We Could Learn From Our History, If Only We Taught It
By
Allan C.Brownfeld
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History
has many lessons to teach Us—-but we will not learn such lessons if we
don’t teach our history. In his farewell to the nation, President
Ronald Reagan said, “I’m warning of an eradication of the American
memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American
spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American
history.”
Sadly, the
teaching of history is in decline. Student scores in history and civics
are at all-time lows. Jeffrey Sikkenga, executive director of the
Ashbrook Center, calls it a “civic illness” and notes that, “Too many
young people don’t know the basic facts of U.S. history and government.
They don’t adequately understand the fundamental principles that guide
our country.”
One reason
that schools are ignoring the teaching of our history is because of
stress and testing on math, science and English. Students and teachers
are judged on how they do on these subjects, while history is rarely
taught and is not tested. Consider the lessons from our history that
are not being learned.
In
May, 2006 the 400th anniversary of the first English settlement in
America at Jamestown, Virginia got under way. The Godspeed, a $2.6
million replica of one of the three ships that carried the first
settlers to Jamestown in 1607, sailed to six East Coast ports to
generate interest in the “America’s 400th Anniversary” commemoration.
Governor
Timothy Kaine (now Senator) of Virginia said, as the Godspeed set sail,
that, “Today is the beginning of 18 months of commemoration of a moment
not just critical to the history of Jamestown or Virginia or even
America, but we begin to mark a moment that altered the path of the
entire world and of human history.”
Former
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who served as honorary chair
of the national Jamestown commemoration, declared: “The system of
government that we have today was an outgrowth of those early
settlements, and so I thought the anniversary was a worthy reason to try
to remind citizens of our history. In the United States today, public
schools have pretty much stopped teaching government,civics and American
history. It gets tossed in occasionally, but it’s no longer a major
focus for children. That’s a great concern to me because I truly don’t
know how long we can survive as a strong nation if our younger citizens
don’t understand the nature of our government, why it was formed that
way, and how they can participate and should participate as citizens.
That’s something you have to learn. It just isn’t handed down in the
genetic pool.” It all began in Jamestown in 1607.
Reviewing
this early history is instructive. Thirteen years before the Pilgrims
landed in Massachusetts, a group of 104 English men and boys made the
four-and-a-half month voyage to the banks of the James River to form a
settlement in Virginia. Their goal of making profit from the resources
of the New World for the Virginia Company of London, a start-up venture
with a business model based on extracting profits from the New World.
The
Susan Constant was the flagship of the Virginia Company’s
expedition,carrying 71 people. It was armed with cannons for protection
against pirates, leading the way for the other two ships, the Godspeed,
which carried 52, and the Discovery, which carried a mere 21. Unlike
Raleigh’s expedition, this voyage included no women. About half of the
passengers were gentlemen, members of the upper class who were seeking
adventure and riches.
Historian
David Price writes that, “The men had come to the enterprise with a
range of motives,and their hopes and fantasies would run likewise. Most
of the travelers were on board because they—-like the Virginia Company
itself—-expected quick treasure.”
The
colonists, writes historian Samuel Eliot Morison, “owned no property;
they were working for stockholders overseas. Twice a day the men were
marched to the fields or woods by beat of drum, twice marched back and
into church. They led an almost hopeless existence, for there seemed to
be no future….No empire could have developed from a colony of this
sort…The first factor in the transition was tobacco. Its value for
export was discovered in 1613 when John Rolfe, who married the Indian
Princess Pocohontas, imported seed from the West Indies, crossed it with
the local Indian grown tobacco, and produced a smooth smoke which
captured the English market. Virginia then went tobacco-mad; it was
even grown in the streets of Jamestown.”
Beyond
this, reports Morison, “…the institution of private property was the
second factor that saved Virginia. When, after seven years, the terms
of the Company’s hired men expired, those who chose to stay became
tenant farmers and later were given their land outright. This made a
tremendous difference. As Captain John Smith put it, ‘When our people
were fed out of the common store, and laboured jointly together, glad
was he who could slip from labour, or slumber over his taske, he cared
not how; nay, the most honest among them would hardly take so much true
paines in a week, as now for themselves they will doe in a day.’ By
1617, a majority of the hardy, acclimated survivors were tenants.
Within ten years tenant plantations extended 20 miles along the James
River, and total European population of Virginia was about a thousand.”
A
third factor that ensured the success of Virginia was political, in the
broadest sense. Captain John Smith put it in one sentence. “No man
will go from hence to have lesse freedome there than here.” In the
English conception of freedom the first and most important was “a
government of laws, not men.” The Company ordered Governor Sir George
Yeardley to abolish arbitrary rule, introduce English common law and due
process, encourage private property, and summons a representative
assembly. This assembly would have power with the appointed council, to
pass local laws subject to the Company’s veto.”
Our
society is increasingly diverse, with a growing population of men and
women from throughout the world. Many of them come from societies which
have no experience of democracy. If we do not transmit our history,
our culture, and our philosophy of limited government, free speech,
religious freedom and democratic and constitutional government, those
concepts are unlikely to endure into the future. There are important
lessons to be learned from our history. It is potentially suicidal not
to transmit these lessons to the next generation.
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