现代大学英语精读第二版（第五册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——7 - Rewriting American History（改写美国历史）

Unit 7 - Rewriting American History

Rewriting American History

Frances FitzGerald

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanence of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth of things: They were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and trappings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorizing a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognizable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George Mcjunkin. It appears that when Mcjunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilization ten thousand years old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations and the meaning of the word "culture” before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text—this one for the fifth grade—begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, 'The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would," and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot."

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American History. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America—even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok—the great self-promoters of American history— have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handedly; and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis.

A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompanies Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks. A fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens has been reconstructed—his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents—except certain unmentionables in the second half of the 19th century—seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modern scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics text did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it, for that generation never noticed when its complaint began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the textbooks. But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and a half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania—ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove man that the United States interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: Its values and its political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution.

To my generation—the children of the fifties—these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no handholds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonialists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorale of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anticommunist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were— or so it seemed—the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor Presidents is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word “progress" has been replaced by the word "change": Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically.

One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage; the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society, and wastage created by their production?" Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation; the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely:

Problems are part of life. Nations face them, just as people face them, and try to solve them. And today's Americans have one great advantage over past generations. Never before have Americans been so well equipped to solve their problems. They have today the means to conquer poverty, disease, and ignorance. The technetronic age has put that power into their hands.

Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the texts has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise, paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues.

The political diversity in the books is matched by a diversity of pedagogical approach. In addition to the traditional narrative histories, with their endless streams of facts, there are so-called "discovery," or “inquiry" texts, which deal with a limited number of specific issues in American history. These texts do not pretend to cover the past; they focus on particular topics, such as "stratification in Colonial society" or "slavery and the American Revolution," and illustrate them with documents from primary and secondary sources.

The chapters in these books amount to something like case studies, in that they include testimony from people with different perspectives or conflicting views on a single subject. In addition, the chapters provide background information, explanatory notes, and a series of questions for the students. The questions are the heart of the matter, for when they are carefully selected they force students to think much as historians think: to define the point of view of the speaker, analyze the ideas presented, question the relationship between events, and so on. One text, for example, quotes Washington, Jefferson, and John Adams on the question of foreign alliances and then asks, "What did John Adams assume that the international situation would be after the American Revolution? What did Washington's attitude towards the French Alliance seem to be? How do you account for his attitude?" Finally, it asks, "Should a nation adopt a policy towards alliances and cling to it consistently, or should it vary its policies towards other countries as circumstances change?” In these books, history is clearly not a list of agreed-upon facts which must be ordered by the historians.

In matters of pedagogy, as in matters of politics, there are not two sharply differentiated categories of books; rather, there is a spectrum. Politically, the books run from moderate left to moderate right; pedagogically, they run from the traditional history sermon, through a middle ground of narrative texts with inquiry-style questions and of inquiry texts with long stretches of narrative, to the most rigorous of case-study books. What is common to the current texts—and makes all of them different from those of the fifties— is their engagement with the social sciences. In eighth-grade histories, the "concepts" are the very foundation stones of various elementary-school social-studies series. The 1970 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich series, for example, boasts in its preface of "a horizontal base or ordering of conceptual schemes" to match its "vertical arm of behavioral themes.”

What that means is not entirely clear, but the books do proceed from easy questions to hard ones, such as—in the sixth-grade book—"How was interaction between merchants and citizens different in the Athenian and Spartan social systems?” Virtually all the American-history texts for older children include discussions of "role," "status," and "culture." Some of them stage debates between eminent social scientists in roped-off sections of the text; some include essays on economics or sociology; some contain pictures and short biographies of social scientists of both sexes and of diverse races. Many books seem to accord social scientists a higher status than American Presidents.

Quite as striking as these political and pedagogical alterations is the change in the physical appearance of the texts. The schoolbooks of the fifties showed some effort in the matter of design: They had maps, charts, cartoons, photography, and an occasional four-color picture to break up the columns of print. But beside the current texts they look as naive as Soviet fashion magazines. The print in the fifties books is heavy and far too black, the colors muddy. The photographs are conventional news shots—portraits of Presidents in three-quarter profile, posed "action" shots of soldiers. The other illustrations tend to be Socialist-realist-style drawings (there are a lot of hefty farmers with hoes in the Colonial-period chapters) or incredibly vulgar made-for-children paintings of patriotic events. One painting shows Columbus standing in full court dress on a beach in the New World from a perspective that could have belonged only to the Arawaks. By contrast, the current texts are paragons of sophisticated modern design. They look not like People or Family Circle but, rather, like Architectural Digest or Vogue…The amount of space given to illustrations is far greater than it was in the fifties; in fact, in certain "slow-learner" books the pictures far outweigh the text in importance. However, the illustrations have a much greater historical value.

Instead of made-up paintings or anachronistic sketches, there are cartoons, photographs, and paintings drawn from the periods being treated. The chapters on the Colonial period will show, for instance, a ship's carved prow, a Revere bowl, a Copley painting a whole gallery of Early Americana. The 19th century is illustrated with 19th-century cartoons and photographs—and the photographs are all of high artistic quality. As for the 20th-century chapters, they are adorned with the contents of a modern-art museum.

The use of all this art and high-quality design contains some irony. The 19th-century photographs of child laborers or urban slum apartments are so beautiful that they transcend their subjects. To look at them, or at the Victor Gatto painting of the Triangle shirtwaist-factory fire, is to see not misery or ugliness but an art object. In the modern chapters, the contrast between style and content is just as great: The color photographs of junk yards or polluted rivers look as enticing as Gourmet's photographs of food. The book that is perhaps the most stark in its description of modern problems illustrate the horrors of nuclear testing with a pretty Ben Shahn picture of the Bikini explosion, and the potential for global ecological disaster with a color photograph of the planet swirling its mantle of white clouds. Whereas in the nineteen-fifties the texts were childish in the sense that they were naive and clumsy, they are now childish in the sense that they are polymorphous-perverse. American history is not dull any longer; it is a sensuous experience.

The surprise that adults feel in seeing the changes in history texts must come from the lingering hope that there is somewhere out there, an objective truth. The hope is, of course, foolish. All of us children of the 20th century know, or should know, that there are no absolutes in human affairs, and thus there can be no such thing as perfect objectivity. We know that each historian in some degree creates the world anew and that all history is in some degree contemporary history.

But beyond this knowledge there is still a hope for some reliable authority, for some fixed stars in the universe. We may know that journalists cannot be wholly unbiased and that "balance" is an imaginary point between two extremes, and yet we hope that Walter Cronkite will tell us the truth of things. In the same way, we hope that our history will not change—that we learned the truth of things as children. The texts, with their impersonal voices, encourage this hope, and therefore it is particularly disturbing to see how they change, and how fast.

Slippery history! Not every generation but every few years the content of American-history books for children changes appreciably. Schoolbooks are not, like trade books, written and left to their fate. To stay in step with the cycles of "adoption" in school districts across the country, the publishers revise most of their old texts or substitute new ones every three or four years. In the process of revision, they not only bring history up to date but make changes—often substantial changes—in the body of the work. History books for children are thus more contemporary than any other form of history. How should it be otherwise? Should students read histories written ten, fifteen, thirty years ago? In history, the system is reasonable—except that each generation of children reads only one generation of schoolbooks. The transient history is those children's history forever—their particular version of America.

参考译文——改写美国历史

改写美国历史

弗朗西丝·菲兹杰拉德

我们这些成长于50年代的人总以为美国的历史教科书是亘古不变的。对于儿时的我们来说，历史书就代表了事情的真相，因为它们是美国历史。这不仅因为在我们读到这些书的时候，我们尚未意识到书上印刷的并不意味着事实，至少不是事实的全部，而是因为和其他书比起来，历史书看起来更权威。一卷卷厚重的书本字斟句酌、严谨慎重、呆板无趣，就像中国皇帝一样遥不可及。老师们对这些书充满了尊敬，而我们则唯唯诺诺地每周背诵一个章节来表达我们对它们的崇敬。然而今天，历史教科书已然发生了变化，有些甚至变得面目全非，让我们这些成年人再难找到以前教科书的一丝踪迹。

时下的一本初中历史教科书中，美国历史开始于一个黑人牛仔男孩乔治·麦克琼金的故事。1925年一个寒冷春日的清晨，麦克琼金骑马经过新墨西哥州的一条荒凉的林间小道，他发现了一堆骨骸和石器工具，科学家们后来证明这些骨骸和石器属于一万年前的印第安文明。书中写道，科学家们据此认为至少两万年前南北美洲就出现了人类。在介绍来到美洲的欧洲探险家们之前，该书先讨论了阿兹特克人、玛雅人、印加文明以及“文明”一词的含义。

另一本为五年级学生撰写的教科书则以一位田纳西州国会议员亨利·B·冈萨雷斯的民族身份认知之旅开篇。在冈萨雷斯10岁那年，他的老师告诉他，他是一个美国人，因为他出生在美国。但他的祖母却反问：“这只猫是在烤炉里出生的，那难道它就是个面包吗？”在讲述完冈萨雷斯先生最终上了大学和法学院的故事之后，书中的解释是“大熔炉的观点并未像某些人所预期的那样取得成效”，而且如今“有些人认为美国与其说是一个大熔炉，倒不如说是一个沙拉碗”。

可怜的哥伦布！他如今成了个小角色，不过是美国历史里一个跑龙套的。即使有些书没有把他的画像替换成玛雅庙宇或易洛魁族面具，这些书也不认为是他发现了美洲，甚至不认为是欧洲人发现了美洲。书中认为在哥伦布之前，维京人就已经发现了“新世界”，只不过此后的欧洲人或许遗失了地图或忘记了这些地图的存在，在之后的500年中再没有想起来要穿越这片大洋。被时间遗忘和教材改写的远不止哥伦布一人。约翰·史密斯上校、丹尼尔·布恩，还有狂野比尔，这些曾在美国历史上熠熠生辉的人物如今都在教科书中难觅踪迹，随之而逝的是美国开拓边疆时期的种种传奇色彩。卡斯特将军让位于印第安首领狂马，艾森豪威尔将军也不再是那个只手解救欧洲的伟大人物。事实上，大部分将军的身影都在书中渐渐淡去，如同那些老兵的命运，纷纷被诸如威廉·劳埃德·加里森和雅各布·里斯之类的社会改革者们所取代，甚至连华盛顿和李将军都难逃此劫。

不少美国黑人成了历史名人：不仅是乔治·华盛顿·卡佛，还有弗雷德里克·道格拉斯和马丁·路德·金，W.E.B·杜·波伊斯和布克·T·华盛顿也总是相伴出现。此外，还有一位神秘人物克里斯珀斯·阿塔克斯，一位逃奴。关于他，人们只知道他死于波士顿大射杀，是美国独立战争的首批牺牲者之一，此外无任何确凿信息可知。泰迪尔斯·史蒂文斯的形象则被完全颠覆——可以说性格大变，从反面角色变成了正面人物，从怀恨在心的残酷之人变成了满腔热忱的坚毅之人。而泰迪·罗斯福如今成了环境保护支持者，而不再是过去教科书中圣胡安战役的英雄。再没有一个总统被视为英雄，几乎所有的总统在各自所处的困境中都交出了令人民满意的政绩单——除了19世纪下半叶某些无法提及的总统。

当然，在教科书中发现当下的一些学术研究和观点并不会令人十分惊讶。但教科书的变化却着实让人震惊。60年代的人们认为，尽管他们曾抗议旧教科书中的平庸乐观主义、沙文主义和拜金主义，但课本绝不会因此而变。他们对这一想法非常笃定，因为，当他们的意见发生作用时，关于核雨和粗制滥造的房子的歌曲收进历史课本，他们竟然浑然不觉。

时下的历史教科书在一定程度上反映了美国历史不光彩的一面。例如，有几本书讲到了美国大陆最后一个“野生”印第安人艾什的故事。他的族人被屠杀殆尽之后，艾什在1911年被俘并在位于旧金山的加州大学人类学博物馆度过了生命中最后的四年半。至少三本书里都有同一张让人触目惊心的照片。镜头下宾夕法尼亚州煤矿里分拣煤炭的童工身体扭曲、满脸煤灰，从煤矿口呆滞地望出来。有一本书援引了一个士兵为例来证明20世纪初美军曾使用酷刑来镇压菲律宾人。另有不少书都提到在独立战争期间，爱国者们曾把反对者们浑身涂满柏油粘上羽毛以示严惩，并将许多保皇党人驱逐出国。几乎目前所有的教科书都提到美国在第二次世界大战期间曾将日裔美国人监禁在拘留营中。

从意识形态上来说，50年代写就的历史书坚如磐石、天衣无缝。书中的美国是完美的：是世上最伟大的国家，是民主、自由和科技进步的化身。这些教科书中，美国从未发生过重大变化：美国价值观和政治体系自独立战争以来便稳定延续。

对我们这些出生于50年代的人来说，这些教科书是恒定不变的，因为书中的事实根本毋庸置疑。历史书的正统观念看起来无懈可击，永不衰败。毕竟，有谁会怀疑技术带来的奇迹或英国殖民者相较两班牙殖民者的优势？有谁会否认昔日美国西部和南方田园牧歌般的时光？又有谁会质疑反共产主义的运动？似乎根本无须将书中的内容与现实去对比，因为这些是公认的真理，与现实无关，与个人意见无关。这些观点曾是美国大众文化的永恒体现——至少看起来是这样。

但是如今的教材已然变化，随之而变的还有孩子们成长后将要迈入的美国社会。曾经统一的社会如今成了一个个群体割据的大拼盘，富人与穷人，老人与年轻人，男人与女人，黑人、白人、西班牙裔人和印度裔人。美国社会过去依据宪法有章可循，依靠总统仁慈善为，国家运转顺利，但是现在整个体系都变得破旧不堪、岌岌可危。过去不再是通往现在的一条通衢大道，而是一堆混杂在一起的事件，彼此互不相融、没有统一的方向。“进步”一词被“变化”所取代：现代的教科书认为，孩子们学习历史是为了更好地适应他们身边日新月异的变化。历史在前进，不以我们的意识为转移。以前的历史书在末尾章节总是会提到科学进步和总统大选，把当代社会描绘成宁静美好的天堂，但是如今的历史书总是以各种各样的问题结束：种族问题、城市问题、外交问题，以及污染、贫困、能源枯竭、青春叛逆、暗杀、毒品等问题。一些书甚至以戏剧化的笔触来阐释这些问题。

例如，一本书以一幅布娃娃半个身子被埋在污水坑里的图片来说明问题，图片说明文字则写道：“我们是否会被我们社会所生产的产品及生产过程中所产生的垃圾所淹没？”另有两本书选择了一张相同的图片，昏喑的房间里一位黑人妇女坐在一张直背椅上，双手交叠，姿势得体却透着无奈；图片周边段落讨论的是城市贫民和依靠养老金度日的老年人所面临的问题。其他书中对当前社会问题的呈现方式则略为温和。某本教材在结尾处语重心长地说：

问题本是生活的一部分。正如每个人都要面对问题一样，一个国家也要面对问题并尝试解决它们。今天的美国与过去相比有一个显著优势，那就是美国人比以往任何时候都要装备精良。今天的美国人有足够的办法去解决贫困、疾病以及无知等问题。技术时代为他们提供了解决问题的能力。

这样的话在教材中比比皆是。在问题面前，美国人仍然希塑科学之神能够从天而降，神奇地解决一切问题，但这样的愿望虚无缥渺、不切实际。

比在教科书中看到美国社会种种问题更让人吃惊的是教材之间的统一性被破坏殆尽。50年代所有的教材呈现的是同一个政治观点，但如今的教材中却再难觅统一的正统观点。比如，公民权利的立法保障在一些书中被描述成是一个如父亲般慈爱的政府所采取的一系列措施，但在另一些书中却隐含社会动乱，并出现了诸如斯托克利·卡迈克尔和马尔克姆·X等人的名字。冷战，在一些书中已然结束，在另一些书中却还在继续。

与书中多样化的政治观点相呼应的还有多元化的教学方式。除了传统的史实叙述法提供无尽的历史亊实之外，还有所谓的“发现”和“探究”部分，针对美国历史上一些特定事件进行讨论。这些部分并不试图去叙述过去的历史，而是聚焦于诸如“殖民地时期社会的阶层分化”和“奴隶制与美国独立战争”等特定话题，并佐以一手或二手资料加以论证。

书中的这些章节几乎成了案例研讨，因为其中包括持有不同观点的人们的说辞，甚至是持有对立观点的人们对同一问题的看法。不仅如此，这些章节还提供背景信息、注释，以及为学生设计的一系列问题。这些问题往往盘指事件核心，因为他们被精心挑选出来以促使学生从历史学家的角度去看待问题：明确说话人的角度、分析提出的观点、质疑事件之间的联系等。比如，某本教科书就外国盟友问题引用了华盛顿、杰斐逊和约翰·亚当斯的观点，并提问：“约翰·亚当斯认为美国独立战争后的国际形势将会如何？华盛顿对待法国盟军的态度如何？如何解释他的这一态度？”最后，还问道：“一个国家所采取的对待盟友的策略是否应当保持不变，还是应当随着形势的改变而变化？”在这些书中，历史已不再是历史学家们依序排列的公认史实了。

如同政治观点一样，不同的教科书所采用的教学法并非分成阵营分明、相互对立的两派，而是构成了一整个系列。政治上，从左倾到右倾；教学上，则从传统的布道式的事实罗列，到中间地带的叙述为主配合探索性提问以及探讨性文章为主配以叙述长文加以扩充，再到最严密的案例分析类教材。目前教材的共同之处在于社会科学的介入，这也是它们迥异于50年代的教材之处。在八年级的历史书中，“概念”一词构成了各类小学阶段社会学研究系列的基石。例如，哈考特·布茁斯·乔瓦诺维奇出版社在其1970年出版的教材系列的序言中自豪地说，该套历史教材运用“以概念为横向架构”，结合“以行为主题为纵向架构”的编写体系。

该描述的确切含义尚不清晰，但该系列教材中讨论的问题的确依照从易到难的顺序排列，比如在六年级的书中有一问题为“雅典社会体系中商人与城市居民间的关系与斯巴达社会体系中的有何不同？”事实上，所有年龄较大的孩子所使用的教材中都含存关于“角色”“地位”以及“文化”的讨论。有些教材在书上单辟一块区域展示知名社会学家之间的辩论；有些会收录一些关于经济学或社会学的文章；有些则包含不同性別和不同种族的社会学家的照片和生平介绍。很多教材中，社会学家的地位似乎要比美国总统还要高。

与政治观点和教学方式上的改变同样令人吃惊的是教材在外观上的变化。50年代的教科书在设计上颇费功夫：有地图、图表、漫画和照片，偶尔还用四色图来区分不同的栏日内容。但如果将它们与当下的教材并置，就显得像苏联的时尚杂志一样单调，字体过粗、字色偏黑、色彩模糊。照片总是一贯的新闻摄影风格——总统的脸部特写要占照片四分之三篇幅，士兵永远摆出打仗冲锋的姿态。其他图片则多是社会主义写实风格(殖民地时期的章节中常常可见粗壮的农民扛着锄头）或是专为孩子画的爱国主义图片，模糊不清。有一幅图画的是哥伦布站在“新世界”的海滩上，身穿宫廷礼服，但其画风非阿拉瓦人莫属。相反，当前的教科书却是现代精美设计的典范，不是《人物》杂志或《家庭杂志》风格，而是《建筑辑要》和《吋尚》杂志风格……当前教材中图片所占的篇幅远远超过50年代的教材；事实上，一些为学习迟缓者设计的教材中图片的重要性远髙于文本。然而，说明性图片的历史价值绝不仅仅在于其精美程度。

当前教材中的插图不再是人为编造的或是年代混乱的图片，而是选自各色杂志中用于讨论的漫画、照片和图像。比如，殖民地时期的章节中有雕刻的船首、自由钟、科普利的画作——整整一个早期美国文物画廊。19世纪时期的插画都选用了19世纪的漫画和照片，而且是具有髙度艺术水平的摄影作品，而用于20世纪历史章节中的装饰插图足可以开一个现代艺术博物馆。

然而，使用这些髙质量、髙艺术水平的设计却颇具讽刺效果。关于19世纪童工和贫民区住宅的照片拍得如此美丽，使人们甚至忽略了照片的主旨。看着这些照片或是维克多·加托所作的纽约三角内衣工厂火灾画，人们看到的不是社会的惨剧或丑陋，而是一件件艺术品。现代史的章节中，图片风格与文章内容的冲突同样巨大：垃圾场和污水河的彩照简直像《美食家》杂志中的美食图片般迷人。有一本书竟采用了本·沙恩绘制的一幅美丽的比基尼岛核弹爆炸图来说明核试验的恐怖，还为地球潜在的生态环境危机配了一幅地球旋转、白云飞扬的彩色照片。这本书也许是对现代社会问题描述最失败的作品了。如果说50年代的教材过于幼稚，因为它们过于简单和粗糙，那么现在的教材也同样幼稚，因为它们在诸多方面有悖常情。美国历史不再是枯燥无趣的史实，而成了能带来感官享受的经历。

成人对历史教材的修改感到惊讶，多半是因为他们心里还残存一丝希望，那就是在书本之外的世界上尚存在客观事实。怀有这种希望的人当然是愚蠢的。所有20世纪出生的孩子们都知道，或者说都应该知道，人类社会中没有绝对之物，因此也不会有所谓的绝对客观。我们都知道，从一定程度上而言，每一个历史学家都重新创造一个世界，所有的历史都是当代人撰写的历史。

但是在此认知之上，我们仍然希望读到的历史中能有一些可信度、一点权威性，就像我们希望星空中会有一些星星能恒久不变。我们都清楚记者无法做到完全的客观公正，所谓的“平衡”也只是位于两极之间的一个想象中的点，但我们仍然希望沃尔特·克朗凯特能够告诉我们事情的真相。同样，我们希望美国的历史是确定不变的，希望我们在孩提时学到的都是真实的。这种希望在教科书客观中立的口吻中得到鼓励，因此，我们尤其无法忍受看到教科书发生变化，而且变化如此之快。

多变的历史！不只是每隔一代人，而是每隔几年，孩子们的美国历史教科书的内容便会发生重大的变化。和大众读物不同，教科书不会写出来然后任其自生自灭。为了迎合全国各学区选用教材的周期，出版商们每隔三四年便要大规模修订一次教科书或者直接以新书取而代之。修订过程中，他们不仅更新最近的历史，而且会对书本主体进行修改——大幅修改。因而孩子们所用的历史教科书比其他任何形式记录的历史都要更具当代特色。不然又当如何呢？难道让孩子们去读十年、十五年，甚至三十年前所写的历史教科书？就历史而言，整个体系是合理的，但却没有考虑到每一代美国孩子只能读到一套教材，而这个短暂存在的版本就成为孩子们永恒不变的历史，决定了他们如何理解自己的国家。

Key Words:

abject ['æbdʒekt]

adj. 卑贱的，不幸的，可怜的

imperturbable [.impə'tə:bəbl]

adj. 沉着的，泰然自若的，镇静的

materialism [mə'tiəriəlizəm]

n. 唯物主义，唯物论，实利主义

continental [.kɔnti'nentl]

adj. 大陆的

implacable [im'plækəbl]

adj. 难宽恕的，难和解的，执拗的

patchwork ['pætʃwə:k]

n. 修补工作，拼凑的东西，混杂物

crusade [kru:'seid]

n. 改革运动 Crusade n. 十字军东征

resignation [.rezig'neiʃən]

n. 辞职，辞呈，顺从

orthodoxy ['ɔ:θə.dɔksi]

n. 正统说法，正教，信奉正教

vulgar ['vʌlgə]

adj. 通俗的，粗俗的

accord [ə'kɔ:d]

n. 一致，符合

tend [tend]

v. 趋向，易于，照料，护理

victor ['viktə]

n. 胜利者 Victor: 维克托(男子名)

stark [stɑ:k]

adj. 僵硬的，完全的，严酷的，荒凉的，光秃秃的

gallery ['gæləri]

n. 美术馆，画廊，顶层楼座，狭长的房间

enticing [in'taisiŋ]

adj. 迷人的；引诱的 v. 引诱；诱骗

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