Which of the Following Myths About the American Family Was Not Mentioned in Your Textbook?
We analyzed some of the virtually popular social studies textbooks used in California and Texas. Here'south how political divides shape what students larn nearly the nation's history.
The textbooks encompass the same sweeping story, from the brutality of slavery to the struggle for ceremonious rights. The self-axiomatic truths of the founding documents to the waves of clearing that reshaped the nation.
The books have the same publisher. They credit the same authors. Simply they are customized for students in dissimilar states, and their contents sometimes diverge in means that reflect the nation's deepest partisan divides.
Hundreds of differences — some subtle, others extensive — emerged in a New York Times analysis of 8 commonly used American history textbooks in California and Texas, 2 of the nation's largest markets.
In a country that cannot come to a consensus on central questions — how restricted capitalism should be, whether immigrants are a brunt or a boon, to what extent the legacy of slavery continues to shape American life — textbook publishers are defenseless in the middle. On these questions and others, classroom materials are non merely shaded past politics, but are also helping to shape a generation of future voters.
Conservatives have fought for schools to promote patriotism, highlight the influence of Christianity and celebrate the founding fathers. In a September voice communication, President Trump warned against a "radical left" that wants to "erase American history, shell religious liberty, indoctrinate our students with left-fly ideology."
The left has pushed for students to encounter history more from the ground up than from the top down, with a focus on the experiences of marginalized groups such as enslaved people, women and Native Americans.
The books The Times analyzed were published in 2016 or afterwards and have been widely adopted for 8th and 11th graders, though publishers declined to share sales figures. Each text has editions for Texas and California, among other states, customized to satisfy policymakers with dissimilar priorities.
"At the end of the day, it'south a political process," said Jesús F. de la Teja, an emeritus professor of history at Texas State University who has worked for the country of Texas and for publishers in reviewing standards and textbooks.
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The differences between country editions can be traced back to several sources: state social studies standards; state laws; and feedback from panels of appointees that huddle, in Sacramento and Austin hotel conference rooms, to review drafts.
Requests from textbook review panels, submitted in painstaking item to publishers, bear witness the sometimes granular means that ideology can influence the writing of history.
A California panel asked the publisher McGraw-Hill to avert the utilize of the word "massacre" when describing 19th-century Native American attacks on white people. A Texas panel asked Pearson to point out the number of clergy who signed the Annunciation of Independence, and to land that the nation's founders were inspired by the Protestant Bang-up Awakening.
All the members of the California panel were educators selected by the State Board of Teaching, whose members were appointed past former Gov. Jerry Dark-brown, a Democrat. The Texas console, appointed by the Republican-dominated State Board of Education, was made up of educators, parents, business representatives and a Christian pastor and politico.
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McGraw-Hill, the publisher whose annotated Bill of Rights appears differently in the 2 states, said it had created the additional wording on the Second Amendment and gun command for the California textbook. A national version of the pages is similar to the Texas edition, which does not phone call attending to gun rights, the company said in a written statement.
Pearson, the publisher whose Texas textbook raises questions virtually the quality of Harlem Renaissance literature, said such language "adds more than depth and nuance."
Critical linguistic communication almost nonwhite cultural movements also appears in a Texas book from McGraw-Colina. It is partly a event of debates, in 2010, between conservative and liberal members of the Texas Board of Education over whether state standards should mention cultural movements similar hip-hop and country music. Their compromise was to ask teachers and textbook publishers to accost "both the positive and negative impacts" of creative movements.
Texas struck that requirement in 2018, but its most recent textbooks, published in 2016, volition reflect it for years to come.
Publishers are eager to please state policymakers of both parties, during a challenging time for the business organization. Schools are transitioning to digital materials. And with the ease of internet research, many teachers say they prefer to curate their own primary-source materials online.
How Textbooks are Produced
1 Authors, frequently academics, write a national version of each text.
two Publishers customize the books for states and large districts to meet local standards, often without input from the original authors.
3 Country or district textbook reviewers go over each book and ask publishers for farther changes.
iv Publishers revise their books and sell them to districts and schools.
Withal, recent textbooks have come a long fashion from what was published in by decades. Both Texas and California volumes bargain more bluntly with the cruelty of the slave merchandise, eschewing several myths that were common in textbooks for generations: that some slave owners treated enslaved people kindly and that African-Americans were better off enslaved than free. The books also devote more space to the women'due south movement and balance the narrative of European immigration with stories of Latino and Asian immigrants.
"American history is non anymore the story of great white men," said Albert S. Broussard, a history professor at Texas A&M Academy and an author of both the Texas and California editions of McGraw-Hill's textbooks.
Here is how the politics of American history play out in California and Texas textbooks, on subjects like race, clearing, gender, sexuality and the economy.
White resistance to black progress is covered differently in the two states.
McGraw-Colina, "United States History & Geography: Continuity and Alter," California, P. 505
California notes the suburban dream of the 1950s was inaccessible to many African-Americans.
McGraw-Colina, "Usa History Since 1877," Texas, P. 436
Texas does not.
California and Texas textbooks sometimes offer dissimilar explanations for white backlash to blackness advancement after the Civil State of war, from Reconstruction to housing discrimination in the 20th century.
Southern whites resisted Reconstruction, co-ordinate to a McGraw-Hill textbook, because they "did not desire African-Americans to have more rights." Merely the Texas edition offers an additional reason: Reforms cost money, and that meant higher taxes.
Whole paragraphs on redlining and restrictive deeds appear only in the California editions of textbooks, partly as a consequence of different state standards. Texas' social studies guidelines do not mention housing discrimination at all.
Texas says that white Southerners opposed Reconstruction considering of tax increases too as racial resentment. California instead includes primary-source quotations from black historical figures about white resistance to civil rights.
McGraw-Colina, "United States History & Geography: Growth & Conflict," California, P. 586; McGraw-Hill, "United States History to 1877," Texas, P. 555
Both states say that breaches of "racial etiquette" led to lynchings after Reconstruction. But only California, whose edition was written more recently, makes clear that the perpetrators of lynchings also hoped to discourage blackness political and economical ability.
HMH, "American History: Reconstruction to the Present," California, P. 245; HMH, "The Americans: Usa History Since 1877," Texas, P. 288
Nevertheless, Kerry Green, a high schoolhouse social studies teacher in Sunnyvale, Tex., a small boondocks east of Dallas, said she discussed redlining with her 11th graders, adding it every bit a counterpoint to lessons about postwar prosperity — the optimistic story of consumerism, television and the Baby Smash that is emphasized by her country'southward standards.
Ms. Green said she preferred to assign master sources that "encourage students to explore history on their own." But she said she would welcome textbooks that contain more historical documents and a greater multifariousness of voices and themes from the past.
"The textbook companies are not gearing their textbooks toward teachers; they're gearing their textbooks toward states," she said.
On gender and sexuality, California textbooks include history that is not in Texas editions.
McGraw-Colina, "United States History & Geography: Growth & Conflict," California, P. 624
California states that the federal regime failed to recognize nonbinary gender identities and female leaders in its early relations with Native Americans.
McGraw-Colina, "United States History Since 1877," Texas, P. 111
Texas does non mention gender roles or gender identity in its word of efforts to "Americanize" Native Americans.
In Texas textbooks, mentions of 50.One thousand.B.T.Q. bug tend to be restricted to coverage of events in contempo decades, such as the Stonewall uprising, the AIDS crisis and debates over marriage rights.
But for recent California editions, publishers wrote thousands of words of new text in response to the FAIR Education Human activity, a law signed past Governor Brown in 2011. It requires schools to teach the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and disabled Americans.
Peppered throughout California books are passages on topics like same-sex activity families under slavery and early sex reassignment surgery in the 1950s — text that does non appear in Texas versions.
California states that enslaved women faced sexual violence from owners and overseers.
McGraw-Hill, "United States History & Geography: Growth & Disharmonize," California, P. 449; McGraw-Colina, "United States History to 1877," Texas, P. 443
California mentions the "lavender scare" that targeted thousands of gay men and lesbians.
Pearson, "United states of america History: The Twentieth Century," California, P. 486; Pearson, "Usa History: 1877 to Present," Texas, P. 456.
California states that Alfred Kinsey's research and early sex reassignment surgeries challenged "the postwar platonic" on gender.
Pearson, "United States History: The Twentieth Century," California, P. 498; Pearson, "United states History: 1877 to Present," Texas, P. 470.
Both states focus on women's fight against discrimination in the workplace. But California says birth control played a office, past "assuasive women to exert greater control over their sexuality and family planning."
McGraw-Loma, "United States History & Geography: Continuity and Change," California, P. 627; McGraw-Loma, "United States History Since 1877," Texas, P. 525.
Stephanie Kugler, an eighth-grade history teacher in West Sacramento, Calif., said she had expanded an idea mentioned briefly in her classroom'due south textbook, almost women who dressed as men to fight in the Civil State of war and continued to live as men, into an entire lesson on troops who today would be considered transgender. The students read accounts of those soldiers' lives alongside more traditional sources, such as letters written by a black Union soldier and a Confederate soldier.
Her goal, Ms. Kugler said, was to "go far really authentic" to talk about diversity in the context of each historical period.
While both states devote many pages to the women's movement, Texas books, in general, avert discussions of sex or sexuality.
Immigration and nativism are major themes in American history textbooks.
McGraw-Loma, "United States History & Geography: Continuity and Change," California, P. 736
California includes an extract from a novel about a Dominican-American family.
McGraw-Hill, "United states History Since 1877," Texas, P. 609
In the aforementioned place, Texas highlights the vocalism of a Edge Patrol agent.
Michael Teague, a Border Patrol agent, is featured in the Texas edition of McGraw-Hill's 11th class textbook. He discusses his concerns about drug trafficking and says, "if yous open up the border wide upward, y'all're going to invite political and social upheaval."
Mr. Teague's story is featured at the cease of a chapter on contempo immigration, alongside accounts from a Vietnamese immigrant and a second-generation Mexican-American.
That section in the California edition of the aforementioned book is devoted to a long excerpt from the novel "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents," by Julia Alvarez. It deals with intergenerational tensions in a Dominican-American family unit.
In a written argument, McGraw-Hill said the full-page Border Patrol narrative was not included in the California edition because information technology would non fit beside the literary excerpt. And at the time the Texas edition was produced, six years ago, land standards chosen for students to clarify both "legal and illegal clearing to the United states."
In contrast, California textbooks are more than likely to note when a historical effigy was an immigrant. And they include more detail on the office immigrants such as Japanese and Filipino farmworkers played in labor movements.
California is one of many states to ask teachers and textbooks in contempo years to embrace the contributions of specific immigrant groups, including Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders, European-Americans and Mexican-Americans.
Only California states that Levi Strauss was a High german Jewish immigrant.
McGraw-Hill, "United States History & Geography: Growth & Conflict," California, P. 416; McGraw-Hill, "United States History Since 1877," Texas, P. 417
California tells the story of Wong Kim Ark, whose 1898 Supreme Courtroom instance established birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants; Texas's edition, which is older, does not mention this case, merely does cover the Chinese Exclusion Act.
HMH, "American History: Reconstruction to the Present," California, P. 247; HMH, "The Americans: U.s.a. History Since 1877," Texas, P. 289
These additions are role of the reason California books are almost always longer than their Texas counterparts.
California'southward Board of Education adopted an expansive 842-page social studies framework in 2016. Two years afterwards, Texas' school board streamlined its social studies standards, which are now laid out in 78 tightly compressed pages.
Critics of California's approach say that making state standards and textbooks longer and more inclusive can exist overwhelming to teachers trying to move quickly through hundreds of years of material.
Both states emphasize the role of big business from the Gilded Age to the present.
HMH, "American History: Reconstruction to the Nowadays," California, P. 160
California is critical of wealth inequality and the touch on of companies like Standard Oil on the surroundings.
HMH, "The Americans: U.s. History Since 1877," Texas, P. 235
Texas is more than likely to celebrate free enterprise and entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie.
Texas policymakers feel strongly about giving students a positive view of the American economic system; since 1995, state law has required that loftier school economics courses offer an "emphasis on the gratuitous enterprise system and its benefits." That emphasis seems to have made its mode into the history curriculum as well.
California'southward curriculum materials, by contrast, sometimes read like a brief from a Bernie Sanders rally. "The yawning gap between the haves and have-nots and what is to be done near information technology is one of the keen questions of this time," says the state's 2016 social studies framework.
Every bit a result, California textbooks are more than likely to gloat unionism, critique the concentration of wealth and focus on how manufacture pollutes the environment.
California refers to "the income gap" and explains that "changes in taxation structures and safety-cyberspace programs" and "higher costs for education, child intendance, and housing" played a role. Both land editions discuss economic inequality in reference to the Occupy Wall Street motility and the decline of labor unions.
Pearson, "United states of america History: The Twentieth Century," California, P. 728; Pearson, "United states History: 1877 to Present," Texas, P. 687.
The older Texas edition highlights additional Republican critiques of President Barack Obama's environmental policies, while the California book discusses the threat of rising sea levels.
Pearson, "United states of america History: The Twentieth Century," California, P. 749; Pearson, "U.s. History: 1877 to Nowadays," Texas, P. 709.
Both the California and Texas 11th-grade textbooks from Pearson state, "The main argument against environmental legislation is that information technology hurts the economy and the nation's industries."
The Texas edition goes further to highlight criticism of federal efforts to subsidize the dark-green energy industry: "Republicans charge the regime of wasting taxpayers' money, for example past supporting the failed solar manufacturer Solyndra." The Solyndra controversy was a fixation for conservatives in 2011, when the company went broke after accepting half a billion dollars in federally guaranteed loans.
The Texas book also states that American action on global warming may not make a difference if China, Republic of india, Russia and Brazil do not also act.
The California edition does not mention Solyndra or the other nations. However, information technology does include a section on the threat to American states and cities from rising ocean levels, noting that the impact on tourism in Florida could hurt that state's economic system, and that transportation networks and buildings could be threatened.
Pearson said in a written statement that the differences between the books could be attributed mostly to the fact that the California book was published several years later on, and that concerns over coastal flooding have become "more than heightened in recent years."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/12/us/texas-vs-california-history-textbooks.html
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