Collective Memory: Americans Do Embrace Their History

By Charles F. Bryan, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer

In recent years several influential commentators have argued that we face a crisis of historical amnesia in America. Lynne Cheney declared that "a refusal to remember the past is a primary characteristic of our nation." Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough warned that "we, in our time, are raising a new generation of Americans, who, to an alarming degree, are historically il literate." Louis Harlan, former president of the American Historical Association, lamented that "the present public ignorance of our cultural heritage . . . has alarming implications for the future of our nation." This perceived crisis has been a strong rallying cry for reforms in the American education system and the teaching of history. It has been used as evidence to cite what is wrong with this country.

I confess that until a few years ago, I held many of the same sentiments, and at times I still decry the misuse and misunderstanding of history. But I have become more sanguine about the state of history in our country. Most of the arguments about historical ignorance are that it is a growing problem and that the American public is becoming less well-grounded in its knowledge of the past. Of course, this assumes that previous generations were much more knowledgeable about history. That history was taught better in schools. That textbooks were more interesting and meaningful. That historical information was easily available to the public. That most Americans were fonts of information about the past.

Could this be the case, however, when only 50 years ago, more than 40 percent of the population did not have high-school degrees? Can we say that Americans once had a "better" understanding of history when many important aspects of history were all but ignored in textbooks and classrooms? Was it really taught that much better in previous generations? I, like many of my contemporaries in the '50s and '60s, was "taught" history by a football coach, who seemed more interested in next week's game than in the Louisiana Purchase.

History occupies a paradoxical and problematic place in contemporary American culture. On the one hand, it is widely believed that we face a crisis of historical amnesia. In other words, the glass is half-empty. But is it possible that the glass is half-full - that the American people value and support history to a far greater degree than is commonly thought? Indeed, there is a flip side to the so-called history crisis, and there is strong evidence of an enormous interest in the past.

Take, for example, the proliferation of museums and historical societies, resulting in record museum attendance and a growing historically oriented tourism market. Since the American Bicentennial in 1976, the number of history museums in this country has more than doubled, reflecting the willingness of the public to invest huge sums of money and effort in preserving the past. As a member of the accreditation team of the American Association of Museums, I have observed the phenomenon of new local and regional museums all over the country, from Virginia to Kansas to California.

According to a recent survey, nearly 40 percent of all museums in the world are now located in the United States. Most do an excellent job, thanks to a strong emphasis on scholarship and a willingness to deal with subjects that once were regarded as too controversial. So if we look only at the proliferation of museums, there is reason to be less pessimistic about the state of history.

But museums aren't the only reason to consider the glass half-full rather than half-empty. History is prevalent in the media. Although much of television still can be considered a vast wasteland, there is more good history in that medium reaching a bigger audience than ever before. For the past several years "The American Experience" on PBS has presented a variety of important subjects on our nation's history, done with sensitivity and based on solid scholarship. A whole network is devoted to history, and good history can be found on other networks, including the commercial stations.

And, even though he has been the subject of criticism, Ken Burns has presented several historical documentaries that have stimulated remarkable public interest.

The ratings for his series on the Civil War were the highest in PBS history and rivaled those of the major commercial networks. In the following two years, sales of Civil War books soared, as did visitation to museums and battlefields. His other series on Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, baseball, and jazz have had similar though less profound results.

With the advent of the worldwide web, it is estimated that there are at least 10,000 websites in the United States alone devoted to history. Through this development, history now is accessible to people almost anywhere in the world. We have invested heavily in our website at the Virginia Historical Society, and it is having a profound effect on our institution. Our card catalogue is on-line now, making detailed information on our collections available to anyone on the face of the globe with access to the web. In addition, our site enables us to offer virtual tours of exhibits, send lesson plans to teachers, and even sell books from our museum shop. Use of our website has soared, and the number of visits we received last year approached a quarter of a million. Multiply those hits by the total number of history websites and you realize there are a lot of people who are learning from a whole new source.

There are other signs that the glass is half-full for history. Thanks to the growth of the historic preservation movement and related legislation in the past 25 years, historic structures and neighborhoods have a degree of protection that did not exist in the past. Because of tax credits, we are seeing huge investments of money in adaptive re-use of historic buildings and in urban renewal. Genealogy is one of the fastest growing pastimes in America. Once the domain of people seeking admission to patriotic societies, genealogy in the past several years has become much more democratic (small "d"), with people of all ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds seeking information on their roots. A glance at almost any non-fiction best-seller list will usually reveal a strong presence of history books such as David McCullough's John Adams or any of Stephen Ambrose's works. The number of students enrolled in college history courses has rebounded from the declines of previous decades.

I could cite other examples of why I am more upbeat about the state of history in this country, but I do have concerns. I am bothered by the misuse of history to justify political arguments or personal ends. I am not a regular listener to radio talk shows, but I was appalled by what I heard from announcers and listeners alike over the controversy relating to the Confederate flag in recent years. And although there have been some fine movies based on history, too often we see Hollywood's manipulation of the past in the name of artistic freedom. From Oliver Stone's conspiracy-laced interpretations to the big screen spectacle "The Patriot," films often are filled with egregious errors and gross distortions of the past. I am concerned that scores on the history section of standardized testing in schools are usually low, but I suspect they would have been no higher in my high-school days.

Despite these concerns, I am not convinced our country is losing its national memory. I have visited museums and historic sites in countries around the world. In so many places, the records and evidence of the past were at one time or another systematically destroyed. We saw a chilling example of that in Afghanistan even before the current international crisis. Over the past few years, members of the Taliban began to obliterate historic Buddhist icons and empty the shelves of the national museum and archives in Kabul. As one Taliban official declared: "There is no place for sentimental feelings with these old things."

Although our record is not spotless, history has done well in this country. We may not like certain aspects of our past, and we may not agree on how it is interpreted, but we're not afraid of it. We turn to our past for instruction, especially in the aftermath of September 11. Rarely have the news media called so much upon the expertise of historians as they have in the current crisis. Indeed, this is a time when we who value and preserve the history of our country hold a special place and purpose.

In good times and bad, history - whether in museums, on television, or in books - is a prime source for putting the events of today in perspective. It imparts a sense of time, place, and stability. It provides an opportunity for dialogue, debate, and the exchange of ideas. It protects the collective memory of our people and reminds us that together we are strong. It reminds us that there is comfort in the past. As David McCullough observes: "History is an aid to navigation in perilous times."

Despite alarms to the contrary, the American people do value their history. We are not afraid of our past as some other societies are, and we have done a remarkably good job of preserving it and making it available to a wide public. We learn from it. As such, history is a key component of this country's remarkable experiment in self-government and a bedrock of our democracy.

This essay was published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 3, 2002

Posted February 2002
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