The Teaching of History in a Shrinking World
fly ARNOLD TOYNBEE IN our day, man's technology is keeping its maker on the run. Our technological feat of ' annihilating distance ' is having the same effect as a rapidly rising flood: The World's population is being crowded together on the patch of ground that still stands above flood-level. But, as the waters rise, the patch shrinks and the refugees are compressed into ever closer quarters. When this happens in non-human life, the animals who have found a common refuge on the island are said to observe, instinctively, a temporary ' truce of God.' The lion really does lie down with the lamb till the flood- Waters subside. In our present human quandary. however, a Merely temporary truce is not going to save us from bringing on ourselves the fate of the Kilkenny cats; for the .progress of technology shows no signs of abating. So, human-fashion, We must supplement instinct by art. Now that we are all going to be within point-blank H-bomb range of one another permanently, we have to train ourselves to live together like One of those ' happy families' in a menagerie, where the hunter and the hunted—lion and lamb, cat and mouse, hawk and dove—do live permanently cheek-by-jowl within one narrow Common cage, not thanks to an instinct that comes into play Only in emergencies. but thanks to patient training, from Infancy, by skilful human educators.
Here is the model of the small and crowded world in which mankind is going to find itself in the chapter of history that IS opening in our time; and this new situation calls for new Views and new policies. It calls, for instance, for a drastic revision of the current Western view of what is the standard and normal pattern of mankind's geographical distribution. In the West we see the world as a patch-work quilt made up of national units, each of them displaying a distinctive colour of Its own, and each of them separated by a sharp dividing line from the different-coloured patches adjoining it. This has never, of course, been the prevailing pattern of distribution in the world at large; it has been prevalent just in Western Europe; and, in the aeroplane age, it is rapidly being trans- formed, even here, into the quite different pattern of a piece Of shot silk, in which threads of different colours are inter- Woven. In Western Europe, as elsewhere, the multinational state, not the national state, is going to be the normal standard Pattern of the future; and the hunter and the hunted —Gentile and Jew, Protestant and Catholic, Christian and Muslim, White and Black—are going to be intermingled there. They are going to be parked, cheek-by-jowl, in the same streets and the same tenement houses, and they are going to have to learn to live at very close quarters without scratching one another's eyes out.
Now are we to cultivate the necessary mutual tolerance ? One of the first lessons that we have to learn is to understand, appreciate, respect, and make allowance for one another's different ways of life; and, since the present is the child of the past, this means also making allowance for one another's different histories. The misrepresentation of history can Poison human relations. But here we come up against a Crux. Contemporary historians are apt not to be on their guard against the danger of misrepresenting history because they are apt to feel sure that, in this scientific modern age. they are immune against bias. With their hands on their hearts, they will declare that they have resolutely put out of their minds all traditional patterns, ideologies, and prejudices, and have learnt from Ranke simply to record events as these have actually occurred. This sincere conviction that one is unprejudiced is, however, a snare. By discouraging self- examination, it diminishes one's chance of bringing to light In oneself any prejudices of which one is not conscious. And the unconscious prejudice is always the one that makes most havoc because it does its insidious work unperceived and uncensored.
If there is substance in this summary account of the world's present problem of inter-communal• relations, the Council of Christians and Jews has done a timely and valuable service in publishing the findings of an enquiry into history textbooks now in use in Great Britain for the age-group 11-15*. The object of the enquiry was to discover whether the textbooks
accorded fair and adequate treatment to the different human groups within the nation—racial, national, social, cultural,' religious—or whether, through inaccuracy, omission, exaggeration, or unconscious bias, they tended to promote intolerant attitudes and perpetuate misconceptions.
The enquiry was deliberately focussed on the treatment, in these textbooks, of two minority communities, the Roman Catholics and the Jews; and, in a survey made in Great Britain today, this choice is obviously a good one: for these are the two most important minority communities in the country; in both cases there is the same past history of mutual misunderstanding and animosity poisoning the minority's relations with a Protestant majority: yet at the same time there is Me important point in which these two minorities are dissimilar. While the Catholics are mostly native Britons (or Irish) who differ from their neighbours in religion alone, the Jews differ from their neighbours in race as well, and are descended from ancestors who came into Britain from abroad.
The findings in this enquiry are definite and illuminating. There are few complaints of inaccuracy on points of historical fact, and few, again, of conscious and deliberate denigration with a polemical or a propagandist aim. The misrepresenta- tions on which the critics put their finger are, nearly all of them, the reflections of a bias of which the writers of the textbooks have been unconscious. Such unconscious and unintentional misrepresentations can be serious. They range from errors of balance and proportion. through omissions and exaggerations, to the almost mechanical reproduction of traditional misconceptions and hostile feelings. Jewish critics of Christian textbook-writers complain mostly of omissions and of errors of balance and proportion; Roman Catholic critics of Protestant textbook-writers complain mostly of traditional animosities and misconceptions: After summing up the critics' findings, the author of the report makes an interesting suggestion for a remedy.
The chief way in which bias appears is in omission, especially of factors which may. to an author writing within the context of his own intellectual and cultural equipment, seem unimportant, but which to members of another group may be vital. There is need on the part of both authors and teachers of what has been called a ' cultural pluralism '--a view of culture which is Copernican rather Ptolemaic '.
This goes to the root of the matter; for, in the minds of modern Western historians who believe that there is no pattern there, the unconscious ,pattern of history is the Chosen People' pattern in modern dress. Western Civilisation,' the New World,' Europe," Britain," Guatemala' are patent substitutes for an original ' Israel.' The Christian Church has claimed Israel's role for itself, and then a secular modern Western Society has purloined the role from the Church. This role of being the Chosen People ' has thus been a bone of contention; but, whatever party has been cast for it, the pattern imposed on history has been the same and has had the same distorting effect. In reality mankind never has been divided into an elect minority monopolising the light of God's counte- nance and a gentile majority sitting in outer darkness. There never has been any supernaturally privileged inner circle within the human family. The only treatment of history that is objective is one that treats all communities as equals; and this objective view of history is the only view that we can afford to present to our children in our now rapidly shrinking world.
I' History Without Bias ? A Textbook Survey on Group Antago- nisms, By E. H. Dance, Senior History Master, Wolverhampton Grammar Scnool: foreword by Professor Herbert Butterfield, Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. (London 1954, Council of Clhittiaus and Jews. 2s.)
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