Debating History for the Classroom :...

The texts are greatly improved over what we have today, but the publishers did not go far enough.

The first problem is ethnocentrism. The texts come from a European perspective, which is detrimental to the psyche of kids from other backgrounds. It’s detrimental to their esteem and their sense of belonging to society as a whole.

Also, some of the information is not truthful, or it is distorted. African-Americans have made many contributions that are not mentioned: advances in computers and open heart surgery and hundreds of inventions, such as making light bulbs more practical. The man who surveyed much of Washington, D.C. was black, and he is not mentioned. Contributions by Asians and Latinos are also missing.

There are some overtures made to African-Americans--about one short passage every 50 pages. But they look like an afterthought, like they were cut and pasted in. African-Americans’ story is not interwoven into history.

For instance on slavery, there is not much of a preface about the achievements of Africans before they were taken into slavery nor about how they have risen above it.

I can remember when slavery was mentioned in my 11th-grade history class in 1966. I would get real embarrassed and try to sink in my seat and hide, because the other students would look at me. Students still feel much the same way. We are taught that slavery is terrible, but it isn’t put into any historical perspective.

Rather than adopting these deficient textbooks now, it would be preferable to supplement the present books with other literature. Then we need to analyze how we teach social studies. We need to get away from the encyclopedia approach. We need to identify concepts and relate literature from a number of perspectives to those concepts.

Textbook publishers have been pulling the wool over our eyes for a long time. School boards have been discussing the need for textbooks to be more ethnically diverse for years. They will continue to do so until we say no.