Mary Grabar, The Influence of Howard Zinn’s Fake History | National Leadership Seminar

Hillsdale College is an independent institution of higher learning founded in 1844 by men and women “grateful to God for the inestimable blessings” resulting from civil and religious liberty and “believing that the diffusion of learning is essential to the perpetuity of these blessings.” It pursues the stated object of the founders: “to furnish all persons who wish, irrespective of nation, color, or sex, a literary, scientific, [and] theological education” outstanding among American colleges “and to combine with this such moral and social instruction as will best develop the minds and improve the hearts of its pupils.” As a nonsectarian Christian institution, Hillsdale College maintains “by precept and example” the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith.

The College also considers itself a trustee of our Western philosophical and theological inheritance tracing to Athens and Jerusalem, a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law.

By training the young in the liberal arts, Hillsdale College prepares students to become leaders worthy of that legacy. By encouraging the scholarship of its faculty, it contributes to the preservation of that legacy for future generations. By publicly defending that legacy, it enlists the aid of other friends of free civilization and thus secures the conditions of its own survival and independence.

[inesalmeyda]

Sounds too familiar to what is going on today in schools.

[bridgetamato]

Howard Zinn did share truths about American history however, one woman made a brutal point. Howard Zinn's lens of history if applied to countries around the world would come up with the realization most non-western countries did not end in a free market that celebrated diversity but one living below poverty, starvation, civil war, and oppression.

[baystater]

I graduated in 1970, B.A. History. We were taught about different perspectives including revisionist history and the dangers of revisionism. 10 years later, everything changed. I know at Cal State Hayward, Zinn was a standard History 101 Text which I found very strange because it was clearly being taught as "straight history" which it is not. I would estimate based on what I know, the University switched from teaching to indoctrinating about 40 years ago. The liberal arts are becoming more and more discredited, they no longer create thinking individuals, only ideologues that hate and desire to silence those who disagree with them.

[christophermaclean]

This book was recommended to me by a friend who would not stop talking about it about ten years ago. It was my vacation book while I was in Bali. I read 3/4’s of it, but I couldn’t finish it. I’m a Canadian history teacher (not specializing in American history), but I could see straight away that this book is not an academic work of history. It is extremely biased, poorly written, and the piece is created just to sell Marxist ideas to young, naive, unknowing people. I honestly cannot believe that teachers use this to teach history.

[ifnotmewho]

Thank you! I started buying used textbooks covering the last 50 years trying to find exactly what went wrong. The history books begin to change, ever so slightly, adding an anti-American slant slowly. But I never seen this book. My kids, and grandkids weren’t allowed to bring home books because of “shortages”, but that’s not the truth at all. I’m seriously so grateful to have seen this video. I’m going to do whatever I can to get this propaganda removed from Washington Sanctuary-State schools. This explains so much, I’m so sad for those that haven’t been allowed to understand why I love my country so much.

[barbarabennett]

I have witnessed this in a local junior high as a substitute teacher and teacher's assistant. I was startled with the curriculum about Moa who was a wonderful leader. How he revolted, how he inspired the people destroy all the books, statues, and history of the Chinese people. I saw her get the students in each class to act out a revolution. The students did not fully understand but they were taught and retaught that this was a good way to get rid of bad government education.
I also noted there was a 4 th grade teacher who taught American History and this teacher was outstanding. She taught in depth. I was so impressed with the insights and excerpts from history she had collected to share with the children. After that year the school board closed this curriculum she taught to teach something else. I was so sad with this turn of events, as was the teacher.

[TheFreedomFormula]

Thank you for loving America and the founding principles of freedom enough to bring this to our attention and risking your own safety. You like our founders, have put your own life, liberty, fortunes and your sacred Honor.

[valley]

Interesting that 8th graders are learning it in Portland. That explains a lot.

[kumuppins]

I listened to this woman for 40 minutes raging against Zin's writings...but never once did she cite clear evidence of Zinn's errors or misuse of historical documents. I'm willing to hear both sides.... but she just rants on and on implying how dangerous Zinn's writings (and his followers) are. I find Zinn's views interesting and consider it worth considering, as well as considering differing viewpoints from others, but this woman provides no data/information...just verbal 'hand wringing' about the influence Zin has had. In short, she's quite lame in my view.

[Brian_Friesen]

Five minutes into the video and there's a quote from Zinn's book. I've never read the Zinn's book, but in that quote, it is so packed full of logical fallacies and assumptions of intent! Unequal property holdings is not proof of unequal rights. Two guys who both have the opportunity to work, but one is lazy, the other diligent, which one will end up with better stuff? If I had to read such nonsense with all those false premises, I would burn each page after I was exposed to it.

[natesmith]

I am 20 minutes into this video and am still waiting for factual debunking. The effects on our society, and how bad they are, are a matter of opinion. I would love to hear more "Zinn states this in his book and here are facts that disprove that..." but for 22 minutes now all I have heard is opinion. For something presenting as a scholarly discussion on how inaccurate Zinn is, I am very surprised.

While typing this, she stated "the idea that governments represent dominant corporate interests" is a "theory put out in 1913" that has been "repeatedly debunked." Does government not ever represent dominant corporate interests? That has been debunked? Also, wow, one person came up that "idea"? In 1913.

Government and its relationship with corporate interests, or any other interests, including the social and educational interests her whole talk is about, are not "ideas" invented by any single person, they are forces within our society and they aren't exactly the kind of thing you just "debunk." To what extent you think those forces impact or "control" government, or are controlled by it, are well, a debate I suppose.

But to give an hour long speech about how you feel about aspects of our culture as though you're correcting a false historian requires...the actual history then. Isn't that what you're upset about? His depiction of history? You're talking a lot about the present. Where is your counter?

Because she was going on for a long time about Columbus but only said Zinn calls him genocidal thus implants the idea that our country's origin and present are as well, I looked it up--the genocide claim. She could have said exactly what Zinn said. She could have gone into several of the passages Zinn starts his book with that are passages from Columbus himself. Since she was saying how wildly inaccurate this all was, I expected her to say that those passages were some of the ones she mentioned at the top (without citations) that were the ones with words left out, gravely misrepresenting the original intent. But she didn't do that. She didn't pull quotes from Zinn's chapter. She just says how crazy his claims are and that he called Columbus genocidal and then went into, again, our current society and how bad saying this is. For the minute I spent Googling, I saw things saying there is no evidence Columbus committed, or had any intent of committing genocide. Fair. But the passage from Zinn, I have it down by memory, is something like 'these people are so giving. "they would make good slaves." The slaves part I remember. And I remember he brought them back to Europe and sold them, opened up a slave route.

I am not saying we need to sit around and say how horrible Columbus was, but it seems all Grabar wants to talk about is what people *now* think about Columbus, America, etc based on what Zinn said, without actually countering almost any of it or pulling out Zinn's passages. 23 minutes in, I can't give any more time to see if she will.

[bubbag]

Been awhile since I read 'a people's history', as I recall it was mostly from the perspective of those affected by working for big business. Early days of strike breaking etc.

[kimkyle]

This explains so much of what is going on in

[Sugarblizz]

WOW. My granddaughter just told me her prof said Columbus was so tyrannical. I didn't know how t respond. I had never heard that. ....And where does she go to college? Portland, Oregon This really explains a lot. Thank you

[tomtomneal]

Watched this TWICE and then bought the book TWICE. One to read and One to share.

[dazedandconfusd]

I can attest Zinn was mandatory summer reading for my ap us history class as a high school junior

[cardlife]

I tried to read this back in college and I quit when I realized how hard (if not impossible) it was to check Zinn’s work. No footnotes but a general bibliography. Looking at the bibliography it is basically a bunch of books that conforms to his beliefs. I have not throughly checked the all the sources but the one’s I did were written by Marxist or left leaning writers. A majority of the books/periodicals he puts in the bibliography were published in the 60s and 70s. Very little first hand sources. Why this is being taught is beyond me.

[mchristr]

I was assigned Zinn's "history" book as an undergrad and it's brilliantly deceptive. Fortunately I'd been inoculated by way of a solid public school US history education. It's easy to imagine younger students uncritically falling for it.

[wildernessofzinn]

Love ya', Mary. I bought her book when it came out and even made my own YouTube videos citing her book.
I await her next book debunking this rabid Marxist 1619 Project.

[myaccount]

Every day that goes by I thank God that is He guided us to homeschool! My kids were taught true American history and believe that Columbus, our founding fathers, and others in our country’s early history were patriots and strong Christians.
Little did we know 21 years ago when we first started this homeschool journey, that it would be such a huge impact and the best decision we ever made.