More Global Approach to History Texts Discussed

About 60 educators, activists and book publishers gathered in a hotel meeting room Saturday to try to devise methods for broadening the conventional scope of history often represented in school textbooks.

Despite an air of optimistic cooperation, at least one educator described the task as being “against great odds.”

“Can we make the educational system more diverse if the modern world is still hegemonic?” asked Ali A. Mazrui, director of the Institute for Global Studies at the State University of New York, Binghamton. “Can we make it less Eurocentric if the wider world is still Eurocentric?”

The weekend gathering, called “Colloquium on World History,” was sponsored by the Fountain Valley-based Council on Islamic Education, which began eight years ago in part to try to change the way Islam and Islamic cultures are taught in U.S. schools.

The gathering, which concludes this morning, marks the first time the group has brought together non-Muslims, which executive director Shabbir Mansuri described as an attempt “to put textbooks in the hands of students so that they can learn about world history in the true sense of the world.”

Several representatives from textbook publishing houses took part in the sessions, and while some said they understood the gathering’s aim, they said the true target is wider than the publishers themselves.

“You give us more credit for power than we have,” Anne Falzone, editorial director for publisher Prentice/Hall, told the gathering, adding that curriculum outlines that dictate textbook content often are set by state education officials. “Textbooks are often driven by assessment. What is being tested is what is being taught. If integrated history is not asked on the test, then that is not what the teacher wants in the book.”

Sue Miller, executive editor of Holt, Rinehart & Winston, later defended textbook publishers, arguing that discussions on revamping how history is taught must also look at teachers.

“It doesn’t matter what we put in the textbooks,” she said during a morning break between sessions. “They still have to get it across in the classroom.”

Miller also said that many of the faults panelists found in textbooks were in older versions, and that textbook publishers have conscientiously tried to expand the scope of information in the latest editions.

Mansuri said he was pleased with the early results, which saw educators from different backgrounds talking frankly about limitations they find in conventional textbooks, but doing so in terms aimed at improving the material.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Mansuri said. “I wanted different groups to come together and give comments and suggestions rather than complaints. I’m very pleased with the spirit of coming together.”

While some panelists pointed to interactive videos, CD-ROMs and Internet sites as possible teaching tools for the future, others argued that presentation is irrelevant if basic perceptions of history remain unchanged.

“The format doesn’t matter so much as the material,” said David Whitehorse, director of professional programs at Cal State San Marcos’ College of Education. “History well-told is not the story well-told. It is framed by a particular lens. We can replicate the same problems on video or the Internet.”

Whitehorse, who said his ancestry includes Lakota Sioux, Comanche and Irish, presented copies of maps from history textbooks that show the conventional perception of the westward progression of settlers, fulfilling the 19th century U.S. concept of Manifest Destiny.

Then Whitehorse substituted a hand-drawn map of his own that reflects migratory patterns ignored in the textbook: Spanish and Mexican settlements moving up the West Coast; Russians, English and Spanish in the Northwest; French and Spanish up the Mississippi River; a flow of French and English down from Canada.

“The Pawnees [who lived in present-day Nebraska] have artifacts from battles with conquistadors,” Whitehorse said, adding the artifacts evidence cultural collisions and American histories not taught to young Americans. “We have presented history in an inaccurate way because we have used a single lens.”

In a related vein, Gaya Shakes, a high school English teacher in Rochester, N.Y., pointed out inadvertent but critical errors in teaching material provided to teachers, ranging from highlighting the only white musician included in a 20-person anthology of otherwise African American jazz greats, to benign portraits of life for blacks in the American South during slavery and in South Africa under apartheid.

In the latter instances, Shakes said, efforts to avoid offending people leave students with an unclear understanding of historic context.

“It’s this benign image where you never get down to the grit and the dirt,” she said. “We have done token inclusions, but we have not decided we’re going to have integrity about how we’re going to integrate other peoples’ literature.”

Yet Miller, from Holt Rinehart & Winston, pointed out that textbooks have inherent limitations.

“I’m not sure you can get all that,” she said, referring to broader concepts of history, “and keep a textbook under a thousand pages.”