Interview: This Arkansas Republican Says Howard Zinn Books Are Too Scary for Students, Should Be Banned
State Rep. Kim Hendren wants to create a safe space from Zinn's radical leftist take on history.
Arkansas State Rep. Kim Hendren (R) has introduced a one-page bill that would ban "study books or any other material authored by or concerning Howard Zinn" from the state's public schools, including charter schools.
Zinn has been dead since 2010, so it's not like he's a commentator on current social or political affairs, and he's not the kind of writer typically taught in high schools. But in a phone interview with Reason today, Rep. Hendren explained why he introduced legislation to protect Arkansas teenagers from hearing the ideas of the late radical leftist historian (and favorite of fictional Matt Damon characters).
Hendren, who says "he's not an expert" on Zinn, asserts that a number of his constituents have raised "concerns about some of the approaches that Howard Zinn has taken to history in the books he's written." He adds, "My basic personal philosophy is I think we ought to be open to hearing both sides of the situation and then try to do what's best for ourselves and our country. That's what will happen with this bill."
The 79-year-old legislator — who also happens to be the brother-in-law of Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) — clarified that the bill is only meant to apply to elementary and secondary schools, not public colleges.
When asked if he thinks this bill could set a precedent allowing for left-leaning states to ban conservative historians' perspectives from being considered in public education, Hendren said, "Ultimately the parents have a little more responsibility to what [children] are exposed to until they are a little bit older to be able to exercise more judgment. In college and so forth, I have no problem with it." Hendren says his concern is primarily with providing equal time for opposing political viewpoints to avoid "indoctrination" of one point of view, and that his aim with this bill is not necessarily seeing his bill passed in its current form, but rather, to spark a conversation and debate.
Hendren tells Reason that since news of his bill was first reported by the Arkansas Times, he has been inundated with hostile phone calls and tweets. He adds that he doesn't think he's done anything to make people think he's "a bad American or somebody that ought to be degraded or called a cracker."
In late 2016 Hendren introduced a bill that would ban students from possessing any personal electronic or digital devices while at school, including video game consoles, cell phones, cameras, tablets, and pagers (what year is this?). Explaining his motivation for introducing the bill, Hendren told KATV, "If it's going to allow a young boy in that class to email, or however they do…Instagram or whatever they do, a girl in their class to send him a nude or partial nude picture, which is going on now in the public schools, it ought not be done in the classroom."
As a state senator running for a U.S. Senate seat in 2009, Hendren found himself in hot water when he referred to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) as "that Jew." Hendren later apologized and tried to explain away his gaffe by saying, "I don't use a Teleprompter, and occasionally I put my foot in my month…I was attempting to explain that unlike Sen. Schumer, I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on 'The Andy Griffith Show.'"
Telling Reason that he doesn't "think it harms people to discuss what we are discussing here," Hendren hopes for "an intelligent, respectful debate" in the Arkansas House of Representatives, adding, "we Arkansas folks think we ought to listen to each other and then try to work out a solution that's best for us and our country and our state and our young people."
Of the people he says are conflating his actions with book-burning — or those that would describe his bill as fundamentally hostile to free speech and which could open the floodgates for any state government to ban ideas it deems beyond the pale — Hendren says, "I know they are going to get after me, but the moral part of me — because I accept salary from the state of Arkansas and I've introduced this bill — I just need to stand up and take responsibility for it, and that's what I plan to do. So I hope you'll pray for me as I continue to do that."
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Christ, what a crackity-assed cracker asshole.
He’s definitely a throwback to the pre-Carter South, that’s for sure.
With that said, Zinn’s “history” works are dogshit and deserve to be viewed simply as examples of effective communist propaganda, not history.
The text of the bill says “by or concerning Howard Zinn,” which would seem to ban materials that talk about him at all, whether positively or negatively.
Zinn dredges up a lot of real history. He’s got clear sympathies and suffers from certain beliefs but I wouldn’t toss out what he’s done.
^ This. In his defense, he doesn’t lie – he’s just selective about what he chooses to highlight, and isn’t in any way dishonest about his biases. He highlights them, in fact – “Hi, I’m Howard Zinn, and I’m a Communist, with a ‘big-C.’ This is my deliberately slanted Communist History of the USA.”
As left-wing ideologues go, he’s not the worst.
Relevant.
Holy shit – I remember seeing that at the time and laughing my ass off. I had totally forgotten about it – kudos to you for digging that up!
I remember a Rings nut who listened to this piece of drivel on her college radio station, not knowing who they were. She read both my Chomsky doorstops and a friend’s Zinn. She was so offended by their ignorance and pride in that ignorance that she quit the Young Democrats.
She really needs to return my Friedman and Sowell books.
Nothing Zinn wrote about was in any way original research. Saying that he “dredged up” a lot of real history gives him far more credit than he deserves. At best you could say he was a competent political synthesist in that he found sources that supported his viewpoint (while diminishing or outright ignoring what didn’t) and that’s about it.
Patricia Limerick’s “The Legacy of Conquest” comes to mind in the same vein–she got a lot of praise and attention for the book’s thesis on American exploitation of the West, but when you actually read the narrative, it’s pretty obvious that a good deal of it is simply parroting what her secondary source material said. I can’t really take the idea that works like these or their authors are “ground-breaking” in any way when they’re simply repeating or deliberately ignoring material that doesn’t fit within their preconceived frameworks. I have a lot more respect for someone like Julie Roy Jeffrey, who admitted in the intro to “Frontier Women” that she had to confront the reality that not all women in the American West were wanna-be Susan B. Anthonys or radical feminists in the late 1960s-vein, and were sometimes perfectly content in their limited social roles of the period. That’s a lot more intellectually honest than Zinn or his acolytes ever were.
Ah, the token Republican legislator that is pulled out of obscurity proposing a bill that has zero chance of passage to further the false equivalency of: “see they’re both doing it. Ignoring those Leftist mobs on campus!”
If the people of Arkansas don’t want Howard Zinn taught in their public schools, that is their right. At the same time, if New York doesn’t want Paul Johnson taught, that is its right.
There is a difference between telling students or teachers that they must toe the political line and deciding which books to use. Arkansas has ever right to decide they don’t want radical leftist bullshit textbooks used in their schools. And they have every right to decide from what perspective history should be taught.
The wording of the proposed law could be interpreted a bit broader than that, but the argument Fisher is making also could be interpreted as there being something untiward about the legislature providing instruction to the education bureaucracy in what textbooks to not use.
Jesus Christ. This is where feeling old starts now? As one who went to school when the only kids with cellies were drug dealers and Zack Morris, I am unimpressed. And still clueless as to how these things are dealt with in class. I see utterly no justification for permitting them and plenty of downside, but I take it permitting them is the norm these days for some reason. Any teachers in the house?
My kid has to have a cell phone in math class.
Its their graphing calculator.
He needs it to send nude photos to his classmates, too.
You get off my lawn, whippersnapper. “Cell phones in HS”. Sheesh.
Seriously. You don’t get to say “get off my lawn” unless your parents made sure you took a dime with you when you left home so you could call from a pay phone if you needed help.
That’s right, I said a dime.
What’s a “pay phone”?
It’s something from the before-time, and it doesn’t even take pictures.
What’s really scary? I still have my old slide rule right next to my very first enormous calculator.
“What’s a slide rule?” I hear you say. That what we used back when “computer” was a job title.
I knew I was getting old when I saw a slide rule in a display case at the engineering college. This was over 20 years ago.
It’s a cool new retro Android app that is earning millions!
My mom bought me pennyloafers and put dimes in them so I could call home after getting beat up for wearing penny loafers.
Do rainbow boxes count because I built one of those when I was a kid too?
Matell Electronic Football or GTFO!
I wouldn’t ban it, but firing anyone who thinks teaching A People’s History is a good idea… isn’t such a bad idea
Great idea. Zinn had the academic merits of the ancient aliens guy from the History Channel. Maybe less.
Meh. His job is to represent his constituents, propose the bills they want. Yeh, its wacky. So what? Is it any wackier than the recent bathroom bills?
Well, now, you’re touching on that old Democracy vs. Liberty conundrum.
I see no issue with kids reading a Zinn script in public education as long as balancing literature is encouraged alongside. Ayn Rand’s ‘For The New Intellectual’ might be an appropriate choice.
For kids to grasp the full hellish potential of statist ideology they should be encouraged on occasion to study the intellectual poison that promotes political retrograde along with a viewing of film showing how successful the Soviets were at communally-murdering millions.
what’s this balance? I had only Zinn for my two history classes in college. Thank god I already knew about history so I could tell how full of shit he is, but there was no counterpoint or anything.
In fact, the teacher that assigned Zinn (oh and Ward Chirchill), spent 50% of the time in class bashing his political enemies, and saying It’s Okay to be a Republican but It’s hot in hell.
Yeah. ‘Balance’
There are actual teachers who do value balance like that. You had a shitty history teacher.
Such teachers may exist, but public school teachers are overwhelmingly leftist ideologues; they don’t know any better and couldn’t give a balanced presentation if they tried.
Seems to me those classes were a waste of money.
Why did Reason interview this geezer instead of just decrying his politically-motivated censorship?
Probably unconstitutional, practically unenforceable and definitely dumb as shit because it will backfire. I’ve never heard of this Zinn dude until now and I guarantee you’ll peak the interest of these students if you tell them they can’t read this author.
Good point. Banning books is a great way to get more people to read them. Every HS student with a bit of curiosity or rebelliousness is going to read it now.
The rebellious nerd demo is like five percent of people (wait that’s what percentage of people are libertarian interesting). Rebellious kids are skipping school to drink not reading some lame Howard Zinn book. Most people don’t even know a book is banned they just don’t ever see the book and wouldn’t know to miss it.
No it really doesn’t. This fuck you world mindset that libertarians have isn’t that ubiquitous. Most people just shrug and then go play video games or read the assigned text book. Censorship works especially when it has the backing of elites which is why the left wing take over of schools and universities was such a success.
You might want to peek at the definitions of ‘peak’ and ‘pique.’
I read both The Jungle and Anthem in the same junior-year English class in high school. I enjoyed them both.
I do not believe it would have been possible to get my junior year English teacher to assign Rand with a gun to her head.
Welcome to American History students before we start I have something important to say. A certain book cannot be named has been banned from this school. You are not to read this author! It’s dangerous to read this author! We had to pass a law and hold a gun to the backs of teachers to keep this book out of your hands!
Welcome to American History X students before we start I have something important to say. Power to the White Man! Minorities have been moving into Venice and polluting this place with their inferior hoops skills. They cause cultural degradation among Whites, turning our women into such hideous butch androgynes that I had to bulk up like this just to feel like the man when I fuck. They even turned my brother into a half-Mexican cokehead. So, even thought all this is likely just a deranged dream that your principal, Dr. Benjamin Sisko, is having, I would like to thank him and your Zionist swine teacher, Ross and Monica’s dad, for allowing me to substitute today.
The law should say that if this book is assigned, you must also assign another book with a competing view.
Howard Zinn books are not scary, they are trash. You’d think a libertarian outfit would have a problem with millions of kids reading marxist propaganda with no counterpoint. My first year in high school had two history classes that both taught only Zinn and no other perspectives.
I would think that a libertarian outfit would not think it was any of their business what people read and would encourage people to make their own decisions.
But can’t you encourage people to make their own decision while also giving your view on those decisions?
You seem to be saying Libertarians should refrain from trying to convince people that Zinn is a horrible historian.
He might be saying that agreeing with the ban-Zinn sentiment seems to clash with the sunshine-disinfectant spirit, if not really the letter, of libertarian principle. Unfortunately, as Assemblyman Cracker here points out, lower education is a bit different story than higher. For one thing, there is little room for much more than basic instruction, and choices need to be made. Still a monumentally stupid and obnoxious bill. If the education-theory-cultured bureaucrats assemble a curriculum full of leftist propaganda and legislators want to step in and stop it, that’s one thing. But to say a teacher can’t bring in a bit of Zinn to supplement is controlling; and to say he can’t even bring it up is to clearly have a different perspective on critical thinking than we likely do.
What I am really surprised about is that a libertarian outfit did not take the opportunity to remind us that libertarianism always has an easy solution to public-policy dilemmas like this: Privatize.
Schoolchildren generally do not make their own choices as to required reading for class.
Whose business is ciriculum- setting. Someone has to make- the religious right because they hustle and aren’t bogged down with pomposity occasionally get to pick circulums that aren’t leftist indoctrination. a lot of times- because the religious right stupidly believed the three legged stool analogy of the GOP – these circumlums were libertarian friendly.
Honestly I don’t care if libertarianism disappears tommorow but you guys seem to get super agitated a about it- maybe you might want to fight back against left wing indocrintioan to that end. Because let me tell you my generation and the generation below me are being taught that Ayn Rand was a crazed cult leader who couldn’t write- and that’s not making them inclined to read her.
To be fair I tried reading Atlas Shrugged in high school just to see what the whole crisis was about. Couldn’t get past 100 pages. Whatever you think of Ayn Rand’s politics, its clear that she was a shitty writer (at least for novel-length books).
Unfortunately, that’s about the point where it starts getting interesting. I almost quit at about that point myself when I first read it as a teen. She is a Russian author with the common Russian writer’s trait of filling you in on all kinds of things that really don’t have a lot of relevance to the ultimate plot.
I’m not a libertarian, but if she had quit the whole “love affair” business in the first few dozen pages and went straight to the whole conflict between Galt (and d’Anconia and whats-her-face Taggert) and the state, she could at least have bought herself a few brownie points from this Millennial. You have to remember that this when Ron Paul was everybody’s go-to source for revolutionary libertarian thought, at least in my high school.
It’s a shame you guys don’t have a well-known manifesto to enervate the movement. I suppose Anthem could have made for a half-decent Libertarian Manifesto of sorts, but it’s no substitute for Common Sense or The Communist Manifesto.
The key is to go on a long trip to Borneo and only bring a single Ayn Rand book.
You’ll slog through it.
High school or college? Above you say college, here you say high school.
Any history teacher who uses Zinn as a primary text should be taken to task for it, as Zinn is in no way objective and doesn’t even pretend to be. If a public high school teacher is using Zinn exclusively, I think there’s a case to be made that the teacher is abusing their position to spread ideology. A college teacher has more leeway to let their perspective govern the class – ostensibly you’re there to hear the professor’s viewpoint. At 19-20, you can read books on your own.
Sorry, I had it in college.
I have no problem with people reading whatever they want.
But if you are a school trying wanting credibility, only teaching Zinn is a shitty way of teaching.
And if you are a public school only teaching Zinn, you are using taxpayer money for propaganda.
Seriously this like like having a political class where the only textbook is something from Michael Savage. You think that would stand?
In my APUSH class we were supposed to read two books, one by Zinn and one by a conservative author. We never got to the conservative author, although I doubt it was due to ideological bias considering how my teacher was a conservative Mormon who voted for Romney.
I don’t remember anyone calling it APUSH in my day. And frankly as far as doing right by the kids and their future I don’t think these supplemental detours are good at all. “Teaching the test” may be a bad thing when those tests (like nearly all the lower ones) affect the school‘s and teacher‘s future more than the kids’. But at that level nearly everyone is going to college, and they need good scores at that particular point in their lives more than anything the teacher might consider more “important” or “deeper” in his judgment. I’m sure he was a fine teacher, but I think there’s plenty of “straight history” details to be packed in in the time allotted without going off on these kinds of indulgences.
And if you are a public school only teaching Zinn, you are using taxpayer money for propaganda
But that’s what public schools are for.
-jcr
This Arkansas Republican Says Howard Zinn Books Are Too Scary for Students, Should Be Banned
They shouldn’t be banned, but they sure as hell should not be in classrooms.
“Banned”? Or “may not be forced down the throats of captive students”?
True story: Howard Zinn was the commencement speaker at my university graduation. It was horrible. This was 1986 and the commencement address was about how all we graduating students would die horrible deaths because of Reagan. Some of us would die of AIDS, some of us would die because of capitalism, some of us would die because we weren’t white, and so on and so on. It lasted more than an hour. Horrible, just horrible. Parents were walking out of their own children’s graduations.
Thirty years later and I still will won’t contribute to the alumni association. Fuck UCSD for fucking up my graduation by having Howard Zinn give the commencement address.
I hope you stood up and called him an asshole at the top of your lungs. It would be tragic to miss such an opportunity.
-jcr
“When asked if he thinks this bill could set a precedent allowing for left-leaning states to ban conservative historians’ perspectives from being considered in public education”
Now that’s just funny.
“Set a precedent”. “Allowing”.
Zinn’s already pretty much a textbook all through the Midwest high school systems. And non-leftist points of view in history come from a small number of tenured teachers who have a rebellious streak.
Note that I said ‘non-leftist’, not ‘conservative’.
“Banned”?
As in keep students from being able to read them? No.
As in “not used as textbooks in taxpayer funded schools as a tool of indoctrination”?
Sounds good. If people don’t like it, they can end the monopoly on schooling.
If you don’t want you kids indoctrinated home school or charter schools these people see the trees and not the forest or they just use your kids for their own indoctrination parents this is on you if you care about your kids don’t just let the public education take your childs ability to think for themselves
Well, I wouldn’t send my kid to a school that used Zinn in a history curriculum, but then again, I believe the public schools should be shut down and I homeschool my kids. Screw the state.
Seems like a bigger priority should be placed on hiring teachers who know more than lawmakers about teaching kids.
I’m not sure how to deal with this. Would you teach Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto? Sure, but how are they presented? There is no reason students shouldn’t be allowed to read Pravda or Zinn. Context.
How would schools that choose to have Zinn as required reading present it? Is People’s History a student’s only history textbook?
You’d not teach Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto, anymore than you’d Zinn.
You’d not ban them either.
Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” is poor scholarship. It should be banished from public schools not because it is “scary” but because it is garbage.
Jews don’t like being reminded that Charlie Schumer is a Jew.
-jcr
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Fine, ban the friggin’ books. That would be the least harm he’d have done.
I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on ‘The Andy Griffith Show.'”
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When asked if he thinks this bill could set a precedent allowing for left-leaning states to ban conservative historians’ perspectives from being considered in public education, Hendren said, “Ultimately the parents have a little more responsibility to what [children] are exposed to until they are a little bit older to be able to exercise more judgment. ????? ?? ??
????? ???? In college and so forth, I have no problem with it.” Hendren says his concern is primarily with providing equal time for opposing political viewpoints to avoid “indoctrination” of one point of view, and that his aim with this bill is not necessarily seeing his bill passed in its current form, but rather, to spark a conversation and debate.
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