Posted on 08/10/2014 1:31:34 PM PDT by a fool in paradise
At the time, it must have all seemed unforgettable: the endless revelations of wrongdoing, the painful congressional investigation and, finally, the soft black-and-white image of Richard Nixon resigning the presidency.
But ask today’s students about the events of Watergate 40 years ago and odds are that many have never heard of the scandal, or, at best, are vaguely aware that something happened once that lives on in a suffix attached to the occasional controversy.
major reason is that in U.S. classrooms and textbooks, the discussion of Watergate is going the way of the Teapot Dome Scandal and the Petticoat Affair: increasingly simplified and shortened.
(Also on POLITICO: Nixon's newspaper war)
“Watergate is just slowly being condensed, as is the entire time period,” said Kyle Ward, a professor at St. Cloud University in Minnesota who has studied the evolution of American history textbooks. “We are not spending as much time as they did in the late ’70s and early ’80s dwelling on Watergate.”
Lesson plans and textbooks don’t have the space for nuanced discussions about the House Judiciary Committee’s political motives or the legality of forcing Nixon to release his Oval Office recordings. And demanding national and state testing standards only add to the pressure on teachers to move through events such as Watergate faster, they say.
That can make for some interesting moments with students.
“Usually they are pretty surprised to find out that Watergate was a hotel, that it was a standing building that had office spaces in it,” said Matt Moore, who teaches at Mankato West High School in Mankato, Minnesota.
(Also on POLITICO: Watergate scandal: 10 legacies)
Francis Couvares, a history professor at Amherst College, said his students know “almost nothing” about the scandal. “Why would they?” he adds.
Ryan Moran, who just graduated from Warren Hills High School in New Jersey, said that although Watergate attracted better-than-average interest from his classmates, they were generally more intrigued by subjects such as Vietnam or World War II.
“I think people know the word, but they don’t know what it means — most high schoolers, anyway,” he said.
Historiographers (those who study the study of history) say the case of Watergate is really nothing new. History is always under revision, after all, becoming more compact over time as the event recedes. Blow-by-blow details are slowly replaced by an assessment of impact and legacy.
(Also on POLITICO: When Nixon Met the Press)
Watergate is somewhat unusual in that its impact still lingers in the public realm, even as knowledge of its details become less ubiquitous. The same students who know nothing about the scandal’s finer points live in a culture shaped by everything from open-records laws to hyperpartisanship in Washington.
Several teachers interviewed said they tend to budget two or three class periods for Nixon’s entire presidency. After discussing Nixon’s rise, his foreign policy and the Vietnam War, that leaves just half a class or less for Watergate.
“It is painful to have to teach a topic like Watergate in a half an hour or 45 minutes, but it’s reality,” said Eric Hahn, who has taught high school history for more than 20 years in a wealthy suburb outside of St. Louis.
What remains, then, tends to get taught as a “broad morality play,” according to Michael Schudson, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and author of “Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget and Reconstruct the Past.”
(PHOTOS: Is this like Watergate?)
“There was dirty politics, but the system worked. We eliminated the corrupt leader from the system. We got a new president, and Gerald Ford gets a brief mention — you need him to get on to the next president — and the continuity of American history is preserved,” Schudson said.
Moore said he tends to present Watergate as the centerpiece of a broader crisis of confidence in the early 1970s. Couvares explained that he connects Watergate to Nixon’s foreign policy and relationship with the intelligence community. But most educators said they ultimately follow their textbooks and stick to the apolitical approach to Watergate.
Ward says this is unsurprising. The textbook industry is highly politicized, and most big publishers try to minimize historical interpretation so as not to alienate conservative or liberal customers.
For instance, one way to teach about Watergate is to make the case that “the system almost didn’t work, and that there were some maybe lucky coincidences and one clear coincidence — that the Congress was controlled by the Democrats, and they were of course happy to investigate a Republican president,” Schudson said. He added, however, that such a political approach is not really practical for high school curricula.
Hahn said he worried that cramming the tale of the Watergate scandal into a single class period and a neutral frame puts students at risk of missing the point.
“If … we as a nation are not held responsible for the kinds of data and the kinds of experiences that Watergate has to teach us as a lesson to not repeat, then I think we are going to repeat that kind of activity,” he said.
A whole lot of nothing, except the left hated Nixon with a burning passion, as much as they love Obama, that’s how much they hated Nixon, every man and woman jack of them!
Nixon was a crook...
Bill Clinton was simply charming...
Barack Obama has brought us change... mostly dimes and nickles, and pennies...
Folks, Richard Nixon deserves the nation’s apology. For him to be treated like that for what he did, and the other two louts to have been completely ignored for what they did?
Nixon was a saint compared to these two.
Obama will have our nation on it’s knees by the end of his presidency. All hail the best president eva...
God this is depressing.
Nixon went after Alger Hiss and the Commie loving Left never forgave him.
Algar Hiss Interview (1970)
British Pathé
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXY2NDv5CqA
No It was a crime pure and simple. Just because the other side engages in it, or worse, is irrelevant. Nixon committed various crimes and rightly resigned. I was quite a Nixon admirer back in the day and worked on his campaign and still feel as I did in ‘73.
BOTH sides of the aisle felt this way about him. If we overlook the criminals in our own home then we have zero moral authority.
Compared to Clinton and Obama, his actions were downright honorable.
Watergate was payback.
How much time do they spend teaching about how Nixon revealed the leftists’ spy idol.
bump
I don’t defend Nixon’s actions (which were criminal). Obama has engaged in same and worse.
Who runs the schools and media? Leftists. Why are leftists surprised that dumbing down the schools for 40 years is actually working??
“No It was a crime pure and simple. Just because the other side engages in it, or worse, is irrelevant. “
You are aware that just prior to the Watergate breakin, the democrats raided a republican place out west and stole papers related to the retrieval attempt of a Russian submarine?
“If we overlook the criminals in our own home then we have zero moral authority.”
Well, OK, I can agree with that, but how do we solve a problem like Obama (apologies to Rogers & Hammerstien)?
I wish I could do a big parody song here, and maybe someday I will, but never mind that now.
The press covers for him, he’s got real dead bodies on his head, and nothing happens.
Not to mention that [every bad word in the book] Lois Lerner.
These people make Nixon look like an amateur, forget Kennedy and Clinton, the whore mongers, that’s really bad but not a threat to the nation.
Nixon’s name is MUD; many still see this nincompoop Obama as a “light bringer”.
What do we do about that?
There have been Democrat moles in the GOP campaigns for the past umpteen election cycles. Whether they were “Democrats for McCain” (until he got the nomination after which they became members of the Obama 2008 team) or “journolists” working undercover or “free agents” mailing the opposition Bush’s debate strategy video or...
They hated him alright. Look at that fool Johnson. Look at Carter, Clinton, and Obama, and yet they see nothing wrong with them at all.
Nixon was hated for the Vietnam War. When he was sworn in there were between 500 and 550 thousand U. S. Troops in Vietnam.
Johnson had to stand down rather than run, but the media gave the guy a complete pass.
JFK had RFK as Attorney General to protect his @$$. Barack Obama has Eric (with)Holder.
I agree. What the guy did was wrong, but your point is reasoned. He stood behind his men. He didn’t merely cut bait and whistle on down the road.
Over 100 different Chinese people in the United States fled the nation rather than testify before Congress regarding Clinton campaign cash from China.
Clinton was the main contact for all those people. He cultivated those contacts in Arkansas. He was directly involved.
Not a peep from the press.
Clinton was an organized crime figure. Obama is an organized Islamic plant.
Ssssshhhh...
Nope. EPA, federalization of discrimination (AA), etc.
Calvin, in the overall scheme of things you think these two issues trumps Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Obama?
LMAO
Gain some perspective fella. He wasn’t impeached for those things.
No, those things weren’t good. He sure didn’t sell our our nation to the Chinese or Islamic hordes though. He didn’t put 550,000 troops on Vietnamese soil.
I’ve got bones to pick with Nixon too, but in the overall scheme of things, those are nothing compared to what the others did.
The Great Society programs and the Vietnam War
Carter’s destabalization of Iran that we deal with even today
Carter’s dismantling of our military in the midst of the cold war
Bill Clinton’s criminal activity, many issues, many deaths, treason to boot
Barack Obama’s literal daily treason to Islamic interests...
Obama’s destruction of our military
Sorry, Nixon was still a saint compared to the rest of them.
Blowing off the gold standard, wage and price controls, the EPA, NEPA, the Endangered Species. Clean Air, and Clean Water Acts...
Yeah, I'm feeling really conciliatory and forgiving.
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