Helping you make sense of schooling todaySept. 2000 • Vol. 2 • Issue 7W hen 80 percent of college seniors receive a “D” or “F” on a short high school level American history test (unable to identify when the Civil War was fought or Germany’s allies during World War II), it’s time to shake up the nation’s history lessons.START WITH OUR TEXTBOOKSBecause 81 percent ofsocial studies teachers did not major or minor in history, these teachers are heavily dependent on textbooks. As publishers place a higher worth on “design values” such as graphs, photos, and cartoons, content has fallen, creating gaps in what students learn. For example, the sixth grade text The World contains 28 lines on the North American Free Trade Agreement but nothing on Albert Einstein. As the written word has decreased, publishers have made choices to create space, reducing references to those who created our nation, and emphasizing pop culture figures in a misguided effort to make such texts more attractive (but less challenging) to students.In the 11th grade text TheAmericans, sections on the1920s feature flagpole sitting, Al Capone, Aimee Semple McPherson and Paul Robeson. As researcher Gilbert Sewell points out in his analysis for the American Textbook Council, “Andrew Mellon and Herbert Hoover, isolationism and geopolitics, revolutions incommunications and elec- tricity, medicine and trans- portation, speculation in real estate and securities, the Crash of 1929 – all are shortchanged in the textbook.” The same philosophy has led to classroom projects that seem inconsequential. Writing inAmerican Educator, Sewallnotes “The most ambitious of the nation’s new secondary- level history textbooks, McGraw–Hill/Glencoe’sAmerican Journey – whoseauthors include a former presi- dent of the American Historical Association … – features a Taffy Pull, complete with a recipe and an invitation for students to relive the social event of the 1800s and early 1900s.” If this is the way high school students spend valu- able class time, is it any wonder they cannot identify Theodore Roosevelt? Perhaps worse, history textbooks have swung toward “political correctness” to over- compensate for past mistakes. Where once, many texts barely mentioned the impor- tance of slavery in the United States’ development, today they throw in disconnected “factoids,” making heroes of little known individuals as Mansa Masu and Rigoverta Menchu at the expense of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Edison and Henry Clay.HOW DO BOOKS GET ADOPTED? California, Texas, Florida,and North Carolina dictate the texts used in schools. Nineteen other states publish lists from which local school districts may choose. Theothers permit local adoption. Areas with local textbook adoptions often permit partici- pation by parents, although such recommendation commit- tees are typically top-heavy with school staff members. Sewall offers clear goals: “History textbooks should be accurate and interesting. They should record what actually happened, and do so with some drama, conveying rich details, making an effort at objectivity, and making clear to children why a person, event, or geographical detail was of significance and impor- tance. They should explain, not indoctrinate.” Parents and teachers should seek history textbooks imposing order on the past, emphasizing written text. Graphs, photos, and maps should illuminate the text – not substitute for it in a disjointed manner. Other steps – • Review the information for accuracy, and look for texts that are narrative stories, placing our history in context. • Consider buying slightly dated textbooks, supplementing them with current materials. They are often less expensive, but have more detail and clarity than the new history texts. • Finally, contact the AmericanTextbook Council at (212) 870-2760 and ask for their analyses of history texts as a guide in your school’s next purchase. Their latest report will help ensure, even if history was not your favorite subject in school, your chil- dren will understand how our nation and world got where it is today.Don’t Know Much About…History?
