History and Howard Zinn

I recently had a conversation with a couple of my neighbors at the bus stop prior to putting my sons on the bus to get them on their way to school. It was a terrific conversation - I love getting to know people - hearing their opinions and ideas and sharing their joys and sorrows and the experiences in their lives. The conversation turned toward education, and how history is taught in our schools. There are significant portions of American history that are not taught, or that are taught incorrectly, and one of the topics brought up was the author Howard Zinn. His history book, A People's History of the United States, is the most popular history book ever written, and it is hugely biased, and in fact wrong on several points. The feedback I got from the people I was speaking with was 'Oh, history is always biased - people write what they want to write that fits their viewpoint.' NO, NO NO! That's how bad historians write! And even if historians do write that way, generally thoughtful people don't accept their biased viewpoints as fact - and we should at the least present both sides of any issue if one side is biased when we are teaching our children. Unfortunately that does not happen in our school systems. There is rarely unbiased teaching going on.

For those of you who have read Howard Zinn, here are some facts about his writing from discoverthenetworks.org:

The author of more than twenty books, Zinn is best known for writing A People's History of the United States (1980), a Marxist tract that describes America as a predatory and repressive capitalist state -- sexist, racist, imperialist -- that is run by a corporate ruling class for the benefit of the rich. The book claims to present American history through the eyes of workers, American Indians, slaves, women, blacks, and populists. A People’s History has sold more than a million copies, making it one of the best-selling history books of all time. Despite its lack of footnotes and other scholarly apparatus, it is one of most influential texts in college classrooms today -- not only in history classes, but also in such fields as economics, political science, literature, and women’s studies. Professor Zinn announced the overtly political agenda of A People’s History in an explanatory coda to the 1995 edition: "I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle. I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.”

In A People's History, Zinn describes the founding of the American Republic as an exercise in tyrannical control of the many by the few, for greed and profit: “The American Revolution … was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers ... created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.” By Zinn’s reckoning, the Declaration of Independence was not so much a revolutionary statement of rights, as it was a cynical means of manipulating popular groups into overthrowing the King to benefit the rich. The rights which the Declaration appeared to guarantee were “limited to life, liberty and happiness for white males” -- and actually for wealthy white males -- because they excluded black slaves and “ignored the existing inequalities in property.” (In other words, they were not socialist rights). Zinn's book contends that Maoist China was “the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people’s government, independent of outside control”

Are you kidding? Maoist China? That was the government that started the Cultural Revolution that killed millions and still today suppresses the free expression of speech and religion? For those of you who enjoy Zinn, think again.