When it comes to historic events, not every occasion cuts the mustard

“This is such a historic moment.”

I heard that comment while listening to an NPR story about a hotdog-eating contest at Coney Island. The winner of this year’s Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest chomped down 66 franks and buns in 12 minutes, smashing the old world record by six-and-a-half dogs and dethroning the defending six-time champion. One of the spectators, who’s going to law school, gushed that it was a momentous occasion.

A hot-dog-eating contest may be fun to watch or read about; it may also reveal something telling about our culture, such as our obsession with “real” contests and “15 minutes of fame.” This particular event, in fact, made the front page of the New York Times the following day. But no wiener contest—even one that sets a record that stands for eternity—is a true historic event like D-Day or the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

A spectator has every right to be excited about an event he has just witnessed. I’ve certainly cared very deeply about the World Series and other sports events. But the law student’s remark disturbed me, because it pointed to a larger issue—which relates directly to nonfiction books for younger readers. The reason why he could say something so silly wasn’t just because of our fascination with celebrities and fame. No, his statement reflected how very much we’ve devalued history, tradition, and learning. We overinflate the trivial because we’ve deflated the consequential.

Two days before civilization’s turning point took place at Nathan’s, Edward Rothstein published a think piece in the New York Times entitled “Classical Music Imperiled: Can You Hear the Shrug?” Classical music is in exactly the same predicament as history in our society and social studies in our schools. As these subjects fade from popular notice, we hardly notice. That’s because we have no conviction that our traditions matter. As I wrote that last line, I could already hear someone saying, “Whose traditions? Those are European traditions, not my Asian, African, Native American… traditions.” I disagree.

We must learn about many artistic traditions, many historic moments. Students need to know about ragas and call-and-response singing, as well as symphonies and ballets. They need to know about all of the world’s great civilizations. But that doesn’t mean turning our backs on the events, ideas, and, well, the moments of decision that helped create Europe and America.

We may, in fact, be at a turning point right now, which is particularly challenging for schools. We’re no longer fighting the “culture wars” of the 1980s and ’90s. We have instead settled on the idea of globalization—we are all interconnected, the whole planet matters. That means that schools really can’t teach the old “my state” history or the old fifth-, eighth-, and eleventh-grade American history courses. Yet teachers aren’t prepared to simultaneously teach the traditions, cultures, and historic turning points of every continent. They’re too busy teaching a social studies curriculum that no one is sure matters or a thin global studies course they haven’t been trained to understand, much less transmit. Since it’s not clear to most administrators, teachers, and parents what a real “historic moment” looks like, they can’t pass that knowledge on to their students or children with any conviction. And since students don’t understand what truly makes an event momentous, they rely on their own sensations or personal experiences to discern one.

Last summer, Joey Chestnut ate 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes; in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed, “I Have a Dream.” It’s our responsibility as authors, editors, and librarians to make sure that young people can tell the difference between those two moments. That’s what elders do, they pass on traditions.