The Troubled Road to California’s New History Textbooks : Schools: New state textbooks would make a big change in how children study history. But it’s hard to write them so that no one is offended.

A new series of textbooks under consideration for California schools has come under attack from a number of ethnic, religious and sexual-preference groups, complaining about the way their members are depicted.

If these special-interest groups have their way, we will revert to the kinds of textbooks that offend no one. Gone will be all teaching about religion, because it is too controversial. Whatever gives offense will be dropped. And we will once again have the bland and boring textbooks and the non-controversial emphasis on skills that have left our children woefully ignorant of history, geography and civics, with little knowledge of the rest of the world.

In response to that situation, the state Board of Education three years ago adopted a new history curriculum. It has some remarkable features: All children are required to study three years of world history, including the major civilizations of Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. The curriculum restores the study of religion as an important force in history. And it incorporates more time and attention to the study of America’s pluralistic nature than any other state curriculum in the nation.

Textbooks from a number of publishing firms were reviewed by three panels of 24 teachers and scholars--one for the early grades (kindergarten through grade 3), one for American history and one for world history. After receiving training on how to evaluate the textbooks, the panelists spent several weeks reading the books, then met to discuss their merits and flaws. At the end of a three-month process, the professional reviewers endorsed only one series, created by Houghton Mifflin specifically for the California curriculum.

The Houghton Mifflin textbooks span kindergarten through eighth grade, and integrate the study of history with geography, economics, ethics, the arts, political science and civic knowledge. The books include maps, colorful illustrations, an in-depth examination of the major religions of the world. Compared with current textbooks, they contain a marked increase in attention to the history of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe and to the experiences of blacks, women, American Indians and Latinos in the United States. In the judgment of the review panels, they were far superior to anything now in use--and the best textbooks presented this year.

At hearings on the textbooks held by the State Curriculum Commission in July, critics--including Muslims, Jews, atheists, gays, blacks and Asians--presented objections. The commission agreed to make corrections wherever there were errors of fact and wherever historical interpretations were demonstrably wrong in relation to reputable scholarship. Thus far, thousands of pages of text have been fine-combed, but few errors of fact have been found. Some of the demands for change can never be met without compromising academic integrity.

Time and again, the refrain was heard that racial, religious and ethnic groups should have the power to judge and veto what is written about them. Perhaps typical of our times, no one spoke about the common civic values that make us one nation, one society.

Some speakers contended that only scholars from their own group could write their history, because non-members could not possibly understand them. Some speakers insisted that history should be used to “raise the self-esteem” of members of their group by showing only good things about their history and deleting any material that was objectionable.

Imagine such a textbook: It would exclude any references to Hitler and the Holocaust to avoid giving offense to children of German extraction. It would not mention human sacrifice and slavery among the early civilizations of Latin America. It would delete any mention of Idi Amin or slavery in Africa to avoid giving offense. It would delete any unfavorable references to the governments of China, before or after the communist revolution, or to Japanese actions during World War II. All the cowboys would be bad guys, all the Indians innocent victims, until the grandchildren of the cowboys complain, and then they too would be innocent victims. Or simply ignored.

Everyone who ever lived would be shown as good, kind, nice, perhaps heroic. All the bad parts would be dropped, because someone might take offense, or someone’s self-esteem might be destroyed.

On Sept. 13 the State Board of Education meets in Sacramento to decide whether to adopt the Houghton Mifflin history textbooks. The Curriculum Commission will recommend adoption, and the now-familiar parade of interest groups will repeat their complaints about omissions, bias, distortions and wounded self-esteem.

The board should not lose sight of the purposes of the history curriculum. They are:

* To teach understanding and knowledge about the major civilizations of the world.

* To promote understanding of our national identity as Americans.

* To foster respect for our democratic traditions, which enable people of different cultures to live and work together.

* To teach children the habits of mind--thoughtful judgment, critical thinking and reflection--that the study of history can convey.

None of these purposes will be achieved by giving ethnic, religious and racial groups a veto over what is taught.

Of course, any textbooks adopted by the state should be rigorously screened for error or bigotry. But we must not compel historians, textbook publishers and teachers to avoid controversy; we must not compel them to teach pretty fictions about the past lest offense be given to someone, somewhere. We must free them to write and speak honestly; to base their conclusions on evidence and valid scholarship; to deal with historical controversy with sensitivity but without resort to censorship or lies.

One of the glories of our American civilization is that we criticize ourselves openly. We do not hide our errors; we do not pretend to be perfect. We must be free to examine ourselves and others with the same degree of candor. If the bedrock principle of honesty is ejected from historical study, there will be no end to new demands by interest groups, no end to the clamor for politically correct “history.”