SUBJECT:
THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
Bad History
INTERVIEW WITH: Allan Kownslar (Tape 1 of 1)
DATE: 8 February 2000
PLACE : ITC
INTERVIEWER: Sarah Massey
TAPE 1 , SIDE 1
M: Today is Tuesday, February 8 , 2000, my name is Sarah
Massey and I am with the Institute of Texan Cultures, and
I'm here to i nterview Allan Kownslar with Trinity University
where he is a history professor . Hello Allan. This is
Allan Kownslar and he's from Trinity, and what do you teach
at Trinity, Allan?
K: I teach American Hi story, Texas Hi story and Afri can
History.
M: African?
K: Ancient , Medieval and Modern African History .
M: And how long have you been doing this?
K: Twenty-eight years.
M: Tell me something about how you got into history .
How'd you get started?
K: In college , my first semester i n college , I made a D­plus
in a history course , and it occurred to me that there
was more to history than I thought - more unknowns - because
my field was mathematics.
M: Uh-huh.
Allan Kownslar
K: And I decided there was more unknowns in history than
there were in math, so I switched over to history.
M: And then how did you go from there? Did you end up
majori ng in history at the universi ty?
K: Yeah . I was a math ... I tested out of all the math
courses , so I was a math tutor and ma j ored in history and
political science .
M: And where was this?
K: At Trinity University .
M: At Trinity?
K: Undergraduate . Yes.
M: In San Antonio?
K: Yes .
M: So you are teaching at the school that you started in?
K: Yes .
2
M: That is truly amazing . Did you get all of your degrees
there at Trinity?
K: I went to the University of Massachusetts and studied
for two years, graduate work, and then was recruited by
Carnegie-Mell on ...
M: Uh-huh .
K: ... to come into their doctorate program. So ... and to
do another two years , and then got my doctorate at Carnegie­Mellon
.
M: And then came ... were you hired straight from there to
Trinity? Or did you have other work?
Allan Kownslar
K: No , I did . . . I wrote other histories in the process .
Took time off to write. I wrote a Texas history - for
American Her itage and McGraw- Hill .
M: When was this?
K: After I got my doctorate .
M: What year are we talking about?
K: 1970 t o '71. American Heritage called me and as ked me
if I would do a Texas history for the school s .
M: Uh-huh .
3
K: And so I d i d . I t ook a year off, and then Trinity
offered me a job as a professor of history . And I didn't
want to go back to Trinity, necessarily , and I had some
other offers . So the man - the Dean , the Vice- President at
Trinity - h ad me come down and asked me if I knew anybody at
Trinity that ... I only knew three people when I was an
undergraduate, onl y three . And so they hired me to work
with teachers and to teach these history courses. And the
man who hired me is the man who , when I was an
undergradua te , put me on social probation. I remi nded him
of that , and he said, "You're now on social probation."
M: That ' s a good story, Allan , that's a good story . So
did you ... from your i n iti al introduction to history and
getting excited about it , have you ever regretted that , i n
terms of your longevity now in history?
K: No . No .
M: What has continued to fascinated you about it - to keep
All an Kownslar 4
M: up an interest for thirty years?
K: New ways to teach history and write history . I started
my teaching career ... I started teaching ninth graders world
history. And I discovered that I didn ' t like the textbook .
And I thought , I can do a better job; I can do a better job .
So while I was at the University of Massachusetts I was also
put on the Amherst College Committee on the Study of
History, which was a new group .
M: Uh-huh .
K: And I was ... [inaudible] they knew ... [inaudible ] . And
what we asked ourselves was: how can you teach history other
than lecture? And the one thing we could never do was
lecture. So how are you going to teach it if you can ' t
lecture? So I developed three American History Programs out
of t hat wher e the students - it was b iographical, it was
autobiographical and it was point - counter-point on issues .
And it was ... there were surveys of American and then later
World History.
M: So you started right in wri t ing then and working in
schools ... [inaudible]?
K: Yes .... [inaudible].
M: How many textbooks have you written now?
K: I ' ve authored o r co-author ed twenty-four books. But
not all them were textbooks.
M: Okay.
K: Some of them were biographical , some of them are more
Allan Kownslar
K: specialized studies ; so it depends.
M: Do you find yourself . .. [inaudible] . I know you just
completed another textbook series ... [inaudible] . That is
what you were doing last year, wasn 't it?
K: . .. [inaudible] . I haven ' t done it yet , but I am going
to.
5
M: I thought you .. . [inaudible] ... took a sabbatical to work
on that textbook?
K: I ' ve got it ninety-percent done .
M: What ' s the one that ' s ... what is the name of the one
that ' s ninety- percent done?
K: It's a t wo-volume approach to h i story, American
History, for the college level. See , I worked my way from
fifth - grade to t welfth - I did all the soci al studies text .
. . . [inaudible]wording. And now I 'm doing one for American
History in college.
M: Oh , that ' s good .
K: And it ' s biographical and point - counter-point.
[inaudible] - it's not politically correct .
M: And that ' s ... you said American History? What have you
done in Texas Hi story? Have you done any more books since
your first one in Texas History?
K: I did a revision of it. And then I did a book on Maury
Maverick Junior , which is more biographical -
autobiographical - and it includes his articles , all the
articles he wrote. I had to ... I had to edi t over one-
Allan Kownsla r
K: thousand articles down to ninety , and that was tough .
M: So , basically, your work has focused ... your work has
focused more on American History than Texas History?
K: I ' ve done more in American History. But you can only
do so much in Texas History .
M: Yes .
K: As far as surveys . As far as surveys .
M: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And what excites you? What
continues to excite you about the History, about being
involved in History?
K: It asks three questions when you work on history : how
does learning occur, lasting learning , what constitutes
effective teaching, and what ' s the relationship between the
two? And then you apply that to the study of History , and
so it involves also keeping up with the latest research in
the field of Cognitive Science and how people learn .
M: Uh-huh.
K: So my courses are geared to that , to that .
M: You may be the first person I ' ve ever met in a
discipline who has an understanding of the educational
process , the teaching of the learning process .
6
K: Oh , when I was at Carnegie-Mellon, I was a guinea pig
for the people in the field of Cognitive Science , and that ' s
how I began to pick up on it. And I already had . .. I was
operating on intuition before that .
M: Yeah.
Allan Kownslar 7
K: But I needed more than that; I needed some scientific
research as a basis. So I began to take courses - electives
- in the field of Cognitive Science . There was a group at
Carnegie- Mellon. They were also in the process of
developing artificial intelligence ... [inaudible] the
computers . That wasn ' t my interest. My interest was how
people learn . I wasn ' t interested in how pigeons learn or
rats . No, I wondered about human beings. So I was
recruited to go to Carnegie-Mellon by a professor of History
there who recruited eight of us from around the country to
come in and do that project , that History project .
M: Uh-huh .
K: And then my dissertation came out of that - it was all
History, all History Department . But in the process they
picked the eight of us ... [inaudible] field of Cognitive
Science , they picked the eight of us to be guinea pigs for
all kinds of testing on learning . And in the process we
p i cked information up from them; so it went back and forth.
M: Yeah .
K: And one of .. . [inaudible] it just came out of
[inaudible] operation at Harvard.
M: Uh- huh .
K: I worked with her a lot . And so the idea was to link
l earning and history together .
M: And how are you defining history?
K: I define History as interpretation of data .
Allan Kownsl ar
M: Interpretation of data .
K: Whatever is available .
M: Okay . Do you ever reach a point of resolution , 1n
terms of the data being available?
K: You mean where I have an absolute determined fact?
8
M: I keep ... [inaudible] . I as k a series of questions : how
do you know when you ' ve arrived at the truth?
K: You don ' t . I've never thought I arrived at the full
truth of anything. And . .. because like Mark Twain says , "You
can never know but just a little piece of somebody and only
then if they want to make it known. " And that ' s what
i ntrigues me about History ... [inaudible] - is the unknown .
M: Uh- huh.
K: And you ' re constantly coming up with new things and new
evidence. But it's a .. . you ... if we ever get to the absolute
truth in History we will have discovered everything .
. . . [inaudible] there's not enough evidence for that ; it ' s
unavai lable .
M: Okay. Not going to happen.
K: No. No .
M: Well , the thing that makes it ... how you break the mold ,
Allan , is that you have written , what ' s been my .. . my
experience is that historians are always searching for the
next piece of information and so many things don ' t get
written or take so very , very long because they are always
hoping for one more piece of . .. Or they ' ve got to track
Allan Kownsl ar
M: down ... it's either that article , you know,
... [inaudible] until I get that article; and so you break
the mold that ... How do you decide when you 've got enough
evidence or enough inf ormation? What allows you to start
writing?
9
K: I want sometimes double and triple verification of a
piece of data firs t . And I know that maybe I can get ten
times that much information on it , but if I've got double or
triple verification and it - and the verification a l so can
be verified independently wi th another topic ... You see,
you ' re c r oss-checking it constantly, because you ' re going to
get ... [inaudible] . But just because three sources say
something ...
M: Doesn't make it r i ght .
K: Right. No. It's like Henry waiting for the Pope and
the snow and all the sources can be waiting in the snow for
three days and nights , and all the sources have that , and
anybody with a lick o f common sense would know that if you
stood in the snow barefooted for three days and nights your
feet would freeze off. And it didn 't happen. So obviously
he didn ' t do it. But the sources say so.
M: Yeah .
K: So I t hink a lot of this you use common sense. I t just
... what will ... physically what can happen?
M: Well , one of the things that I discovered when I came
to Texas was that Texans take their History very, very
Allan Kownslar
M: seriously . And I quickly found myself engaged in
conversations on bad history. So I guess what I've got to
ask you is , how do you define or what do you consider bad
history?
10
K: Bad History to me would be when a historian
deliberately leaves something out of a history that probably
should be there. And to do it for political reasons, social
reasons, economic reasons, religious reasons - if it ' s l eft
out. And what ... the reason I did the Texas History for
American Heritage and McGraw-Hill was that I am a native
Texan, and I had Texas History in grades four and grade
seven and I remember those textbooks . And the information
was there, but what bothered me was what was not there. And
when I began to really study Texas History i n depth as a
college student then later and I discovered all t hese people
who were quite prominent in Texas History yet they weren't
in the Texas History books. And I understood why - women,
other minorities were never in the textboo ks . And I
understood that if you put women and blacks and Hispanics i n
those early 20th century textbooks, the ones who really
succeeded, you'd be giving minority children a l ot of bad
ideas . In other words they'd want to become like t hat ;
they ' d want to become independent. And I thought t hey
belong in there because they were part of it . And I know
they existed; I know they were there . And so the first
textbook I did of Texas History was published 1971 ; I
Allan Kownslar 11
K: included as many of those people as possible . And not
only that I included, if they were literate, what they had
to say about the topic or issue, so half the Texas History
book contains original sources.
M: I 've never seen your ... [inaudible) .
K: It ' s in the library.
M: Okay .
K: It ' s the . .. [inaudible ) , and so i t ' s ... and it's a lso . .. I
used the inquiry approach throughout the book . Step by step
where the students and teachers work their way through the
process of inquiry - going through the whole book, the whole
book. And i t ' s a survey of Texas History . And when you get
through , you ' ve surveyed Texas History.
M: Uh-huh .
K: But that . .. not doing that represented bad history . And
.. . [inaudible] , the Norwegian, all of those people were
t here and they were prominent. And they weren ' t in the
books.
M: Do you have a different definition of bad history if
... [inaudible ) college student ... [inaudible] term papers?
K: I give them guidelines . Guidelines .
M: Okay.
K: Anything they do, my approach is always point-counter­point;
for every point you must have a counter- point . And
so you're always dealing with at least two people. And so
they always have to look at both sides of an issue . For
Allan Kownslar 12
K: example, in my approach it's - they think it 's a lot of
fun - we do Paul Robeson, the black opera singer and actor
and civil rights activist , and we do Emma Tenayuca, the
Hispanic labor organizer here in San Antonio. And we pit
those two against George Lincoln Rockwell who was then head
of the American Nazi Party. And so there's biographical
sketches on Tenayuca and Robeson , and then what they had to
say about civil rights. And then there's a b i ographical
sketch on George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi
Party, and then what he had to say about minority rights .
M: Is Rockwell the Ku Klux Klan?
K: No , he's a Nazi.
M: Okay .
K: He is a Nazi. He was way to the right of the Kl an .
M: Okay .
K: And I picked him because he ' s that far off to the
right. And so the students then look at the three of t hem
and ask what did each value, what were the main points , but
we always do point-counter-point and what ' s the value
... [inaudible ] What's the question? And the questions are
always abstract , so they're relevant. And the question i s :
what rights should minorities have in a Democratic Republic?
That ' s the question . It's abstract because it could be any
minority in any Republic whether it ' s Democratic ...
M: Yeah .
K: And so when they do work for me they have to do a
Allan Kownslar 13
K: point-counter-point, and so I ... they have to look at
both sides of an issue . And then they have to resolve it.
And sometimes when they ' re doing point- counter-point ... we do
. .. we pit . .. I pit Jefferson against Alexander Hamilton .
Well, the students - and I agree with them - argue that both
men made good points on what they ' re arguing about or what
this new government should represent in the 1790s . So we
look at what each one of them value , and then I ' ll say ,
"Well , if you were George Washington , he had these two men
in his cabinet , now, what ' s he going to decide and how is he
gong to decide to do? " And I said, "There's a way to do
this: you go back and look at what Jefferson and Hamilton
value , both sides , and then you look at all of them together
and say, which one is the most important value of all
these? " You have to rank them .
M: Uh- huh.
K: In order of priori ty . All those things have to be
ranked on both sides - which one is going to number one,
number two? And then tell me why . And then say , "Does this
constitute a dilemma for you?" Because they ' re going to
say, " Well , yes , because I picked this one first , but I also
agree with number two , but I think number one is more
important because ... " And so you see how .. . you see the
technique?
M: Yes .
K: And so, if you present that in history, in written K:
Allan Kownsl ar
history form, then the students - t his is what I 'm
working on - the students read this and t hen they have to
dec i de . So it ' s a . . . that to me is . .. I don ' t know whet her
i t ' s good o r bad hist ory b ut it ' s mor e .. . i t 's a more
objective way of looking at history .
M: And i t's a thinking process .
K: Oh , is it ever .
M: Yeah. You ' ve just described exactly ... Do you know
Ana Carolina Crimm - from Huntsville, Sam Houston
[University}?
K: No .
14
M: Okay . She's using the same process; she ' s call s it the
dilemmas , though.
K: Yeah , it' s dilemmas.
M: And I ' ve been .. . [inaudible] , and she's j ust raving
about the same thing that you ' re raving abou t - that this is
where we need t o be getting in the teaching of our history,
and most of us aren ' t there yet .
K: Well, I ' ve been doing it fo r t hi r ty years .
M: Yeah .
K: And it works and the s tudents l ike it . And it's also
personalized because you ' re dealing wit h biographies . But
t o deal with Hamilton and J efferson you also .. . the students
also have to have a knowledge of knowing who those two men
were , but the background .. .
M: The context of the ... [inaudible].
Allan Kownslar
K: Yeah, the whole context . Because ... [inaudible ]
Constitution - everything in the American Revolution ,
everything - they have to have the over- view first , then
they go in depth in the case studies. And then when I get
through with that , I pit Jefferson against John Marshall .
And it ' s very important . And that ' s the test .
M: Do you have your students working at all on the
Internet ? Any work with the Internet at all?
K: I have them use the Internet occasionally, but what I
want them to use , I really prefer the use of the materials
in the library for research. And we've tried the Internet
and you get ... you do Jefferson for example , you do
Washington - George Washington - there are four-hundred
thousand entries at least.
M: Uh-huh .
K: And I said, that ' s not going to work. I can't expect
you to go through four-hundred thousand entries to do a
paper. And so I recommend certain key sources that they
have to use.
15
M: So what you ' ve done is culled from the library so that
they know which ones that they can use there .
K: Yep .
M: Okay .
K: They can use anything else , but there are certain
sources I make them use, that they have to go through and
look at. And i t ' s not just a couple; it's a lot . But I
Allan Kownslar 16
K: know those are established authorities. Now the books
- well, the authors won't agree with one another
necessarily, but I'll say these are the key books about this
topic of ... [inaudible].
M: Now did you get to them because they were the
established authorities? Okay . See, that ' s ...
K: Well , they have done as much research on the issue or
person as anyone I can find.
M: Okay .
K: But they would not agree on one point or another, but
the fact that they have dealt with some search . Then ... so I
have to use those. But I really prefer the use of scholarly
articles and legitimate ... [inaudible].
M: Well, do you think that the Internet as a medium
prevents the use scholarly articles? Prohibits the use of
scholarly articles?
K: I don ' t think it prevents it , but I think it 's very
difficult for students, young students, to distinguish
between good scholarship and bad history.
M: Okay . And how do you distinguish between good
scholarship and bad history?
K: I read extensively, and I pay attention to footnotes
and bibliographies. And I 'm probably one of the few people
alive that read all the footnotes and check them . I go back
and check them against those sources . I have a thing about
documentation . And I want to know what they 're using . And
All an Kownslar 17
K: then also I l earn more by checking all those footnotes
- this leads me to other sources as well . And I kind of
like that. But it's a ... realizi ng t hat all history is
educational.
M: Yeah , that's the researcher in you . The love of
seeking out the unknown .
K: Yeah.
M: And my sense of the Inte rnet is tha t t here is
absolutely nothing on the Internet that prohibits good
scholarship. But we haven't got the vehicle yet for very
much of it ... [inaudible] .
K: . . . [inaudibl e] .
M: It seems so shallow .
K: Well, I've read some stuff on the Internet that I could
dispute , I could dispute ... [inaudible]
evidence .. . [inaudi ble].
M: Okay, what was missing in what you were reading?
K: Lots of quotes taken out of context and .. . which woul d
reverse an interpretation entirely of something . And I
thought ... and then I remembered reading this whole thing and
that ' s not what it .. . that ' s not what he ... the intention
here, because I have the original . And I like to deal
primarily with original sources , not secondary .
M: Uh-huh .
K: And that ' s why . All of my books include so many
original sour ces .
Allan Kownslar 18
M: Do you have any classic examples of bad history that
you ' ve run into in your lifetime?
K: . .. [inaudible) one - one in particular that just blew
me out of the room. I don ' t know if it was bad history but
it was the documentation on it. It was J . Alex Haley's,
"The .. . [inaudible]. And I read that when it first came out.
And Haley was a first-rate historian ... [inaudible]
excellent biography. And he did that , "A Texan Looks at
Lyndon", and I read that and I knew Lyndon Johnson because I
one of the President ' s Young Democrats . In fact ,
... [inaudible] Senate , and it was the documentation on that
book, that was a political . . . that was political propaganda,
that book was . Because I read it and I kept thinking, "I
know there's other things he didn ' t include here ; this is
not the total story at all on this, because I know , I know."
And sometimes I was there; I saw some of this .
M: Uh-huh.
K: And I thought that was an example of history t hat was
not a history , but that book was put out as political
propaganda. And Haley did it for political reasons .
M: Urn .
K: I think ... [inaudible]. I don ' t think he was very fond
of Lyndon Johnson. He was a tough one .
M: Was it a ... [inaudible) or negative stand?
K: Very negative.
M: Very negative.
Allan Kownslar 19
K: Very negative . And . . . but it was what else Haley didn ' t
put in t he book . Because again , I went back and checked the
sources.
M: Yeah.
K: And - his documentation was excellent - what he called
his documentation . But it ' s what else that could have been
added that wasn ' t. So that ' s why I l ike the point- counter­point.
And I deal .. . half of the people that I deal with
when I write I do not agree with at all . Not at all .
M: Uh-huh .
K: I 'm totally against it . And . .. but I include t hem
because I want to know what their thought . . . [inaudible]. And
I always t ell the students if you can ' t .. . if your values
can ' t withstand opposing a r guments , then you don ' t really
know what you think . And so this is a way t o test your
value system .. . [inaudible] . And if somebody else's got a
better idea than what you ' ve got, then you ' d better re­examine
what your idea was , and see what e l se you t hink.
M: Are you still enjoying teaching after twenty- eight
years?
K: Yes. What I love is writing .
M: It ' s still writing .
K: I t ' s researching and writing .
M: Yeah .
K: But I love teaching .
M: Uh- huh. Why is history important to you?
Allan Kownslar 20
K: Uh ,
curious .
i t ' s important to me because I'm curious ; I 'm very
And I think that students without a knowledge of
history ... I don ' t ... this whole thi ng , if you don ' t know the
mista kes of the past , you ' re just goi ng to repeat them .
M: Uh- huh .
K: Again , I don ' t agree with that . We ' ve always repeated
the mistakes of the past . But every time we .. . I can ' t think
of ...
M: Everybody ' s got to invent their own wheel .
. . . [inaudible ] .
K: Yeah, but it ' s ... what I' ve tried to get student s to do
is t o not only obtain a knowledge o f history , they need to
know t hat nothing is really all that new - peri od . Not h i ng
i s that new. But I also want them to use history to kind of
find their own ways .
M: Oh.
K: And t hat's a way to do it . And I think t hat's the best
[inaudible ] history.
M: Serves as a vehicle for clarifying your own val ue s .
K: Yes . And it ' s loaded with examples ; history is loaded
with examples where you have to test what you believe
agains t what ... [inaudible] And literatur e- lit erature i s
the same way.
M: And how did you . .. yeah .
K: The Bible is nothing . .. but the Bible is not h i ng but a
huge biography of problems and di lemmas and i t ' s
Allan Kownslar
K: biographical - the whole thing .
I won ' t get into that .
21
Yeah , I took a ... well ,
M: If that ' s true , Allan , how did we get to where we are
1n schools today where every . .. history puts everybody to
sleep? They don ' t like it, they don ' t want anything to do
with it , they can ' t remember it , it 's boring .
K: Because you have to make history relevant. And if you
make it relevant and it ' s ... you have to make ... you have to
stir up some emotion among students. I learned in the field
of Cognitive Science. if you can get anybody emotionally
involved, even slightly, there is a greater tendency toward
low- term recall -they'll remember it because they've
internali zed it. And ... [inaudible] important. The way a lot
of history is taught today and in the past is , you memorize
a bunch of dates and names that mean nothing , and it ' s
short-term memory . It ' s like looking at a phone number long
enough to make a call - you regurgitate this stuff back on a
true-false , multiple choice , fill in the blank exam . And
then i t's gone , it's gone , and it has no relevance at all .
So I think if you personalize history with the values
systems and the value complex and the abstract questions
that are relevant - that are relevant - then if you pose a
good abstract question to a group of students they will
begin to think of an answer.
M: Can you give me an e xample of what you mean by
relevant? Something that ' s relevant .
Allan Kownslar 22
K: One would be , to what extent should a nation protect
its children? To what e xtent should students be allowed to
read what they choose in a public school? What rights
should parents have in determini ng a child ' s education?
[inaudible] .
M: Uh-huh. That's good.
K: What do you think? What should a Government owe you?
What should you be allowed to read and write? You see what
I 'm talking about?
M: Yeah . And what you 've done with every question is
insert the word " you".
K: Yeah .
M: That makes the personal element .
K: And I 've also used the word " should" .
M: Should - yeah .
K: Because that makes it open-ended.
M: Yeah.
K: And they could say , well , nothing. Or a lot .
M: Yeah.
K: But I always use the word " should", if possible . And
not "can", because they can say , "Well, yes , it can." But
I ' ll say " should", and so in all of my a bstract questions I
[inaudible] the word "should" appears somewhere.
M: What kind of advice would you give to teacher­historians
in Texas?
K: .. . [inaudible] .
Allan Kownslar
M: Somebody who ' s thinking about being an historian, or
trying to get a job as a college professor here?
K: I don ' t know as if I ' d recommend anybody towards the
field of history r i ght now or their doctorate .
M: Why?
K: Well , the job market . It's the job market. But that
23
will change . I think it will change . I would recommend you
to go into the field if you've got a burning desire to do -
research and teach, and ... [inaudible] both- both. And
you ' ve got to like students. And you ' ve got to have a sense
of humor and a tremendous amount of patience. But you've
got to know your subject . And I think if you ' ve got . .. if
you really like working with students you ought to be a
teacher .... [inaudible]
M: But it ' s been my experience that the hi story people I
knew in secondary school , they got into history because they
were enamoured with the subj ect and they really didn't like
kids . And so they weren ' t interested in teaching.
K: You've got to be interested in teaching. No , you have
to be interest ed in t eaching . The whole idea - if you're
going to do it - the thing is, you want students to go home
and say not what di d I learn today, but what did I think
about today? And there ' s a difference. What did this
teacher make me think about today? And I guess that ' s . .. if
you ' re interested in having students do that , then you ought
to be teaching . That ' s elementary and secondary . And the
Allan Kownslar
K: same in college .
M: Yeah.
K: But it ' s a ... but I'd recommend that you ' ve got to
really love the subject or you burn out .
M: You burn out.
K: And you ' ve got to like the students or you burn out .
Because students will try you to the nth degree. I know -
24
I ' ve had them . And I outlast them; I 'm much more patient
than they are . And I'm very laid-back , and I can just wait .
M: What have you enjoyed the most about your career so far
in teaching history?
K: I enjoy discovering new things. I 'm always looking out
for new things. The books I ' ve done mean very little to me ,
to tell you the truth .
M: Uh-huh.
K: It was something I felt I had to do . I just had to get
those books out. And not for professional advancement or
anything like that; it didn ' t make that much difference to
me , I didn ' t care. But it ' s ... it was the fun of doing it .
It was fun . I enjoyed ... I think it ' s fun . My wife has
always accused me of ... she said your mistress is a research
library.
M: [laughter)
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1
SIDE 2
K: ... [inaudible] the research library . And my wife
Allan Kownslar
K: tolerates it .
M: What woul d you l ike to do with t he next ten- fifteen
yea rs of your life .. . [inaudible] career?
K: I don't know. I don 't know yet. One option is to
become a journalist , which I' m thinking about. Another
option is to ... [inaudible] and play t he banjo . And I 'm
going to keep wri ting . And I have f ive new books planned
f or the future .
M: My word.
K: I 'm going to do a book on Maverick , An Iconoclastic
Texan , about . .. [inaudible] .
M: Uh-huh .
K: I 'm going to do a book on Textbook Censorship, Social
St udies , Textbook Censorship throughout t he 1 920s . I ' ve
already done a lot of research on that.
M: Yeah .
25
K: And t hat's very schol arly . But i t ... history does
repeat itself, it ' s the same thing; you just change the key-word
s - it ' s the same thing you get. But I 'm worki ng on
those sort of things . I 'm going to do a couple of more
biographies on people , but I haven ' t decided which
. .. [inaudible] . And I want to do a book ... I ' ve already done
the first draft on Teaching/Biography/Autobiography in
History , and it ' s a rational e for teaching those t hree
areas . And I ' ve done a rough draft on that . .. [inaudible] .
M: That ' s an unusual subject.
Allan Kownslar
K: Yes. And it's a rationale. But it won't be a long
book - two-hundred pages.
M: Yeah .
K: Maybe three-hundred at the most.
26
M: You've got enough work to keep you busy for ten years .
K: Oh , I like doing this. And I could quit teaching any
time I so choose; I'm very fortunate .
M: And what ' s the journalism thing about?
K: It would ... if I became a journalist it would be
relating historical topics to contemporary ones. Arguing
that history does not repeat itself , but there are certain
problems that are unique to human nature .
M: And those repeat themselves .
K: Those repeat themselves . History ... I do history ... I ' ve
never seen history repeat itsel f exactly ever in anything .
But dil emmas and problems and human nature does, and so it
would be , you know: Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton
had problems with the press over alleged sexual affairs and
both o f them did, both of them did. And when Clinton had
his and other presidents have had theirs, I thought - that 's
not new. But there was ... it was the problem, well , how to
deal with this -all the way through . And in Hamilton's
case , he admitted it openly; in fact , he ran a newspaper ad
- a full page ad - admi tting he'd had an affair with this
woman. Jefferson was accused of having an affair with Sally
Hemmings and .. . but he never admitted that he did and there ' s
Allan Kownslar 27
K: no definite proof that he did. But there ' s proof that
a Jefferson did - one of the Jeffersons did. But Hamilton
admitted his openly , and that was basically the end of it.
Clinton did not.
M: And we had an impeachment .
K: So he got impeached by the House . And tried by the
Senate . And so with the students - we talk about this in
class - and I ' ll say, some presidents have had affairs that
didn't become known until later.
M: Uh- huh .
K: But if it had been known at the time they would have
never been elected or re-elected .
M: Eisenhauer.
K: Yes .
M: Roosevelt.
K: Yeah . Oh , certainly Roosevelt , Franklin Roosevelt.
M: Yeah .
K: Even maybe Woodrow Wilson .
M: Yeah . Oh , yes.
K: But it was a - . .. [inaudible] journalism would be fun if
you could tie that in . And maybe be a journalist where you
wrote articles - like once a week for use in secondary
classrooms for students to use , for the newspaper .
M: Thank you . This has been great fun.
K: You ' re very welcome .
M: I want to show you something. When you were in Texas
Allan Kownslar 28
M: history , in the fourth grade and the seventh grade , at
the time you were in Texas , were you taught using t hose
Texas books - cartoon books?
K: Oh , yeah . But no , we had the regular textbooks . But
I ' ve read those books, yeah .
M: Did you ... were the cartoons a part of your classroom?
K: Yes .
M: Okay . And what were those about? I don ' t know that
much about them.
K: . .. [inaudible] . They were racist , they were just
horrible ... [inaudible]. That ' s part of that media base and
they used "greasers" and this kind of thing and ...
M: Yeah .
K: And when we had .. . we were given those through the Mobil
Oil Company.
M: Uh- huh.
K: Every kid had a copy. Well , we had our regular
textbooks . ..
M: Okay.
K: ... [inaudible] .
M: Ralph ... [inaudible].
K: Yeah. Yeah. That is what it was. I ' ve got a copy of
it. Yeah, something like that , except it was an older
version. Yeah. Yeah. And - yes, here we are - I had an
earlier editi on .
M: The thing that I grew up ...
Allan Kownslar
K: Good Lord. This goes back to 1948 .
M: I've been looking at the different edi tions of
. . . [inaudible] .
K: Yeah .
M: Oh, here ' s another one of his - Ralph ... [inaudible].
K: Yeah. We had a version of this, and he started
publishing it in 1948.
M: Okay .
K: Yeah .
M: Those aren't Texas Histories. Oh ...
K: ... [inaudible].
M: Uh?
K: This is ...
M: When you don ' t know anything about Texas History you
get it from all kinds of sources .
K: Yeah . 19 ...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2.
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