CULTURE WATCH 1996

 CULTURE WATCH
Volume 1, Number 3, August 1996
A publication of Capital Research Center

Why doesn’t a journal for the best high school history papers have support
from groups professing an interest in the future of education?

by Laurence Jarvik

When Will Fitzhugh quit teaching high school history in Concord, Massachusetts nine years ago to start The Concord Review, he didn’t know that it would be so difficult to find backers for his venture. The premise for his quarterly publication was simple: to publish the best history papers by public and private high school students in the United States so that teachers and students would have access to examples of excellence. High standards for writing history could be encouraged by learning by example. Fitzhugh, a graduate of Harvard Colllege (Class of 1960), thought that there would be a natural demand among teachers for his effort to publicize essays written by the “best and the brightest.” He was surprised when his request for funding was turned down by 125 foundations, the Department of Education, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Fitzhugh cashed in his retirement account and put one hundred thousand dollars of his own money into The Concord Review, whose first issue appeared in 1988. What Fitzhugh did not realize was that while he was pursuing teaching history in the public high schools, the field of academic history was changing. The lifelong Democrat had become an unknowing participant in the culture wars. The rejections he received from foundations and government agencies were the results of a paradigm shift which preferred group identity to individual merit. “Sometimes they tell me they are only interested in the work of minority students,” Fitzhugh recalled, “and sometimes they say they cannot see the value of supporting the work of just a few good youngsters.” Fitzhugh’s position that minority students are “welcome to contribute their work” and to be judged on the basis of its excellence fell on deaf ears.

That Fitzhugh’s journal would be caught up in the controversy over politically correct high school history came as a surprise. When the National Standards for United States History were released in 1994, they listed The Concord Review among approved “teaching resources for United States history”…as “an exceptional teaching tool modeling outstanding essays research (sic) and written by high school students…Recommended for grades 9-12.” Two essays were featured in a special January, 1995 Concord Review as the best of the year. Neither could be considered conservative. Aaron Einbond, a sophomore at New York City’s elite public Hunter College High School, contributed a study of John Maynard Keynes based on citations from liberal economists John Kenneth Galbraith and Robert Lekachman. Pia Lindstrom Luedtke, a sophomore at the private Polytechnic School of Pasadena, offered a feminist interpretation of the career of architect Julia Morgan entitled “Blueprint for Social Change.” The high-schooler had already enjoyed one official seal of approval: in 1993 Luedtke received a $1,900 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities through the NEH Younger Scholars Program to write her essay over summer vacation. Other essays published in The Concord Review included accounts of baseball’s Negro Leagues, women’s suffrage, President Woodrow Wilson’s vision of the League of Nations, the role of women in the French Revolution, and a critique of Frederick Jackson Turner based on the work of liberal historian Richard Hofstadter. The Concord Review also published essays on the development of the Ferris Wheel and the power loom and an analysis of how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis continue the debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. A glance at issues provided to Culture Watch shows little in the way of what might be characterized as conservative history: for example, the legacy of conservative statesmen, scientists, businessmen, intellectuals, military history, or criticism of leftist historical figures or trends.

Fitzhugh is a colorful character. The son of a prominent Boston physician, at the age of two Fitzhugh moved to Arizona with his mother after his parents divorced. Graduating from a boarding school in Menlo Park, California after winning a prize by answering 1,000 questions correctly (the first time a student had done so in 17 years), he went to work as a lumberjack. Fitzhugh entered Harvard in 1956 after his father brought him back East with an offer to pay his tuition. He graduated in 1962 with an English degree, spent a year doing graduate work in English literature at Cambridge University, and in 1964 went to work for the Apollo space program preparing charts used in the construction of the Command Module. This led to a job with Pan Am as a management trainee. Fitzhugh returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he obtained a master’s degree in education from Harvard. After jobs with the Peace Corps (which sent him to Iran), Westinghouse, and Polaroid, Fitzhugh went into teaching, first working as a guidance counselor and, in 1978, as a social studies teacher at Concord High School [CCHS]. He started The Concord Review to give recognition to good students, “the ones who’re doing better than we think they are.” In its first year the magazine had subscribers in 14 states, and soon had support from Harold Howe, a Harvard professor and Commissioner of Education in the Johnson administration, and Chester Finn, Assistant Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration. Finn gave Fitzhugh $10,000 from the Fordham foundation. Howe wrote letters to 15 foundations on his behalf.

A traditional liberal approach to history—narratives of great men, nations and ideas—is not in keeping with trends in political correctness sweeping education. Against his will, Fitzhugh is being pushed into the conservative camp. His notion that The Concord Review is a form of “varsity academics” [now a registered trademark of The Concord Review, Inc.] is offensive to advocates of the new pedagogy. The very educational nostrums that brought Fitzhugh to Harvard in 1956 from a logging camp are now considered obsolete and elitist. The new view of history is instrumental, and high school history has become a kind of sensitivity training. Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman have called the process Molding the Good Citizen (Prager, 1995) in their review of the politics of high school history texts. They point out that civil rights groups, feminists, peace activists and environmentalists have all “sought to change the school in specific ways to bring about a new social order.” Because Fitzhugh’s journal does not pretend to fight oppression by race, class and sex, its purpose is suspect. “It used to be the people on both sides of the aisle thought standards were a good idea,” Fitzhugh told Culture Watch. “Now anybody who thinks reading and writing and doing homework is a good idea is considered a conservative.’

[Will Fitzhugh is at fitzhugh@tcr.org; and The Concord Review at tcr.org
Varsity Academics® is a registered trademark of The Concord Review, Inc.]