{"id":108574,"date":"2025-02-25T06:12:20","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T06:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/timothy-egan-is-the-only-guy-who-gets-it\/"},"modified":"2025-02-25T06:12:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T06:12:20","slug":"timothy-egan-is-the-only-guy-who-gets-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=108574","title":{"rendered":"Timothy Egan is the only guy who gets\u00a0it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Timothy Egan is the kind of guy you\u2019d think I could agree with: \u00a0He thinks history is important! He thinks we should write history to engage and fascinate our readers! \u00a0He thinks assaults on high school Advanced Placement history classes are foolish, as he states in his recent essay on the misguided attempts in Oklahoma to control the A.P. American history curriculum!<\/p>\n<p>I agree with him on all of the above, but then he goes and writes something just as dumb and as dishonest as any opportunistic Okie legislator would write:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">With the latest initiatives, the party of science denial is now getting into history denial. <strong>On the academic front, they have a point, indirectly. Much of the A.P history framework is boring, bland, and sounds like it was written by committee, which it was. There\u2019s little narrative, drama, heroics or personality \u2014 in other words, the real-life stuff that makes for thrilling history.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"story-continues-2\" class=\"story-body-text story-content\"><strong>Here\u2019s a sample \u201clearning objective\u201d from the current national course and exam description from the College Board: \u201cAnalyze the role of economic, political, social and ethnic factors on the formation of regional identities in what would become the United States from the colonial period through the 19th century.\u201d And you wonder why the humanities are in trouble.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">That\u2019s right: \u00a0\u201ca sample \u2018learning objective\u2019\u201d apparently must be just as thrilling and as full of \u201cnarrative, drama, heroics [and] personality\u201d as Barbara Tuchman\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Guns of August,<\/em> otherwise it\u2019s just further proof that historians and educators are just as bad as the Oklahoma legislators who want history to be all happy talk about the Founding Fathers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">Egan pretends not to know that there\u2019s a difference in the ways that educators communicate with each other, and the ways in which they communicate with their students, readers of history, or the general public about their work. \u00a0He writes as though an internal process document or a sample exam question exactly describes what is taught in A.P. high school classrooms. \u00a0He writes to suggest that classroom educators aren\u2019t smart enough to know how to talk to their own students about history, and implies that they\u2019re smart enough to communicate in professional shorthand with one another about the boring (but necessary) stuff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">And then he indicts not just A.P history teachers, not just historians, but\u00a0<em>all of the humanities. \u00a0<\/em>Give me a freaking break. \u00a0By this standard, I suppose we should assume that all memos and emails written at\u00a0<em>The New York Times\u00a0<\/em>are worthy of Pulitzer Prizes. \u00a0One dry memo about the deadline for open enrollments this year, <em>a<\/em><em>nd you wonder why the newspaper industry is in trouble!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">This is by no means an isolated example of Egan\u2019s stupidity. \u00a0(Right there, I initially wrote \u201cfalse stupidity,\u201d because I assume this is just a pose Egan assumes to pander to his imagined audience. \u00a0But I erased the \u201cfalse\u201d part, because it doesn\u2019t matter if he believes what he writes about history educators or not\u2013he\u2019s still selling the stupid. \u00a0And if you\u2019re selling the stupid, then you must\u00a0<em>own the stupid!<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">For example, he pretended last year not to understand that complaints and protests against Condoleeza Rice\u2019s appearance at Rutgers were in fact examples of the very liberty of speech he accused the protesters of hating.\u00a0 He called Rutgers students \u201cbigots\u201d and \u201clefty thought police\u201d because some expressed their objections to Rice\u2019s appearance at their graduation.\u00a0 (Remember, they did nothing to shut her down her speech\u2013she voluntarily withdrew from the Rutgers commencement ceremony b<em>ecause students had exercised their First Amendment rights\u00a0<\/em>and complained about her!) \u00a0Once again, Egan can pretend he\u2019s the\u00a0<em>only guy who \u201cgets it.\u201d \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">I understand why Egan pretends that he\u2019s the only guy in the room who understands both the importance of a complete version of American history as well as the\u00a0\u201cnarrative, drama, heroics [and] personality\u201d that brings historical teaching and writing to life. \u00a0It\u2019s his brand to pretend that he\u2019s <em>the only guy who gets it! <\/em>\u00a0I don\u2019t like that he likes to beat on university professors, but whatever: \u00a0I can take it. \u00a0I\u2019m a good writer and a good teacher, so his shadow-boxing doesn\u2019t bother me. \u00a0The man has to make a living, after all. \u00a0I\u2019ve got tenure, and he doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">But it bothers me that Egan is so unoriginal, and that he punches down. \u00a0Is it really courageous and truth-telling to beat on the scholars and high-school history teachers who develop and teach the A.P. standards, many of whom also spend part of their summers grading A.P. exams? \u00a0 \u00a0Is it really so\u00a0<em>politically incorrect\u00a0<\/em>to tell college students these days to <em>STFU<\/em>? \u00a0Of course neither college students nor history teachers are beyond criticism, but Egan willfully misrepresents their work so that he can preen and pretend that\u00a0<em>he gets it<\/em> when no one else does. \u00a0Considering his recent targets, how is this much different from the anti-intellectualism of Sean Hannity or Bill O\u2019Reilly?<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\">If Egan bothered to read anything about the history of education in the U.S., most of which is written by us boring, old professors, he\u2019d see just how hackneyed and stereotyped his complaints really are. \u00a0History is always too important to be left to the historians, and the world has never wanted for lamentations about the rising generation. \u00a0Really. \u00a0You can look it up and\u00a0<em>get it\u00a0<\/em>yourself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Timothy Egan is the kind of guy you\u2019d think I could agree with: \u00a0He thinks history is important! He thinks we should write history to engage and fascinate our readers! \u00a0He thinks assaults on high school Advanced Placement history classes are foolish, as he states in his recent essay on the misguided attempts in Oklahoma [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[23787,49231,19441,49230],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-108574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-egan","tag-getsit","tag-guy","tag-timothy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Timothy Egan is the only guy who gets\u00a0it - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=108574\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Timothy Egan is the only guy who gets\u00a0it - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Timothy Egan is the kind of guy you\u2019d think I could agree with: \u00a0He thinks history is important! 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