The American Educational Tradition: Hostile to a Humanistic World History?

Abstract

trism in textbooks and the lack of systematic teacher training in the field. But these issues need to be seen in the larger context of American educational history and philosophy wherein the more subtle biases toward Euro-centric world views have emerged. Such analysis and changes in teacher preparation are both necessary if a truly humanistic and integrated world history is to come about in the schools. Almost from its beginnings, historical writing in the West has been caught in a paradox. Because Herodotus and his successors were creating a new way of organizing what they saw around them, they were unaware that as they sought to record facts objectively, they were unconsciously using the norms of their own civilization as the basis for all civilizations. Herodotus presented the histories of Egypt and India as exotic deviations from Hellas. Western historical writers from Augustine to Toynbee have continued to draw that same invisible line separating the civilized West from the alien others of Asia, Africa, and the pre-Columbian western