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Saints, Sinners, and People: A Position Paper on the Historiography of American Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Geraldine Joncich Clifford
Geraldine Joncich Clifford*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The San Francisco longshoreman-philosopher, Eric Hoffer, once wrote that, “The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.” While Hoffer had something else in mind, I will use this epigram as an introduction to, and commentary upon, the fact that a large part of the universe of historical actors has been treated to a malign neglect. When Tamara Hareven refers to “anonymous Americans,” she does not equate the “anonymous” in American social historiography with the “inarticulate”; neither does she define a projected integrated and comprehensive history of social experience as “history from the bottom up”. Rather, she points out that all manners of peoples and ranges of human experience have escaped, or been excluded from, systematic historical inquiry. As an essential element in “raising consciousness,” in asserting their identity, numerous groups are now trying to “get their hands on history.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , Fall 1975 , pp. 257 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by New York University 

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References

Notes

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