Who Should Tell America's Story?
Every generation asks the same question.
Not out loud, of course.
The words change.
The politicians change.
The museums change.
The textbooks change.
But beneath the noise, the question remains remarkably consistent:
Who gets to decide what America remembers?
This week, that question returned to the national stage.
The debate surrounding the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History isn't really about museum exhibits.
It's about memory.
Memory is power.
Who we celebrate.
Who we criticize.
Who receives a statue.
Who gets a footnote.
Who disappears altogether.
History has never simply been a record of the past.
It has always been an argument about the present.
That shouldn't surprise us.
Every civilization has curated its own story.
Ancient Rome commissioned triumphal arches celebrating victories while quietly ignoring defeats.
Kings hired court historians.
Empires built monuments.
Revolutionaries tore them down.
History isn't merely written.
It's edited.
And editing always reveals priorities.
Which brings us to an uncomfortable question.
What should American children actually learn?
The answer from many corners today seems surprisingly simple.
Teach the inspiring version.
Or...
Teach the shameful version.
Choose your side.
Pick your heroes.
Memorize your script.
Congratulations.
You've graduated.
Except...
That's not education.
That's inheritance.
One of the first books we read together in Aletheia Courses is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
Predictably, that decision raises eyebrows.
Some assume assigning Zinn means I've chosen a side.
Not quite.
What surprises people is what comes next.
I also encourage readers to read Mary Grabar's Debunking Zinn.
Daniel Immerwahr.
Tad Stoermer.
Primary documents.
Opposing viewpoints.
Contradictory evidence.
Because the objective isn't agreement.
It's intellectual independence.
As I wrote in our first month's curriculum:
"You don't have to agree with Zinn. But if you haven't read him, your disagreement is inherited—not earned."
That sentence isn't really about Howard Zinn.
It's about all of us.
Every one of us inherited a version of American history.
Some inherited a heroic narrative.
Others inherited a cynical one.
Some learned about Washington crossing the Delaware.
Others learned about slavery, indigenous displacement, and systemic injustice.
Neither is entirely wrong.
Neither is complete.
And completeness is where education begins.
Children deserve more than patriotic mythology.
They also deserve more than perpetual national self-loathing.
A mature nation should be capable of holding two truths simultaneously.
The United States produced extraordinary ideals.
The United States frequently failed to live up to those ideals.
Those statements are not contradictory.
They're history.
The danger isn't teaching difficult chapters.
The danger is pretending only one chapter exists.
When we sanitize history, we create citizens incapable of recognizing complexity.
When we weaponize history, we create citizens incapable of recognizing achievement.
Both approaches replace inquiry with ideology.
That should concern every parent.
Every teacher.
Every citizen.
Because education isn't supposed to manufacture agreement.
It's supposed to cultivate judgment.
The ancient Greeks understood something we've largely forgotten.
Education wasn't primarily about accumulating information.
It was about forming character.
Developing discernment.
Learning how to evaluate competing claims.
Asking better questions.
Somewhere along the way, we've confused education with affirmation.
Students increasingly encounter historical narratives already packaged with approved emotional responses.
Feel proud.
Feel guilty.
Feel angry.
Feel grateful.
But rarely are they encouraged to wrestle.
To compare.
To investigate.
To sit with contradiction.
That's a tragedy.
History is supposed to make us uncomfortable.
If it doesn't, someone has probably removed the interesting parts.
That's why I find the current debate over museums and school curricula both fascinating and predictable.
Each generation believes it is correcting the previous generation's distortions.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it simply creates new ones.
The solution has never been replacing one approved narrative with another.
The solution is exposing students to evidence.
Primary documents.
Competing historians.
Conflicting interpretations.
Context.
Nuance.
Complexity.
Teach Jefferson.
Teach Frederick Douglass.
Teach Lincoln.
Teach Ida B. Wells.
Teach Howard Zinn.
Teach his critics.
Teach the Federalist Papers.
Teach the voices that challenged them.
Teach students how historians build arguments.
Most importantly...
Teach them that history is not something to consume.
It's something to investigate.
At Aletheia Courses, that's exactly what we're trying to recover.
Not a particular political ideology.
Not a predetermined conclusion.
A habit.
The habit of reading before reacting.
Questioning before repeating.
Investigating before believing.
Because if history can be rewritten, it can also be rewritten again.
And if every generation insists on editing America's story, then perhaps the greatest gift we can give the next generation isn't a cleaner textbook.
It's the intellectual courage to read beyond it.
After all, the goal of education isn't to tell students what to think about America.
It's to ensure they're capable of thinking about America at all.
That may be the most patriotic lesson we can teach.
