Health & Fitness
Don't (Want) to Know Much About History
A look at the history of Levittown from historian Paul Manton.
Whilst hither to ignorance of history was owed to a dearth of educational opportunities, today it's a function of contemporary intellectual lassitude, cynicism, and sophistry.
Take, for example, the colonial era. Much of what Americans over 50 have learned about it is apocryphal and generated by Progressive Era academician's endeavor to forge a uniform - if romanticized - national narrative whereas much of what those under 50 know is tainted by revisionism and political correctness. Those formulae permeate other areas of historical inquiry, too.
Recent comments in Newsday's September 13, 2012 reader's forum denigrating the teaching of history as "useless knowledge" speak much of Bloom's now-proverbial "closing of the American mind." Although we are wont to bemoan the loss of history manifested in old buildings, changing landscapes, and vanishing folkways, the fact is, history is very much alive and ever-present to such a degree that it's impossible to be knowledgeable about history and not possess some insight into the human condition on the main.
Those who spoke of "useless knowledge" and said all they remembered in social studies class was that "a caveman discovered fire" are not cause for concern because they don't know who won the War of 1812 (or when it was fought), who invented the telegraph, or why Norway isn't a Catholic country like Spain. They are cause for concern because they, by necessity, are ignorant of the here-and-now; narcissistic in their assumption that nothing significant, or at least worth even knowing, happened prior to their birth; easily manipulated by charlatans and demagogues. Let's not forget that the totalitarian practitioner of agitprop always relies, in his stock-in-trade, on collective amnesia and historical revisionism.
Ignorance of history, when so willful in its nature, is merely the unfurled standard of mediocrity. The people in the Newsday forum were not merely ignorant of history, they were dunces as well.
Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org.
