Comparative historian Marc Ferro claims that the largest discrepancy in knowledge between what academic historians and what the average citizen knows about history is found in the United States. How has this situation come about? Certainly the problem does not lie with the secondary literature. Whereas in the past, American historians were handicapped by secondary literature that was clearly biased towards a European viewpoint, since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, the secondary literature in American history has become far more comprehensive. And it cannot be simply a matter of space constraints; the average high school history textbook is well over a thousand pages in length.

One theory holds that American history textbooks are simply the socializing instruments of a controlling elite. The stratification of American society is preserved, according to this theory, by the creation of what Marx termed “false consciousness.” The theory holds that the way people think about their society and their history is crucial to maintaining the status quo. If the power elites come to believe that their success is the deserved product of their hard work and ingenuity, then there will be no desire to change the system. Similarly, if the lower classes are taught that their plight is solely due to their failings, they will be more likely to accept their fate and less likely to rise up in revolution. Griffin and Marciano contend that history textbooks promote nothing more than hegemony.

Many educational theorists share this viewpoint, which in their discipline is often known as critical theory. Proponents of this view, including Kozol, Freire, and Giroux, argue that the dominant classes would never create or foster an educational system that taught subordinate classes how to critically evaluate society and the injustices it contains. As long as schools serve to transmit culture, the power elite will never allow any real reform in the system.

It is all too easy to blame citizens’ poor understanding of American history on some shadowy coterie of cultural aristocracy. But critical theory and other theories that lay the blame for American ignorance of history on the doorstep of the elites cannot explain their own success. Is it not a paradox that critical theory scholarship dominates its field? If the titans of society had as much power as the critical theorists contend, they would surely censor or marginalize the works of social scientists in this field. Furthermore, graduates of “elite” preparatory schools are exposed to alternative interpretations of history, subversive teachers, and unfiltered primary source materials more frequently than are students at public institutions. This would seem to indicate that the power-brokers have little control over what happens at their very own schools, let alone far-flung rural schools or schools deep in urban territory. The real culprit may be something not as insidious as a vast upper-class conspiracy, but more along the lines of pernicious forces working at a highly local level. Almost half of the states have textbook adoption boards consisting of members of the community. These boards review and recommend what books are taught in neighborhood schools. And because textbook publishers are first and foremost seeking to maximize profit, it is these local boards that they must appease.

For the following question, consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.

According to the passage, proponents of the critical theory believe which of the following?     

A. The creation of a false consciousness is a significant element in maintaining the stratification of American society.     
B. It is not in the interests of the powerful classes of society to engender critical reflection among the majority of citizens.     
C. Alternative interpretations of history may be taught to members of the upper classes, but not to members of the subordinate classes.



It can be inferred from the passage that

A. Marx was an early proponent of critical theory
B. textbooks are not solely designed as teaching instruments
C. the secondary literature on American history is no longer biased     
D. textbook publishers do not take the views of the power elite into account
E. under the current system, real education reform is impossible



For the following question, consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.

Which of the following statements about critical theory can be supported by the passage?     

A. It is simply another means by which the power elite preserves the stratification of American society.     
B. It does not contain any of the same biases which had appeared in the secondary literature prior to the civil rights movement.     
C. It is not unique in its attempts to attribute Americans’ poor knowledge of history to the machinations of a particular class of individuals.



Select the sentence in the first paragraph that explains why a problem is less severe for current American historians now than it was a century ago.