Barton and Levstik: Affordances and Constraints of the Narrative of Freedom and Progress

If we can agree for the moment that education is about cultivating a participatory democracy -- preparing citizens to participate in pluralist democracy, a transnational democracy -- then we can agree with Barton and Levstik that "interpreting U.S. history as a story of freedom and progress limits' students preparation for pluralist democracy." 1)"Many of the colonists who came to the North America , for example, were not pursing political or religious freedom but were seeking economic opportunity, and this continued to motivate immigration" to this day.2) "Similarly, the country's foreign policy has not always been motivated by the desire to spread freedom throughout the world; to take just two examples, military interventions in Guatemala and Iran in 1954, although justified in the name of freedom, replaced elected leaders with dictators favorable to U.S. interests" (177).  The argument here is that if students do not recognize then they cannot go beyond recognizing to act -- if they do not recognize that the government sometimes has opposed freedom rather than supported it, these citizen-students will not be able to make the sort of informed judgments required by citizens.

Of course, we've discussed how narratives simply -- any narrative has to -- but this one reduces the motivation for many historical episodes to the single, unobjectionable goal of freedom.

Barton and Levstik show how emphasizing freedom essentializes the causes of historical events and then goes on to show how emphasis on progress essentializes the consequences of events.  "Colonization, Westward expansion, industrialization: All these must have been examples of progress...so there is little reason to consider their potentially negative effects on American Indians  small farmers, or laborers." The narrative of progress, therefore, becomes this defense of status quo "because it characterizes historical change as both beneficial and inevitable."  Students have no alternative framework within which to make sense of these discrepancies. "Without some way of considering both positive and negative consequences of events, the ability to deliberate over the common good will be seriously impoverish," they argue (178).  We have to create space for a more flexible framework for reading our world, and that includes a transnational framework (to expand the American pluralist framework the authors seem to be asking for). Students of this century need an education that allows for multiple narratives that make space for citizens to "fill in the gaps" with questions rather than common sense notions of the individual, freedom, and progress.  "This sense of national purity and righteousness discounts dissenting viewpoints and dismisses aspirations not grounded in the quest for freedom (as defined in contemporary U.S. terms).

"Our national narrative misrepresents the causes of historical events, deflects attention from their negative consequences, and dismisses alternative perspectives. Yet it provides a powerful foundation for those who seek justice, and it offers hope for the future.  The task for history education -- perhaps its most difficult challenge -- is to resolve the tension between these advantages and disadvantages, to enable students to use this too for activism and hope without being blinded by its drawbacks" (180).

First, we have to teach students that the American narrative is, like all narratives, a construction rather than a mirror of reality.  The concept of freedom was used rhetorically: political rights to women and minorities; economic autonomy used by labor radicals and socialists; a rallying cry for struggle against fascism in WWII; businesses appropriated it for "free enterprise'; freedom was appropriated against communism in the Cold War. Discuss freedom and its role in the nation's past as something quite dynamic and rhetorical rather than some static notion.

Second, engage students in the consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of historical changes and events. Who benefited? How? Who suffered How? For example, the rise and fall of bound labor, the transition from rural agriculture to urban industrialization; the creation and expansion of rails and highways; passage of Jim Crow laws; the war in Iraq. Challenge students to move beyond simplified perspectives that see such topics as uniformly positive or negative. [as the Maya unit shows, I hope]

Consider a wider range of evidence and interpretation than narrow stories of progress can provide.