It would be great if George Orwell was wrong, but he wasn’t. Some of Orwell’s most interesting contributions were in observing how we control perception by abusing language and history.

When we ignore the historical process, we may as well watch a magic show. We can clap our hands when an image confirms what we want to believe rather than what the evidence shows.

We also may fall for intellectual sleight-of-hand when we shove history aside in favor of whatever is “nice,” marketable, or promotes “heritage tourism.” Too often, our hopes and expectations exceed both scholarship and sense.

Years ago, anthropologists were embarrassed - and Englishmen forever broken-hearted - when they discovered that one of evolution’s “missing links,” Piltdown Man, was a fake.

Musicologists have found that many old-time Appalachian folk songs did not originate in the British Isles’ “misty, moisty hills.” They were, in fact, nineteenth century Tin Pan Alley compositions and minstrel show tunes.

Similar claims have been made in the name of other ethnic groups. Velma Mackay Paul, the Martha Stewart of her day, orchestrated America’s rush to decorate garages, bedrooms, and kitchens with fanciful hex signs, tulips, and hearts. Few of those “Pennsylvania Dutch” motifs, as promoted, came over on the boat as part of a tribal memory. Early twentieth century manufacturers of quilt batting, such as Rock River and Lockport, distorted the original line and color and sold these stenciled designs as “traditional” and “authentic.”

One of the most intriguing tales to come out recently is the story of slave quilts.

About ten years ago, Jacqueline Tobin’s book, Hidden in Plain View, claimed that an aged black woman told Tobin of women sewing coded pictures into quilt tops. They would then hang these quilts outside to provide handy travel guides for runaway slaves.

This story became a curriculum director’s dream-come-true. It meshed history with arts-and-crafts. A tidal wave of color and charm could leave lasting images in a student’s mind.

When we were kids, we had the impression that the Underground Railroad was all about tunnels, secret closets, and little old Quaker ladies with lanterns lighting the path to freedom.

Unfortunately, subsequent research has shown that much of that was not only misleading; it was another way to deny a people the truth about their history. It’s more accurate to view the Underground Railroad as a resistance movement organized by African-Americans to help other African-Americans.

The same goes for the slave quilt story. There is not a shred of evidence in thousands of contemporary slave narratives to support it. As Karen James, of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, has said, “Quilts are marvelous works of art, but they were never road maps.”

The NAACP and Charles Blockson, the state’s leading historian of the Underground Railroad, have also denounced this current obsession with slave quilts. It diminishes the struggle of those African-Americans who did not wait, but who actually took their freedom.

The slave quilt story also contradicts textile history. Most people made knotted haps, not quilts, for daily use. Haps were preferred for several reasons. They took less time, they made more efficient use of scraps, and they were considered more sanitary because the batting could be replaced easily. Quilt making, as we like to think of it, did not occur on a wide scale until after the Civil War when cheaper cloth, a wider variety of colors, and more leisure time became available.

Textbooks and curriculum guides toss out so many false images that it's easy for students to become dazed and confused when they emerge from this hall of mirrors. No one can understand or apply the process of solving any problem in life if they are only taught to push buttons, memorize disconnected factoids, or digest commercial nonsense.

Why not encourage students to ask and answer serious questions? Even elementary pupils are perfectly capable of discussing these issues in depth. What do we mean by property? How do we define a human being? How and why did that definition change over time? How do we define equality and freedom? What is a law? Can we change it? What’s the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence? Which is more relevant? Was there slavery in central Pennsylvania? Who was engaged in the practice and why?

All is not lost. This whole slave quilt debacle could be turned on its head and presented as a lesson in how not to “do history.”

The practice of slavery in the Western Hemisphere differed from other times and places and cultures because it was race-based. That is the ugly truth. It is a truth that needs to be reinforced. But we cannot arrive at that truth by trivializing history’s horrors and turning them into coloring books and cartoons.

25 July 2006

Bruce Teeple is a free-lance writer, speaker and local historian and is writing a book about Prince Farrington. He lives in Aaronsburg, Centre County and can be reached at mongopawn44@hotmail.com