Interview: Historical Proportions

These days, it’s next to impossible for teachers to present certain political, scientific, or cultural ideas in classrooms without finding themselves embroiled in some kind of controversy. Jonathan Zimmerman, a former social studies teacher who is now director of the History of Education program at New York University, argues as much in his new book, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Harvard).

Throughout the 20th century, he writes, business leaders attacked just about anyone in schools who offered critiques of capitalism. And while most schools now teach the theory of evolution, they are challenged in some districts by fundamentalists who lobby for creationism.

At the heart of Zimmerman’s argument is his belief that critical thinking—a willingness to ask big questions about such things as the causes of economic inequalities—is still pretty much absent from our classrooms and textbooks, especially in history, which gets most of his attention. Although textbooks are far more inclusive than they once were—for instance, students encounter Frederick Douglass as well as Thomas Jefferson—they are still, Zimmerman demonstrates, more about hero worship than the careful consideration of ideas.