LAST WEEK, the Texas state board of education approved the history books that it would buy for its 4.2 million public school pupils. Due to its hefty share of the market, the textbooks Texas selects usually are adopted nationwide ("Remaking History," U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 25).
The current process whereby states vote on which books to buy and advocate changes to textbooks, leads to a censored version of history textbooks which is not the objective view of history that students should be taught.
Twenty-two states including Texas have "adoption" policies, where the state votes on what textbooks to purchase. Only California spends more on textbooks than Texas, but it does not vote on the high school level ones, leaving Texas to decide the fate of many of America's students in terms of what textbooks they read. Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, told U.S. News that a textbook being selected in Texas "is the first step in becoming a bestseller."
The statewide adoption system leads to censorship and political correctness, not an objective telling of American history. One recent textbook approved by Texas talks about the bravery of African-American sailor Dorie Miller at Pearl Harbor, but neglects to mention Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen, according to U.S. News. While the relatively unknown Miller was in fact a hero, this does not mean that he should be in a history textbook instead of Ethan Allen, who captured Fort Ticonderoga, a major event in the Revolutionary War. Both should be in the textbook, because otherwise it gives the possible impression that racial considerations caused the inclusion of Miller, while Allen was not mentioned in the textbook. This places politics over education and this is problematic for a number of reasons.
First off, there are plenty of minorities in American history who have played significant roles in the course of this nation's growth and could be mentioned. But one should not be mentioned because they are a minority or because they were brave or good or anything else. History textbooks should mention influential people in history. If in an objective view, the majority of people in history books are white males, this does not imply the racism or sexism of the textbook. Rather it shows the past inequalities in this country. But the current political correctness hurts the contents of these textbooks.
Sewall also told U.S. News that textbooks don't make exciting reading because the process often sanitizes the content of the books in an effort not to offend special interest groups.
According to U.S. News, Texas education board president Grace Shore thought including the fact that 50,000 women worked in the Old West as prostitutes was too provocative for high school students. Hispanic groups wanted passages detailing the valor of Mexican defenders of the Alamo.
Other special interest groups include creationists, who object to passages describing glaciers shaping the earth millions of years ago or traditionalists who want democracy and capitalism represented more favorably.
This process of giving in to special interest groups makes these textbooks ineffective teachers of American history. State curriculum standards add to the problem because they force textbooks to include a certain number of graphs, tables and charts. Former Oxford University President Bryon Hollinshead told U.S. News that what results from these revisions are, "glitzy textbooks that are totally unreadable."
Diane Ravitch, an education historian, told U.S. News that the only way to reform the process is "to get rid of the process itself" and allow teachers to choose their own textbooks. If teachers in this country are increasingly held accountable for their students' test scores, at least let them choose the textbooks which are supposed to educate these students. The alternative is the current situation, where American students know incredibly little about what should be one of the most important subjects they will ever learn.
The test scores of American children in history is pathetic. According to U.S. News, they score lower on history tests than in any other subject. Fewer than half of American high school seniors demonstrated basic knowledge of U.S. history on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress.
While there are certainly a number of problems which lead to such ignorance among young people in this country, having bad textbooks only hurts the problem.
History textbooks should not be an attempt to avoid offending anyone or to placate interest groups. History textbooks are supposed to teach history, something which they, as well as many educators, have apparently failed in.
(Harris Freier's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at hfreier@cavalierdaily.com.)
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