Exactly 215 years ago this week, some subjects of Britain's King George III adopted a Declaration of Independence that asserted the necessity for a sovereign and free United States of America. The ground moved under that hall in steamy, summertime Philadelphia; an idea was proclaimed that would shake and reshape the world. Yet the entire world was hardly represented. All 56 of the signatories were white males of European descent, most of them wealthy property holders. Like some of his co-revolutionaries, Thomas Jefferson, who was primarily responsible for the soaring language of the document ("We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ."), owned black slaves. In this context, what could "equal" mean? And why were only "men" created that way?
Americans over 40 might be startled by a description of the Glorious Fourth that points out the racial, sexual and social characteristics of the Founding Fathers, never mind taking a swipe or two at Jefferson. But most of today's schoolchildren would not be surprised. It is now fairly commonplace to learn American history in the context of who has oppressed, excluded or otherwise mistreated whom. All across the country, students are imbibing a version of the past and present that their parents would not recognize.
Some of the fundamental images of the American gallery of national icons have received a dramatic reworking. Gone, or going fast, is the concept of the melting pot, of the U.S. as the paramount place in the world where people came to shed their past in order to forge their future. Gone too is the emphasis on the twin ideals that form the basis of the American experiment: that rights reside in the individual rather than with social or ethnic classes and that all who come to these shores can be assimilated by an open society that transforms disparate peoples into Americans. Instead there is a new paradigm that emphasizes the racial and ethnic diversity of American citizens, of the many cultures that have converged here, each valuable in its own right and deserving of study and respect.
In the critical optic of this new "multicultural" perspective, American history as it was once written -- those often tedious treks from Christopher Columbus to Dwight Eisenhower -- leaves out too much, namely nearly everyone who was not a white male. Some adherents go further, questioning whether the Western ideas and ideals that gave birth to America discriminate against people from other traditions. A more radical school argues that those values are no more than the ethnic expression of "Eurocentric" culture and should be taught only as such.
The spread of new multicultural perspectives throughout America's schools has taken place without much notice; curriculum revisions, even sweeping ones, do not appear on local ballots. But these are not merely academic disputes. Especially in diverse, secular societies such as the U.S., a shared sense of the past plays a pivotal role in the way values and vision are transmitted from one generation to the next. "History is part of a society's attempt to structure a self-image and to communicate a common identity," points out Eugen Weber, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. "No community can exist as a community without common references. In a modern nation they come from a history."