, but rather a tool to help students of this generation understand the past in a way that encourages them to shape a better, and greater, future.
Read the report here.
Tyler Bonin is the Civics Education Specialist at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy.
