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Chapter 8. History, “Broader, Deeper and More Mature”: (1946–71)
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C H A P T E R 8 History, “Broader, Deeper and More Mature” (1946–71) Raising the level of “public thought” occupied a large part of Nevins’s academic interests after the Second World War. Accomplishing this objective meant strengthening knowledge of and interest in American history, so that students and thoughtful general readers could appreciate, Nevins wrote, the “multiplicity of new forces and problems” of modern society. Many journalists, publishers , university administrators, professionals, government officials, and political leaders shared this attitude and provided Nevins with the outlets and, in some cases, the financial support to promote this interest. The wife of the publisher of the New York Times, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, wrote Nevins in 1942, “ [W]e cannot hope to have good and intelligent electors unless our citizens are thoroughly informed on American history, ideals and aspirations.”1 Nevins considered knowledge of American history more important now than at the beginning of the century, when one could graduate (as he wrote in a 1942 article for the New York Times Magazine, entitled “American History for Americans”) with a modest understanding because “not much of it was made.” He explained, “The Civil War was only twenty-five years old, a vivid memory; the frontier was just closing; the new immigration was not yet in its stride; trusts and agrarianism were a novelty; imperialism lay in the future.” Moreover, it was not only that our national record was more brief, it was also that “[l]ittle of that record had been explored scientifically or studied from the sources.” But all that had changed over the last thirty years as historians, delving into social, economic, and cultural influences, helped to make history “broader, deeper and more mature.”2 155 I Believing strongly in the value of history, Nevins fretted over the fact that in his view most Americans lacked a factual knowledge of American history.3 He judged that what history the public received was generally the result of distorted portrayals of historical events and personages by Hollywood.4 And, after teaching summer school at Columbia University in 1928, Nevins had remarked to Evarts Greene that though the class, composed mostly of graduate students, was eager and enthusiastic, “they [had] astonishingly little informational background.”5 He found that while students might be familiar with big events (the Dred Scott decision) and important people (Alexander Hamilton) they had little knowledge of secondary influences (the tariff of 1857) and secondary personages (Hamilton’s successor at Treasury, Albert Gallatin). Moreover, he despaired of the efforts of educational psychologists, sociologists, and administrators to give greater weight to knowledge of contemporary conditions than to the forces that helped create those conditions. He found troubling the new emphasis in schools on social studies—that is, the admixture of economics, sociology, and psychology—and on ideas rather than the facts that helped support those ideas. He doubted whether the “modern emphasis on interpretation and ideas” could replace “the basic structure of historical fact, taught with due attention to chronology, to great personalities, and to political forces and events.”6 He found it equally disturbing that many states were beginning to eliminate American history as a required part of the high school curriculum in favor of the broader and more interdisciplinary approach of social studies. At most colleges and universities American history became an elective rather than a required course. Nevins found support for his attitude in many quarters. Dixon Ryan Fox suggested that though the social sciences had their place, they could not replace the need for “a coherent consecutive account of our national development.” He added, “Those in charge of our educational policy have tried to make us wise before we were informed. They have tried to have us think about the meaning of American history before we knew the facts of American history. I think the facts of our history are tremendously interesting, and if we get them into the minds of our young people, I think the facts will take care of their own meaning.”7 Nevins addressed this change in the way American history was being studied and taught in the schools with the publication of The Heritage of America (1939), a source collection that Henry Steele Commager and he prepared for high school students. In the selec156 Immersed in Great Affairs [44.201.59.20] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:03 GMT) tions they chose, Nevins and Commager tried to exhibit the varieties of historical resources, including speeches, diaries, books, novels , travel...