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.
Historians, both famed and anonymous, have developed theories that try to explain the course of history. The “Whig theory” of steady progress was widely shared until the horrors of the twentieth century demolished it. Marx’s theory of one class replacing another had a long run. The “Great Man” theory (now, Great Person theory) still has some adherents.
I too am trying to develop a theory of history, but not a grandiose one. I’m trying to figure out if there are consistent ways to better understand certain historical outcomes. Why was St. Louis an “also-ran” to Chicago? Why did so many orphans work in the early factories of the Industrial Revolution? Was soil exhaustion a contributor to the Civil War?
In answering such questions, I borrow tools from my friends the economists. Economists don’t spend a lot of time digging into the past but when they do they come up with surprising findings. When Deirdre McCloskey explained the scattered private fields in medieval England, she solved a mystery that had stumped historians for decades, and Eric Edwards and Walter Thurman just revealed an explanation for the U. S. Corn Belt that historians have largely ignored.
We are all aware of rising student debt, which now exceeds $1.6 trillion in the United States, dwarfing credit card debt ($930 billion). Although student loan totals have been growing for decades, only recently has their human toll been widely discussed, leading to calls to forgive debts and make some college tuition-free.
“Student debt has shaped how Americans live, work, and form relationships,” writes Josh Mitchell in his new book, The Debt Trap. Young people are delaying home ownership, putting off marriage, avoiding starting businesses, and failing to save for retirement, he says—all because they are trying to pay off their student loans.
Mitchell is a Wall Street Journal reporter. The book’s subtitle is “How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe,” and Mitchell’s job is to tell the complicated story. Federal guarantees of student loans began in 1965, when the Higher Education Act was passed with the enthusiastic endorsement of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
It is a grim story and in many ways familiar: a long, slow process by which politicians, government bureaucrats, and private businesses pursued their narrow interests while failing to acknowledge the logic and warnings that foretold disaster. Supporting it all was the public, ignorant of the details but eager to send their children to college.
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Jay Schalin, director of policy analysis at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal in Raleigh, North Carolina.
As somebody who is right in the middle of the “boomer” generation, I often hear or read my peers lamenting the good old days in education, before the radicalization of the late 1960s and 1970s ushered in disastrous changes.
What they fail to realize is that the K-12 education we received in the post-World War II era was not only already severely degraded, but it paved the way for the radicalization they decry. Here’s how it happened. Continue reading “The (Not So) Good Old Days in Education”
Last week I wrote about the Transportation-Communication Revolution that has fostered economic growth around the world.[1] Yes, it may have sped up the international spread of the coronavirus but, if so, that is a short-run effect. Prosperity has been the long-run result.
In the late nineteenth century another transportation-communication revolution took place, as railroads enabled products to be sold over vast geographical distances.[2] In the United States this led to the emergence of mass marketers like Montgomery Ward and Sears, which sent catalogs, products and even kits for building houses all around the country.
