Posted on 05/19/2019 2:31:58 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
Historian Wilfred McClay aspires to be the antidote to Zinn, whom he accuses of greatly oversimplifying the past and turning American history into a comic-book melodrama in which the people are constantly being abused by the rulers. Mr. McClays counterpoint, which comes out next week, is titled Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.
He says . . . hes seen too many students drawn to Zinn because the standard textbooks are visionless and tedious. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, Mr. McClay says, so a culture will find some kind of grand narrative of itself to feed upon, even a poisonous one. . . .
Mr. McClays objective in Land of Hope is to help readers develop a sense of perspective and a mastery of the detail of American history. The Zinn approach allows them to be lazy: Why learn what the Wilmot Proviso was, or what exactly went into the Compromise of 1850, when you could just say 'original sin of slavery'?
By contrast, Land of Hope delves into the complexity of the Founders debates over slavery. Many expected it would eventually end on its own, or believed the alternative to accepting itabandoning the unionwas worse. Some were conflicted. The book describes George Mason as a slaveholder but also a Christian who labeled the trade an infernal traffic . . . The Founders had to weigh what was possible, not just what was idealand Mr. McClay thinks its unfair to denounce them for failing to meet todays standards.
Land of Hope is being published by a conservative house, Encounter Books. He probably wont sell many copies to public schools, but he hopes there are enough private and religious and charter schools, not to mention home-schoolers, that it will find a market.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Hand salute to you, sir. The gift you give your children is to think for themselves, and there is no money or schooling that can replace what is instilled by a parent...
Nice job!
Thanks fieldmarshaldj. I wasn't going to add this to GGG, but since you took the time to ping me...
You are a good parent!
I found this article amazing. Here was a “scholar” reviewer who apparently had never heard of a NYTimes #1 bestseller that is now in its 30th printing; is used in “Classical Conversations”; is in use in 40 colleges and universities; and which is the #1 conservative “textbook” used by homeschoolers everywhere.
Moreover, it was reviewed (favorably) when it came out by the . . . Wall Street Journal.
PHUSA now has sold over 350,000 copies, with half a million copies in print, and will appear in its 4th edition this July (the “Fifteenth Anniversary Edition”).
Not for him. We own that market.
I dunno, wouldn’t Howard Zinn qualify for the science-fiction ping list ?
What, you expect journalist/scholars to be well-informed on their subject matter? How unreasonable!
When I took over as Dept Chair of my high school’s history department I asked the teachers who were using Zinn to justify it. If they could give me an appropriate pedagogical or curricular use for it, I’d have no objections. None of them could justify using Zinn as there was no alignment with the book to our curricula.
In fact, the only rationale was from a teacher who did not use the book who suggested it be used to advance our historiography goals as an example of hagiography. The other teachers didn’t understand that, so we just threw out the copies on hand.
Btw, Herbert Croly in early 1900s was the Zinn of his day. Zinn isn’t a new phenomenon, just another example of the putrid lust for vengeance against success that seems to be an inevitable corollary to democracy.
Thanks for posting that link to Ricochet Podcasting. I just subscribed and can’t wait to start consuming. Much appreciated!
If we conservatives continue to support our local ‘wonderful’ public schools and send our kids to these schools, we deserve EXACTLY the kind of indoctrination our kids are getting.
We have only OURSELVES to blame. The public schools get their money from government and will NEVER answer to us, until we’re willing to pull the plug on that cash flow - and since we are not, we lose.
Thank you!
I will check out both the book and the publisher.
The nation owes a debt of un-thanks to Matt Damon, who single-handedly vaulted the hateful lunatic Howard Zinn into the mainstream with his film, Good Will Hunting.
(I hated that movie: It was a horrendously inaccurate representation of very-high-intelligence persons. That movie made him All Things: handsome, charming, muscular, et cetera, in addition to, oh yeah, being off-the-charts brilliant. It was Damon’s fantasy.)
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