A classroom of the airwaves . . . and you are there, attending via satellite or video a discussion of the lessons of American history. The teacher has an informal style, a Donahue-like ease with controlling the flow of discussion. There are opportunities for student questions, staged in the manner of an infomercial--not to mention an 800 number, testimonials from satisfied viewers and opportunities to buy T-shirts and coffee mugs.
The topic is the Gettysburg Address. We see a short clip from the Ken Burns "Civil War" documentary that describes the occasion: Edward Everett spoke for two hours, Abraham Lincoln for a few minutes; Lincoln was disappointed in himself, and many others were critical of his effort. The teacher asks the students to consider what lessons this excerpt holds for them. Their answers are copied on large sheets of paper and hung on the walls to facilitate "brainstorming." Among the lessons:
Don't talk too long.
Don't listen to critics.
Past experience can mislead.
Things are different in the long term from the short term.
Only later do we hear the actual Gettysburg Address read, also from the Burns documentary. A discussion of democracy ensues. The teacher defines "democracy" as Lincoln's government "of the people, by the people and for the people," finding insight in the actor's emphasis on the word "people" in his reading of the line. The teacher contrasts democracy with Stalin's and Hitler's ideologically defended massacres of their own citizens.
The teacher's point is that America is an exception in the history of civilization because it is a unique example of success. The wiping out of native American peoples and the slaughter that was part of the slave trade do not figure as relevant questions for the student to consider. In fact, the celebratory tone of the presentation heads off any troubling questions that might arise during such a discussion.
This classroom of the air comes from "Renewing American Civilization," the bully pulpit of Newt Gingrich, the next Speaker of the House. Gingrich has said that this college course, taught at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Ga., and distributed to more than 100 colleges nationwide, is the most important of his many public works. I watched several episodes of the series and read the accompanying materials to get an idea of what my fellow history teacher means by American history. I should perhaps declare a special interest here: Jeffrey Eisenach, a member of Gingrich's inner circle and the President of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, which supports the broadcast of "Renewing American Civilization," studied U.S. intellectual and cultural history with me when he was an undergraduate at what was then Claremont Men's College.
History classes are meant to instruct the student in basic historical information and the methods by which evidence can be found and evaluated and opinions about the past formed. History is intended as much to satisfy the abiding human curiosity about the past as to help us understand something of the world in which we live. Our work in the classroom is supposed to be about teaching students what they can and cannot support from the evidence available. But historians understand that history, like the Bible, can be used to support almost any side of an argument. One thing history teachers learn quickly is that if you give students the historian's tools, you inevitably help them to disagree with your own interpretations.
Gingrich, however, does not give his students the kind of primary or secondary sources and the historian's craft that will enable them to form their own views, independent of his; the highly opinionated essays in the course reader, none by historians, reinforce his views. Gingrich views American civilization as a series of a priori qualities that are certainly values that many Americans--and even non-Americans--espouse. The five principles of American civilization, as presented here, are: "1. personal strength, 2. entrepreneurial free enterprise, 3. the spirit of invention and discovery, 4. quality, as described by (a popular management guru), and 5. the lessons of American history." Gingrich believes that American history reflects these values. He does not consult history to formulate or understand the problems he addresses, he is already certain of the problems and the solutions. History is his word for the illustrations he gives from the past of the things he already believes in the present.
