Don't Know Much About History

Remember the Bicentennial minutes on CBS? Between July 4, 1974 and December 31, 1976, just before nine o'clock at night in the East and eight in the Central Time Zone, CBS aired educational segments commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of the American Revolution and American independence explaining what had happened two hundred years earlier to the day. Thus, for example, the April 19, 1975 Bicentennial minute was devoted to Lexington and Concord. They were usually narrated by a star of a CBS series, and I think Walter Cronkite might have done a few. They were wonderfully entertaining and they told the story of the Revolution right up to Washington's crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton, with President Ford - who, like the Bicentennial minute, would be gone in 1977 - narrating the last one.

I bring this up not out of nostalgia for the seventies (though I have some, believe it or else), but out of disgust with the present. According to a recently released Marist poll, one out of four Americans can't name whom we fought to gain our independence. Given the disinterest Americans have, er, historically shown for history - and given the battles over how to teach it, especially the "Eurocentric" and "cultural bias" charges from the left, and also the right's "white man's world" approach - maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Appalled, yes. Surprised, no.

Anyway, I think it's time that one of the broadcast or cable networks do something like the Bicentennial minutes of the seventies. Rather than just have a Black History Month or a Women's History Month, we should have a plain ol' American History Month to get people interested in and appreciative of all American history. In such a month - July, when Independence Day falls and the kids are out of school and thus not learning anything - a television network should have a one-minute look at a major event in our nation's history and focus on making Americans understand why they should know and care about it. It would get American television viewers to ponder something about our country and ourselves before the next show on the tube, just as CBS did so many years ago.

Ironically, the Bicentennial minutes almost didn't make it on the air. Ethel Winant and Louis Friedman, the series's creators, had to overcome the objections of CBS executives who considered it to be an unworthy use of program time.

And by the way, we declared our independence from Great Britain.

Gee, and I always thought we declared our independence from the United Kingdom! ;-)

Here's the Bicentennial minute about the Liberty Tree, aired on August 31, 1975, featuring actress Jessica Tandy.