Do we teach our children 'bad history' in classrooms?

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): "Good history is necessary, because bad history brings disaster on those who peddle it and seek to impose their distorted vision on whole societies." This is a statement made by historians Lord Hugh Thomas and J. M. Roberts, as reported by Sir Raymond Carr from Oxford University in The Economist (Nov. 16, 1996).

Influenced by the way this statement was formulated in this report, I thought at first that good history is needed primarily to prevent societies from becoming victims of peddlers of bad history. Good history is thus perceived merely as a reaction to bad history.

I feel very uncomfortable with this thought. Is it really so? I don't know. We first need to decipher what is meant by "good history" and "bad history" before we can make valid inference concerning the meaning and connotations of this statement.

Good history, according to some historians, is analysis of past conditions of society based on evidence, coherent argument (logic), and common sense. Expressed differently, good history is truthful re-creation of the past in which past human events are comprehended "from the inside". In good history, past events are conceived as "outcomes of personal existential decisions at particular times". It should be obvious from this explanation that in good history the acquisition of specific factual knowledge is of paramount importance.

And what is bad history? Analysis by historians suggest three kinds of bad history, that is "new historicism", myth-history, and revisionist history.

The worst among the three is new historicism, which is history without facts. This is "history" which is concentrated on cultural motivations, and consists of judgments on past societies which are not substantiated by sufficient detailed characteristics acquired through traditional research. Believers of history-without-facts think that, in general, the acquisition of specific knowledge has become declasse.

These people believe the aim of education is to teach students how to think, and therefore education should give more attention to method and not content. To them the important thing is not the acquisition of facts or evidence, but the ability to make generalizations.

According to Mary Lefkowitz, professor of classics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, the inevitable result of this kind of history is "a portrait of the past painted with broad strokes and bright colors of our own choosing". History thus becomes a projection of society's cultural values of the time in which the writers of history live. History written in this way does not give a true picture of past human processes that brought us to our present situation. Through this kind of history there can be no valid understanding of our strengths and weaknesses, or of our true potentials. This kind of history misleads.

Myth-history, or "mythistory", is full of "myth-making, feeble methodology and ungrounded psychologizing" is in part an effort to influence the assessment of past conditions in society.

Revisionist history is the attempt to rewrite history for purposes of glorifying an ideology, a generation, ethnicity, or nationality. Revisionist history is thus "falsified" history, which quite often leads to tendentious and bizarre accounts.

Underlying all practices of bad history is, according to many social scientists, disrespect for facts and reason. In some circles followers of bad history insist that the demand for hard evidence and sound reasoning are just manifestations of "cognitive imperialism". They insist that facts are meaningless, because they can be reinterpreted and manipulated.

Christina Hoff Sommers, professor of philosophy at Clark University in Massachusetts, looks upon bad history as "pathological science" which occurs whenever researchers report the existence of illusory effect. Thus bad history, as a part of a pathological social science, constitutes an integral part of the assault on truth, objectivity, and plain good sense. These kind of practices have "corrosive effects of unreason in our society and on several disciplines that study society".

Two lessons are firmly implanted in my mind after reading all these explanations. One is that the danger of bad history and pathological social sciences is real, and that in the long run they are really harmful to society. The second is that bad history and other forms of pathological social sciences are the products of premeditated attempts to distort reality, or -- perceived from their point of view -- to adjust the perception of reality to one's preferred ideological model. Bad history is thus the product of conscious manipulation of facts and scientific paradigms.

Do we have problems of bad history and pathological social science in our society?

I don't have a clear answer to this question. What I have noticed and experienced thus far is that finding teachers who know and can teach good history is very hard. History has never been considered an important subject in our schools, and history as a subject has lately been considered an adjunct of "political education", which in some cases degenerates into "political indoctrination". Is this reason enough to say there are seeds of bad history and pathological social science in our society? Again, I don't know. But it would be wise, I think, to keep this question in mind.

The second phenomenon that worries me is that I think I see signs of "collusive collaborations" between intellectuals and politicians. Unchecked, this can lead to the superimposition of distorted views on our society in the future. Am I right? Do I see things correctly? I would be happy to be wrong. But in case I am right, it would be wise to take corrective steps from now on.

Two such steps are recommended by two professors. Mary Lefkowitz reminded us that "the ultimate duty of the scholar is to promote the untiring use of evidence, coherent argument, and common sense in dealing with history". She warned against the danger of "ambient epistemic relativism."

Ann Mary Roth from Howard University in Washington D.C. advised professors, lecturers, and teachers to bring students to a "sense of intellectual responsibility, to enable them to internalize the canons of sound historical argument". According to her, "the capacity to form reasoned judgments is a powerful antidote to even the most seductive chauvinism."

Do these two recommendations sound realistic?

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.