Appleby, Joyce O., Lynn A. Hunt, and Margaret Jacob. Telling the Truth About History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.

Telling the Truth About History

Telling the Truth About History is a somewhat ironic title for this book, for one of the central questions it raises is whether it is even possible to achieve objective truth. Still, the authors argue that what historians do best is to connect with the past in order to understand present-day problems as well as the potential of the future. They maintain that we can arrive at a clearer picture of history today than was possible using methods of the past. The book traces how historians have understood their task in the past and how this conceptualization has changed through the centuries, beginning with three forms of intellectual absolutism and its consequences for historians.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, science became the basis for all truth. Therefore, science became the driving force behind the methodology of doing history, eventually replacing religion as the framework for comprehending social experience. This compelled historians to become like scientists – neutral investigators attempting to piece together events of the past exactly as they happened. This method was termed the “heroic model of science” because it made scientific geniuses into cultural heroes. Later, the idea of progress prompted historians to study the laws of human development. The last intellectual absolutism that arose in the nineteenth century came from the concept of a “nation” and the strong national sentiments that men and women drew from for a sense of identity.

Linked with the idea of the nation in the United States were the ideas of industrialization and an inexorable drive toward self-improvement. The United States was viewed as the ideal for humanity if human ambitions were pointed toward autonomy and self-improvement. This idea had a profound effect on history curricula: while celebrating the achievements of their forebears, children were taught to think within a cultural framework that was predominantly white, male and Protestant. “At the center, then, of American history was an undersocialized, individualistic concept of human nature set in an overdetermined story of progress” (p.125). The American story took on a mythic quality that became entrenched and resistant to change because it could not explain real problems of real people, such as the Civil War and the dislocation of indigenous peoples as a result of immigration.

The authors hearken back to the heroic model of science, asserting that it has helped shatter some of these old ways of thinking. Using methods they call scientific, historians of the twentieth century have succeeded in creating competing, multi-cultural visions of the American past. The authors argue that “a comprehensive national history is not now an educational option for the country; it is a cultural imperative” (p.295). It is vital to teach the whole of history; it is inadequate merely to select fragments. “The tension between patriotic presentation s of one’s country and accurate reconstructions of national failures remains to be probed in the future…” (242).

It is important for teachers to understand how past methodologies of history have impacted history education. A simple yet overriding lesson is that truth can never be absolute and that our view of history is colored by where we find ourselves today. Students should understand the complexity of doing history and that it is not simply one long story to be memorized.

This book is a useful tool for teachers. Understanding what has influenced historical thought provides an important awareness that will ideally preclude exclusions of ethnic groups previously left out of the American story. It also serves as a reminder that the search for truth is an ongoing, collective endeavor.