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Passing on our past

By MARTIN DYCKMAN
Published November 13, 2005

A neighbor who walks past our house every day usually wears a three-cornered hat, a waistcoat, knee breeches and white stockings. Today, it being chilly, he was clad in a long black cape. He is no eccentric. He has to dress that way for work.

Since taking up temporary residence in Williamsburg, Va., only blocks from the restored Colonial area, we have gotten used to living amidst a perpetual costume party, although it still strikes us as odd to see people in 18th-century garb chatting on cell phones.

Williamsburg is at the heart of American history. Our English heritage took root at Jamestown, just a few miles in one direction, and the colonies won their independence - Virginia having been the first to demand it - at Yorktown, close by on the other. Much of the Civil War was fought nearby, including the first battle of ironclads, and that war too ended in Virginia.

And yet even Virginia middle-school students have been testing so poorly in American history that for two years the state has allowed their scores to be discounted in figuring school accreditation ratings.

But at least Virginia considers history important enough for a test. Florida doesn't.

"In the current atmosphere, if it's not tested, it won't be taught," said Bill White, a historian at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, when I asked if he approved of standardized testing for history. "So in the short term, yes."

But White, the foundation's educational program director, is no fan of testing regimens overall.

"What we seem to get . . . is that the test becomes the end, because it's the thing that marks survival," he said.

White, who works with public television, publishing companies and schools to promote and improve the teaching of history, emphasizes that the proper purpose is not to drill students in dates, names and places, but to create thinking citizens.

"I don't know how to test for that," he said.

He was describing the sort of liberal education - the foundation of critical analysis and a well-rounded mind - that is being sacrificed on the heathen altar that Florida calls "acountability." Congress and the Bush administration cut the misnamed "No Child Left Behind Act" from the same invisible cloth.

White is convinced that holistic scholarship is a long-term casualty of a national fixation with producing more technocrats. For a point of beginning, think 1957 and Sputnik, the tiny Soviet satellite that appeared to put the United States far behind in the race for space and eventual control of the planet.

"The education system has been co-opted by the economy," White said. "We're desperately afraid if we don't raise new scientists and mathematicians and engineers, our economy won't be able to complete."

He's right. History is an indispensable foundation of good citizenship, "the only road map we have," in White's view, "of what it takes to be a participating citizen in a republic."

Imagine testing applicants for naturalization on their skills in math and science instead of their knowledge of American history. (I hope that comparison doesn't give the idea to some dunce in Washington.)

"It's a national problem," White stressed during our interview. "We've raised two generations of Americans who don't understand their history. That's a disaster . . .

"We've lost the focus and purpose of our public school system," he said. "We're asking our educators to do everything, to socialize our children, create citizens, protect our children, to do absolutely everything in the world. And as we continue to flood the agenda, you end up denying the value of everything.

"I don't know what the solution is. I do believe if we were to back up and start with the declaration that the purpose of our education is to create better citizens, we would have a better curriculum and better citizens."

That is because history is "a way of thinking, of asking questions, analyzing the veracity of the evidence, and drawing a conclusion. It's precisely the skill every child will need in the 21st century."

White was raised in Williamsburg, where his first job as a teenager was in the Fife and Drum Corps. He has worked for Colonial Williamsburg ever since and holds a doctorate in American studies from William & Mary.

"I have never been faced with what it means to grow up," he said with a grin.

But he was serious when he said that he considers history "so important that I get up on every stump that I can."

I'm glad that I was able to give him this one.

Martin Dyckman's e-mail address is madyckman@verizon.net

[Last modified November 12, 2005, 00:21:02]