Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Every Bush His Own Historian

"Hardly a brainchild of the flower-power '60s, the concept of historical interpretation has been at the heart of our profession from the 1920s onward. Before that time, to be sure, some historians believed that they could render a purely factual and objective account of the past. But most of them had given up on what historian Charles Beard called the 'noble dream' by the interwar period, when scholars came to realize that the very selection of facts was an act of interpretation."

Jonathan Zimmerman in the Los Angeles Times schools critics of revisionist history.

Correction from the June 13, 2006, Los Angeles Times: "A June 7 article about interpreting history said Florida passed a law banning the teaching of "revisionist" and "postmodernist" history in public schools. Those words appeared in a draft of the bill, not in the final version."

1 comment:

Liam said...

That's great, Ted. I will steal it and give you credit.