Getting Lincoln Wrong: Ann Althouse, The New York Times, and the American Student
(x-posted to The Valve)
Law professor and conservative blogger Ann Althouse, in a post (and follow-up post) in which she advocates discontinuing the study of fiction in schools, has drawn my attention to a report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which claims that American students are increasingly well-informed about American history. You may have read the optimistic New York Times article here.
The claim is based on a 2006 assessment test for students in the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades. The most politically significant results were gains by 4th graders, who entered school only slightly prior to the 2002 passage of George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. Althouse concludes, “quit bitching about No Child Left Behind.” What you may not know is that the answer to the showcase question from the 4th grade test — about Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 speech on slavery, and quoted by both Althouse and the Times — is completely wrong.
This is more than a matter of oversight. It is a matter of the fundamental relationship between ideology and practices of reading. Althouse’s real target is the kind of reading that calls ideology into question, including the study of fiction. She missed the flaw in a question designed for fourth graders for the same reason Sam Dillon missed it, at The New York Times: because the mistake was grounded in ideology, and that ideology is a comfort.
(thanks to tomemos for the link; he has responded to Althouse insightfully here)
***
Here is the question.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect that it will cease to be divided.
–Abraham Lincoln, 1858What did Abraham Lincoln mean in this speech?
a) The South should be allowed to separate from the United States.
b) The government should support slavery in the South.
c) Sometime in the future slavery would disappear from the United States.
d) Americans would not be willing to fight a war over slavery.
The correct answer, according to the examiners, is c: “Sometime in the future slavery would disappear from the United States.”
Here is the quotation from Lincoln in context. I beg your forgiveness for its length; if you read it from beginning to end, you will have done more than Althouse:
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation not only has not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination—piece of machinery, so to speak—compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision.
All of the urgency in that address—its mood of grim determination in the face of tremendous uncertainty, and everything, in short, that secures its claim to greatness—belies the notion that Lincoln could already foresee an end to slavery. Instead, he predicted the possibility of victory in a decidedly partisan struggle against the doctrine of inevitable progress:
Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday—that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he himself has given no intimation? [...] Whenever, if ever, [Douglas] and we can come together on principle, so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But, clearly, he is not now with us—he does not pretend to be, he does not promise ever to be.
It should be no surprise that the adjective used in the Times to describe the NAEP is “bipartisan.” The modern political myth of bipartisanship without appeal to principle is coded into the passivity of waiting for slavery to eventually end, the “correct answer” for which Lincoln furiously indicts his opponent. It’s this kind of over-writing (here, over-writing Lincoln) that produces ideology; the same kind of over-writing that will not acknowledge a group that has not made any significant improvement in scores since 2001, in any age group: African-Americans.
***
Where does this leave the attack on fiction? Althouse writes,
I’m saying that the reading materials used in teaching reading should be nonfiction, so that students are absorbing information and practicing critical thinking while they read. (first post)
Look, my main point is efficiency…I’m also not opposed to teaching history and science through the kinds of novels and storybooks that present the information accurately. (second post)
The debate hinges on the question of information — what qualifies as information, what standards are used to evaluate the accuracy of information, and above all how students will be tested on what they know. I was immediately reminded of Lionel Trilling, who in “Manners, Morals, and the Novel” had this to say about history in relation to art:
As we read the great formulated monuments of the past, we notice that we are reading them without the accompaniment of something that always goes along with the formulated monuments of the present. The voice of multiplication which always surrounds us in the present, coming to us from what never gets fully stated, coming in the tone of greetings and the tone of quarrels, in slang and in humor and popular songs, in the way children play, in the gesture the waiter makes when he puts down the plate, in the nature of the very food we prefer….And part of the melancholy of the past comes from our knowledge that the huge, unrecorded hum of implication was once there and left no trace—we feel that because it is evanescent it is especially human. We feel, too, that the truth of the great preserved monuments of the past does not fully appear without it.
Trilling is describing two different, related things here. First of all, the ability of literature to encode information very densely through the representation of everyday events. Second, the relationship between those uncountable events that escape history because they are mundane, and the larger kinds of undecidability produced by what philosophy calls “counter-factuals.” In fact, the kinds of information and habits gained from a lifetime of reading fiction are incompatible with multiple-choice exams, because such exams of necessity exclude a multiplication of voices, and have no mechanism for the kinder offices of doubt: curiosity, reserve, and toleration. The strength of Lincoln’s convictions came from the real historical uncertainties to which he opposed them. It is little wonder that he would be read so badly by thinkers like Althouse; her incurious zeal is of a piece with the exam that seems to give us such good news.
The point you raise was in fact discussed by many people in the comments on my post. Maybe some “incurious zeal” of yours kept you from noticing.
Dear Ann,
What a pitiful rejoinder. If by “the point you raise” you mean the inaccuracy of the showcase question — well, I’m delighted to do whatever I can to foreground the error. I hardly think of myself as the only person who knows the basics about Abraham Lincoln.
My policy, when a commenter has pointed out a substantial oversight in something I’ve written, is to add an explanatory update to the original post. The most you’ve managed is a crack at Tomemos for an error of much smaller proportions.
As for the rest of what I’ve written, I am unsurprised to find that you have no means of response.
To which I’d add: Ann, I read that discussion, and while you left plenty of comments mocking your critics, you yourself never acknowledged the points made about the test question, or took a position on it one way or another. You certainly didn’t let it affect your suggestion to “quit bitching about No Child Left Behind.” If you’re going to take credit for the observations made by those who disagree with you, then there’s no argument you can’t win.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
The wingnuts do not feel his words, and law profs never will;
Their ship of thought is at the dock, its voyage not begun;
On Lincoln’s quotes, they like to gloat; their meaning they will shun.
Exult, warblogs, and ring, hit count!
But I must mourn instead,
Lincoln’s words, when used for lies,
Have fallen cold and dead.
LOLZ AT THE RIGHT. Whose basic strategy is limited to state, ancedotal evidence, stats, re-state, state again.
Well this is just silly innit? Is she saying that nothing can be learnt from fiction? No life lessons gleaned? No virtues fostered? No knowledge of ones community, nation and culture? Fiction is just that isn’t it, silly stories about imaginary characters whose only purpose is to mildly amuse people, to give them a spurious pleasure sensation in the C-fiber.
Yes because reading a book in detail only destroys ones pleasure in it, and as noted, pleasure is the only reason to read anything ever. Because the great books, like, say, 1984 or Nausea, are laughs and japes to get through aren’t they? We should never actually look at what something says, just be satisfied with skimming the surface and smiling blankly.
Not only that but she gets all lathered up about kids loving books on guns. Great. Kids are little savages, they like guns, I know I did when I was 12, but I don’t think a book on guns is going to teach them any life lesson about their use or about the reasons why they probably shouldn’t shoot their fellow man.
Come back Ann I am hankering for a fight.
Oh how I find your bloated scietism drole and the way that every form of critical thinking should be subject to the roughly utilitarian logic of technology. Question: who sets this test? The Scientists right? Well how it at all fair? Perhaps there are different types of critical thinking that might be different from one another but both worthy.
Sorry, you just come across as too nasty to interest me. I would have engaged with this post at some length — I was going to do a post on my blog about it — but gave you only what you call a “pitiful rejoinder” because I found you so unlikeable. Is that clear enough for your critical thinking to penetrate?
Not really, Ann, no. You uncritically accepted a very flawed set of statistical results in the service of a political agenda with serious consequences for American children. On top of that, you made a series of illogical arguments for abolishing the required study of fiction. I am surprised that you would wish to subordinate all these matters to an unrelated question of personal likeability. I am equally surprised that you would think it possible to make me regret what I wrote on such grounds. I accused you of misreading (or not re-reading) Lincoln. You had this to say about critics of your first post: “Ironically, you are not reading very well.” You also accused educators of conflicts of interest; I believe the word you were looking for was “expertise.”
I did not find your posts interesting or likeable; I found them unscrupulous and ill-considered, and that was why I responded. Whether you respond in turn is a matter for your own conscience. Regardless, you yourself are hardly the audience of greatest importance in debates like these.
“Sorry, you just come across as too nasty to interest me. I would have engaged with this post at some length — I was going to do a post on my blog about it — but gave you only what you call a “pitiful rejoinder” because I found you so unlikeable.”
It’s the “I used to vote Democrat” spiel word-for-word. “I would have voted for Obama — but then he chose the same middle name as our country’s enemy, which I find so unlikeable.”
Drat it all. I was hoping that someone would criticize my poem for being mawkish, and then suddenly discover, Aha! plagiarism!
I think that your arguments, or more accurately statements, on your blog come across as more than mildly “unlikeable”. Take this rhetoric for example, which is an effective dismissal of any serious engagement.
and also the high level snark of
So please post about this. Your retort to Kugelmass’ lack of pleasantries as your reason for not doing so betrays your cowardice in not actually responding when someone who does know what they are talking about weighs in. You are scared your quasi-arguments and the spurious statistics and ancedotes that support them will be torn to shreds. So post, please, if you are so confident in this, confident enough to bait your commentators, swing open the doors to further debate.
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This exchange with Althouse reminds me of Socrates’ exchange with Meletus in the Apology over who teaches the youth virtue. After a series of questions it finally becomes clear that Meletus hasn’t thought a day in his life about education, virtue, or the youth. Far more telling than the unquestioning acceptance of the multiple choice question over Lincoln is the “philosophy” of “education” reflected in the belief that fiction should not be taught. Indeed, the use of the word “information” in the context of a discussion of what education is says a good deal. Apparently education can be reduced to Trivial Pursuit.
Moreover, the refusal to respond based on the “nastiness” of this post reveals an inability to respond to valid criticism. There was nothing overtly “nasty” in this post or subsequent comments. One would think a law professor would be capable of appreciating arguments on the basis of their own merit.
Once again, it disturbs me deeply to hear education discussed as if it were the mere exchange of “information”, as if learning were the acquisition of so much trivia. This seems to be the basic concept of learning underlying NCLB and advocated by its defenders. Apparently the idea that it’s what’s between facts and bits of information– i.e., how it is structured and organized –completely escapes the defenders of this policy. Then again, it comes as no surprise that the defenders of this policy would shy away from such things as reasoning and critical thinking are not easily quantifiable.
Oh, Ann. You’ve just got to be you, haven’t you?
…ooops, told YOU, JK. You’re just too nasty for Ann Althouse.
Also, you shouldn’t have been posing like that, and say, isn’t that sweater kind of tight?