Western Civ and World History: Conflicts and Complements

Historically Speaking · March 2004 Western Civ and World History: Conflicts and Complements Peter N. Stearns Anyone conversant with the history teaching scene in the United States over the past twenty years knows about the running battle between Western civ and world history as foci for survey courses served up to college freshmen and nota fewhigh school students. The conflict has several fronts. Coverage competition looms large. It is impossible to do justice to the standard topics ofa Western civ course and the ambitious canons ofa world history course in the sameyear. Acommon effort at compromise, the high school world history course (usually 10th grade) that is in fact 67% Western, is legitimately ridiculed by world historians as providing a civilizationallyskewedvision ofwhattheworldwas and is all about. Competition over values is at least as fierce, and ultimately more intractable. While some partisans ofWestern civilization courses are primarily attracted by the comforts ofroutine and familiarity, others, including a number ofpolitical and educational leaders, see in the course a defense of superior traditions in anuncertainworld, an opportunity to preach unified values to an increasingly diverse American studentpopulation . Thus the 99-1 United States Senate vote againstthe world historyportion of the "historystandards" issued in 1992, which insisted that any educational recipients of federal moneyshould have a "decent respect for the values ofWestern civilization." Thus second lady Lynne Cheney's assertion that 9/1 1—a tragedy that seemed to many a call for greater understanding of the world at large—showed how essential it was to rally around Western values and a Western curriculum . World history partisans, in some instances, have replied in kind with a gleeful effortatWest-bashing and (as critics rightly pointed outin the historystandards debate) a virtuous attempt to shield other civilizations from adverse comment. This aspect of the conflict reflects the resurgence of cultural conservatism in the United States, butit also picks up on the history of the Western civ course itself. The course was designed in the early decades of the 20th century by American educators eager to demonstrate the deeper roots of their ownupstartsociety—in anotherperiod ofrapid immigration—but also concerned aboutdiplomaticinstabilityfollowingWorld War I. As one partisan put it, the Western civ course was designed to help students make a choice between "utopia and barbarism ." In this vein, innovators conceived of Western civas, effectively, the onlycivilizational tradition, with a straight line from ancientEgyptandMesopotamia to the glories ofAnglo-American constitutionalism. They saw their course as a mixture oftriumphantcoverageand aninculcation ofprecious , but now threatened, values. World historians, byno meansuniformWest-bashers , simply have to dissent from this tradition . Their vision must encompass a number ofdifferentcivilizations (orlargerworld forces that downplay civilizations altogether ), and theirvalues, implicitly emphasizingcosmopolitanism and tolerance, point in an alternate direction as well. In practice, to be sure, the battle has not raged as bitterly as periodic rhetoric might imply. In the Advanced Placement arena, both world history and European history programs are flourishing(the formeris gaining ground, in partbecause its recent emergence leaves more room for growth). Colleges and universities differ in their choices for survey courses, and some programs, as at Stanford, have combined a traditional Western requirementwim imaginative comparative offerings. The idea ofsequences of courses, as a logical solution to the dilemma of choice, has not penetrated very far, because the American educational system is so resolutely chaotic where history is concerned and because partisans areunwillingto yield terrain atanyparticularpoint. Itwould be possible, for example, to see high schools as offering a civilizational approach, followed bycollege-levelworld history, orviceversa, but that assumes a level ofcoordination that simply does not exist in the United States, aswell as a willingness of, say, world histori- March 2004 · Historically Speaking ans to abandon high school in favor ofcollege (or Western civists to cede college), which so far has proved to be too much to ask. ButpureWestern civis on the decline— moststate requirements insiston someworld coverage, though often in Western-oriented amalgams that displease world history purists—and a continued evolution toward a greater awareness ofglobal history is likely. Yet one crucial aspect of the tension between world history and Western civ has notbeen adequatelyexplored, ifonlybecause Western civ advocates fear any concession while world historians are often too busyfiguring out how to downplay or...