And your comments make me think of the way that the Texas School Board controls the textbooks in the United States. Since Texas has such a large population, textbook publishers basically cater to them, and all other states get stuck with the version of history (or science, or ...) that they approve. According to the "Need to Know" blog hosted by PBS station WNED, the TSB's version of history "emphasiz[es] the Christian influences of the nation’s founding fathers, highlight[s] conservative groups and personalities while downplaying liberal ones, and rewrit[es] common terms such as 'democratic' to fall more in line with standards the board deemed more conservative" (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/texas-school-board-approves-controversial-textbook-changes/954/). If memory serves, the TSB (or maybe just the committee in charge of social studies texts) is currently headed by a dentist...
History is powerful. The ability to control it and especially to teach it should concern everyone (in my opinion as a historian!).
This topic has been fascinating me ever since EDU 305. During EDU 305 we were assigned field placements, and were asked to teach the students(Obviously.) However, during the periods when it was a "study hall" I would grab one of the textbooks they were using. I was curious to see if I could find any type of content, that showed clear bias. Sure enough, when I looked at modern US History.... Two things hit me ---
ReplyDelete1) The book suggested that Global Warming was a myth, and that there was not sufficient evidence to prove it. This seems a rather bizarre claim, being that the book was published within the last five years. There is more than enough evidence (In Fact I believe it's over 95% of scientists have confirmed through research) that it is happening.
2) The war on terror was necessary. In this section they talked about George Bush needing to enact the war on terror, because of the threat of nuclear arsenals, and therefore this is why Saddam Hussein was such a threat. Now... For a period of time this might have been believed, but there was no objectivity to the book, it said it was NECESSARY!
However, as a soon to be History Teacher (I can only hope.) I have faith that this problem will actually begin to disappear. My argument is based on:
1) Younger generations are coming out more socially liberal and less religious: There has been a sharp decline in the population of America who are religious. While this may not necessarily change the textbook company and politicians -- it does mean a population who are not born to recognize Christianity's hegemony on America.
2) The internet: The internet has truly made finding information easy. The internet is a powerful source in fighting these companies, because more and more people are using the internet for their source material. This leads me to believe, that the false narrative of America will be refuted by the amount of material on the internet by historians and others that shows it not to be true. However, I'm not ignorant to the fact that the same argument could be made about spreading false-knowledge.
~This goes back to your final point about " The ability to control it and especially to teach it should concern everyone "
--> This will be key moving forward. The argument I made about fighting this issue, will only work with qualified historians who are teaching social studies. Students need to be able to work with accurate primary sources, and be able to judge material critically. I fully believe though, that moving forward if students are taught well enough -- they will see the false Christian narrative. Simply because, the Christian narrative doesn't actually make all that sense and to many contradictions would be caught.