Silencing the Past: From the Haitian Revolution to American Correspondence Schools

We’ve all heard that history is written by the winners.  In his 1995 book, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History,  Michel-Rolph Trouillot both agrees and disagrees. He shows that  historical narratives, such as the story of the Haitian Revolution,  reflect differences in  power—”the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals,” from the initial event to the written word.[1]

In other words, the people who shape history are not necessarily the winners. But they usually have some kind of power.

About a third of the way through his book I realized that I had discovered  such silences in my research on, yes, American correspondence schools.

The Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804

Trouillot illustrates his point with telling examples. The most astounding—once he explains it—is how little has been written by non-Haitians about the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804.

Nothing like the Haitian revolution had ever happened.  Toussaint Louverture and other enslaved Haitians defeated the storied French military, including Napoleon’s brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc. They created a new nation. The Haitians’ success was so shocking at the time that the French denied it was happening.

Eventually, they couldn’t deny it, so rumors spread that the rebellion had been fomented by whites and mulattoes (maybe the English?) “Every party chose its favorite enemy as the most likely conspirator behind the slave uprising,” says Trouillot. [2] It couldn’t have been the slaves themselves. But it was.

Trouillot, who died in 2012, was a Haitian historian who lived and worked in the United States. Let’s look more carefully at Trouillot’s  message. His book is densely written, so I offer a simplified version. Then I will apply it to my  personal experience researching correspondence schools.

Any account of an historical event has been shaped by the varying levels of power over time,  says Trouillot. The power impacts occur at four different  junctures. In  my words, they are:

• • • The relationships at the time of the event—that is, which persons were admired and known and paid attention to, and which were not;
    • The existence of materials that can become archives or historical artifacts, such as “buildings, dead bodies, censuses, monuments, diaries, political boundaries.”[3] They too reflect  existing wealth and power;
    • Historians’ personal choices about which archives to preserve and study;
    • The cultural forces that affect the historian at the time of writing, which can include movies, popular books, celebrations, commemorations, and the ways that historians have previously shaped the story.

The result: Parts of history are left untouched, silent.

Silence about Schools

So here’s my story. In 1926 the Carnegie Corporation issued a book about adult education called Correspondence Schools, Lyceums, and Chautauquas. [4]  Most of the book was about private, for-profit correspondence schools, which taught courses by mail. The author, John Noffsinger, had decidedly mixed feelings.

On the one hand, he provided a short but respectful history of the correspondence-school phenomenon and praised one of the first such schools. He suggested that the growth in American industry had created a void in education that the correspondence schools had partly filled.

On the other hand,  the picture had changed: “[M]ore and more the promoter of correspondence schools tends to be of the type that knows nothing and cares less for educational standards.” [5] A few pages later: “As most correspondence schools go now, moral questions are uppermost, for an appallingly large proportion of the schools are little better than frauds.” [6],

What does this have to do with historical silences? Noffsinger shaped a narrative that hasn’t changed since. His image of the schools in 1926 has largely snuffed out serious attention to what they were earlier—or perhaps even at the time he wrote.

I have seen six books mentioning correspondence schools that rely almost entirely on Noffsinger.  Only two give a balanced view of the schools.

And C. Hartley Grattan’s history of adult education, In Quest of Knowledge: A Historical Perspective on Adult Education,  barely mentioned correspondence schools at all. This 1955 book relegated them to a  long footnote. [7]

The Historian’s Problem

So  here am I, an amateur historian, yet  I  am one of the handful of people (or fewer!) over nearly a century to go back and look at relevant historical documents on this subject. I found comments by at least eight prominent  men around the turn of the 20th century who took these schools seriously and made positive statements about them.

They were: a well-known science writer; the U. S. Commissioner of Education; three engineers (one  a professor of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and another a co-founder of the American Institute of Mining Engineers); an editor of an education magazine; a Presbyterian pastor; and the man who became president of the United Mine Workers at age 28.

Contemporary Views of Correspondence Schools

Let me share the views of the science writer, Thomas Commerford Martin. He had worked with Thomas Edison, written a biography of Nicola Tesla, and later  would coauthor a life of Edison. He wrote about correspondence schools this way: “[I]t would be a serious oversight to forget these remarkable educational forces which during the last ten or twelve years have been sharpening the wits and satisfying the thirst for knowledge of hundreds of thousands of our best artisans and engineers—not one of whom ever saw his instructor face to face.”[8]

And  John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers of America, gave a speech with these words in 1906: “I have known hundreds and hundreds of men denied the opportunity of early education, who have grown to manhood, illiterate and ignorant . . . ;  these men by scholarships in the International Correspondence Schools have secured a good general and technical education, and now hold positions of profit and responsibility.” [9]

Why Have Historians Ignored Such People?

Why were such people ignored? Trouillot ‘s four principles can guide us.

• • • The narrative was set in 1926 by a severe critic of these schools who had the ear of the powerful  Carnegie Corporation.
    • The schools’ internal records have largely (but not entirely) disappeared.
    • Historians tend to disdain for-profit education.
    • Once they had Noffsinger’s book, historians didn’t bother to look more deeply.

I wonder how many other stories have yet to be heard  because no one has cared to break the silences of the past.

Image of fighting in the Haitian Revolution. Artist is unknown and the work is in the public domain. Provided by Wikimedia Commons.

Notes (Find comments below the notes)

[1] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. (Boston: Beacon Press, ([1995], 2015), xxiii. Thanks to Pascal Wick for recommending this book.

[2] Trouillot, 92.

[3] Trouillot, 29.

[4] John Samuel Noffsinger, Correspondence Schools, Lyceums, and Chautauquas (New York: Macmillan, 1926). I have discussed  correspondence schools on this blog before.

[5] Noffsinger, 24.

[6] Noffsinger, 33–34.

[7] Hartley C. Grattan, In Quest of Knowledge: A Historical Perspective on Adult Education (New York: Association Press, 1955). 319–20.

[8] Thomas Commerford Martin, “The Educational Value of Correspondence Schools.” Independent (1848) 7 (Aug. 1902): 1896–1898, at 1896..

[9] John Mitchell , “Education: The Wage Earner’s Opportunity.” Fifteenth Anniversary Exercises and Banquet. (Scranton PA.: International Correspondence Schools of Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1906), 140.