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McClay on Zinn: ‘Maturity and Acne Don’t Generally Mix’
I recently stumbled across Professor Wilfred McClay’s review of Mary Grabar’s book, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History that Turned a Generation Against America, from which the pithy quote in the title of this post was taken regarding Zinn’s appeal to teenagers. The link at PowerLine caught my eye because I recognized Professor McClay’s name from the 25-session online course on American history offered by Hillsdale, which I just completed last week. Having experienced Professor McClay’s instruction, I believe him to be a trustworthy source on the subject of American history — unlike Howard Zinn.
But, it made me wonder, has anyone here read Zinn? Or, worse, been taught from his deplorable book? I managed to make it through my public education before the publication of A People’s History, so I was spared. And I’m sure most of us have better uses of our time than to go back and “catch up.” But, have any of you been afflicted with Zinn’s History? What was your experience of it?
Published in General
I believe his book came out long after I was in high school. However, I am interested to hear from people who did have it in school, and how they overcame it.
I got my education waaaaaay before Zinn, thank goodness. People had a sense of humor way back then. Our US History teacher brought an antique flintlock rifle to school one day to show us, and he was severely reprimanded for it, but that was all. He got more razzing from us. His name was Dean Brink, and one day one of my classmates wrote on the blackboard:
King Brink is a Fink
Everyone laughed, including the teacher, and no one got sent to the principal’s office.
Yeah, my memory of high school history is one of getting by. I remember pulling an all-nighter finishing an extra credit, mixed-media, self-illustrated (and I’m not an artist!) report on the fall of the Roman Empire, just so I could pass. My teacher was kind. And generous. He passed me.
I did learn something in that twelve hours of slapdashery, though.
My memory of high school history class was that the teacher, Mrs. Canova, was a petite little woman with a trim figure who emphasized it with the clothes and high heels she wore, but not a pretty face, and she sat the football players in the front and the girls in the back, and she never called on us. From my seat in the far reaches of the very back of the room, I’m not sure she could even see me.
Rush spotted Zinn for what he was instantly, and he’d read passages from the book and point out what Zinn was doing to America. Some of it was kind of subtle; like he’d say “the peoples” of America instead of “people,” in his ongoing effort to dis-unite the United States by emphasizing groups. This book would never have been published when I was in school.
Our high school history book had a sentence in it which said that everyone looked up to George Washington, but that it might have just been because he was the tallest. One of the moms saw that as an unforgivable slight, probably written by a Communist sympathizer, and raised a ruckus that was heard all the way in the state capital, and the book was ditched. Can you imagine that happening today?
Well, I can certainly Imagine it.🤔🤔🤔
I’m young enough (I think) that I might have been taught by Zinn (and I remember that the history department’s closet had a lot of copies of it the summer I went in to organize), but funnily enough AP saved me from it. I have no idea what the non-honors or even the honors kids learned from, but Zinn wasn’t an endorsed AP US textbook so we never bothered with him. Strayer, and Turner’s Thesis, were the Bible for that class.
I was in high school in 1998-2002 and we did not use his textbook. I remember some World History book where we had to know the 5 pillars of Islam and the 10 commandments, but I don’t really remember anything that was contradicted my very christian middle school world history.
I took AP American History, which was even handed. Even handed enough that my liberal teacher managed to teach me enough for me to draw my own far right conclusions. I came out of early 20th century American Hiatory with a bit of a nationalist and isolationist bent. I had a rather poor view of Monroe and FDR’s enterprises in other countries. The teacher didn’t seem to speak negatively about any of it, though.
I read his “People’s History of the United States” when I was a serving military is officer (around 1985) strictly out of curiosity. It was as bad as you would imagine; a leftist screed masquerading as a history book. I never could see why anyone took him seriously.
And in many ways, my Jesuit high school (class of 1975) education was intellectually superior to what I encountered at several universities.
I had it in high school, junior year.
It was not the main text book but a supplement.
The main text book we used was by Robert Divine.
Sounds lovely. A petite lady in tight clothes and high heels (even with a homely face) would have been an improvement. In my southside all boys HS I had, in order:
A large man of Slavic descent with foot problems which only enhanced any comparisons to Frankenstein’s monster. He wrote his own book on ancient history (and that’s the one we used)
Head sophomore football coach (of Slavic descent) whose teaching consisted of filling the blackboards with notes, having us copy them, then tests.
A largish Augustinian brother (probably of Slavic descent). Pretty good teacher.
A stumpy jowly man. Germanic descent I think. Hard to get past the polyester, droning voice, AP level material, and the jowls. Oh the jowls – I’ll take being bald but please God spare me the jowls.
Ooh, the Jesuits. Have you recovered yet?
The Augustinians were pretty conservative; actually in hindsight I remember southwest side Chicago being pretty darned conservative (at that time) especially for a Democratic stronghold.
All I really remember from AP US History is Joe Cannon. The most powerful speaker of the house ever, or something like that. I think it was the way our teacher pronounced it all mushed together: joe-CANnon.
I don’t know why that book is permitted as a text.
I lived in San Fran for a few years after school, and a roomate of mine at the time recommended it. So I was already through my formal education before encountering it (I was Comp. Sci /Math major, I think my Sociology 101 filled out the “history/social science” core req.). I would have considered myself fairly middle-of-the-road politically at the time, though with a healthy anti-authority sensibility.
I read it and was generally unimpressed. It read more like a polemic than an academic work, and I remember being annoyed at the lack of any sourcing for much of the information being layed out in the text. It could serve as a counter-perspective within a greater history curriculum, but using it as the core of a survey course or US history course is an academic crime in my opinion.
I learned American history by reading lots of books before I even got to high school. The most I remember about the high school class was that our teacher was really ticked off at me and my two friends because we were always passing notes back and forth and not really paying attention. I was finished with high school before Zinn wrote that book.
When I began teaching school, about twenty years after I graduated high school, my district used the Cultural Literacy books “What Every 4th Grader Should Know” as the Social Studies and Science curriculum. It was great! My students were so into learning about the American Revolution. This was in Maryland, so they had a couple of battle sites there. But, what really got the students going was when we learned about The Quartering Act. They were so astonished that the King of England could force people to take in soldiers and feed and house them–for no pay!! And many of these students had a parent or two who was active duty in the military, because our district was flanked by bases–Air Force, Navy, and a couple of parents were Marines, so it wasn’t any anti-military bias going on.
Anyway—E.D. Hirsch is a much better source for teaching students than Howard Zinn, in my opinion.
Wait! You mean that slavery and genocide of Native Americans are not the only things that ever happened in America? Who knew? Now you’ve got me wondering who this Abraham Lincoln fellow was…
Yes, my kids learned from E.D. Hirsch in a Core Knowledge charter elementary/middle school. I loved those books, too.
He’s a Republican politician from the 1850s known for making racist statements.
Arrrrrggghh!
Did you know he didn’t have any women in his cabinet at all?
I took AP US history recently and did end up reading Zinn, but since we had two other dense textbooks and a lot of other excerpts and stuff to read, I ended up reading only one chapter of Zinn before the teacher decided to stick to one of the main textbooks. AP US History now leans somewhat left, both the curriculum and probably most teachers, but I think I got some good things out of it. Off the top of my head, I remember many things I took away from the class that were conservative, such as the fact of ever-expanding presidential power, issues of federalism vs. central government, how the courts work and how much of that is in the constitution, and the realization that there is really no way to compare modern political parties to historical ones, since modern parties all carry strains of various historical parties.
I think my worldview was challenged and eventually got a lot stronger during the two years of mildly left-leaning AP US history and then We the People/AP government I got. I know why I think what I think now, thanks to the combination of non-propaganda left-leaning history, the election of Donald Trump, and the Ben Shapiro show.
I think a left-leaning history class, as long as it isn’t constant pure propaganda, is what you make of it. People can block out the opposing ideas, or they can just buy it, but the best thing to do is to let your beliefs be challenged and explore ideas that both support and oppose your views.
When I was coming up I was a lib – a hangover hippy, I suppose. I found American history and government courses (high school) to be jingoistic and suspect.
Well, we fixed that, and now they are anti-American history and government.
The best way to come out of school is to love your country warts and all. This is not possible when you only learn about the warts.