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By all means there should be a History Day, particularly as this sounds to be something that was already in the works. But American history is talked about every day on social media, in newspapers, on TV, magazines, in books that people read and discuss. And yet, here we are...
Perhaps I misunderstood what National History Day was to be about. I took it to be a proposed antidote to a current day political problem.If it's just to remind us of our past, and its connection to the present, that's very different from the political responses I raised.
Revealing how the past gets us to where we are, always with the sense of contingency in play, is the work of history every day. Political activism, particularly effective political activism, is different. I guess it depends on what effect one wishes to bring about.
I have one plea for National History Day: that it not be about "the Founders" as traditionally construed. Much has been written about them. "The Founders" that people need be introduced to are the people who transformed the Constitution in the 1860s.
The 13th, 14th,& 15th Amendments-- the 14th particularly-- put in place the conditions for the country we inhabit now; a country very different than the one conceived and constructed by the original Founders.
The process of incorporation has made nearly all of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. This, along with the rise of the administrative state, and the various civil rights movements were made possible by what happened after the remaking of the original Constitution.
History is contested. It's not a block we can put on a table and say,"Here's history. Recognize it. Now, go forth and do the right thing." It is an argument. Any history that is presented on this day must account for the fact that there is no one version of history.
There are-- at least-- left, liberal, center, conservative, right understandings about what history is and what it means. A National History day that takes in all of these perspectives will be interesting and important, but not an antidote to any particular problem.
Let's face it, if we wind the clock back to the origins of the United States; the people in power tolerated even worse things than what we complain of today: slavery, Indian removal, the subjugation of women, the disfranchisement of free blacks, and one and on and on.
There was wisdom in the actions of the original Founders, and we should take that wisdom wherever we can find it. But National History Day should focus on the promise of the new country that was created in the ashes of the Civil War. But even that statement will be contested.
My skeptical reaction was to the implicit assumption that if we consulted our history It would tell us we should not be doing things we are doing now. There’s another argument that if we knew our history it would tell us to do exactly what we’re doing now.
