Unit 7 Rewriting American History
改写美国历史
Frances FitzGerald
弗朗西丝·菲兹杰拉德
Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanence of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth of things: They were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and trappings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorizing a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognizable.
我们这些成长于50年代的人总以为美国的历史教科书是亘古不变的。对于儿时的我们来说，历史书就代表了事情的真相，因为它们是美国历史。这不仅因为在我们读到这些书的时候，我们尚未意识到书上印刷的并不意味着事实，至少不是事实的全部，而是因为和其他书比起来，历史书看起来更权威。一卷卷厚重的书本字斟句酌、严谨慎重、呆板无趣，就像中国皇帝一样遥不可及。老师们对这些书充满了尊敬，而我们则唯唯诺诺地每周背诵一个章节来表达我们对它们的崇敬。然而今天，历史教科书已然发生了变化，有些甚至变得面目全非，让我们这些成年人再难找到以前教科书的一丝踪迹。
One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George Mcjunkin. It appears that when Mcjunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilization ten thousand years old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations and the meaning of the word "culture” before introducing the European explorers.
时下的一本初中历史教科书中，美国历史开始于一个黑人牛仔男孩乔治·麦克琼金的故事。1925年一个寒冷春日的清晨，麦克琼金骑马经过新墨西哥州的一条荒凉的林间小道，他发现了一堆骨骸和石器工具，科学家们后来证明这些骨骸和石器属于一万年前的印第安文明。书中写道，科学家们据此认为至少两万年前南北美洲就出现了人类。在介绍来到美洲的欧洲探险家们之前，该书先讨论了阿兹特克人、玛雅人、印加文明以及“文明”一词的含义。
Another history text—this one for the fifth grade—begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, 'The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would," and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot."
另一本为五年级学生撰写的教科书则以一位田纳西州国会议员亨利·B·冈萨雷斯的民族身份认知之旅开篇。在冈萨雷斯10岁那年，他的老师告诉他，他是一个美国人，因为他出生在美国。但他的祖母却反问：“这只猫是在烤炉里出生的，那难道它就是个面包吗？”在讲述完冈萨雷斯先生最终上了大学和法学院的故事之后，书中的解释是“大熔炉的观点并未像某些人所预期的那样取得成效”，而且如今“有些人认为美国与其说是一个大熔炉，倒不如说是一个沙拉碗”。