SubscribeThe book doesn't pull any punches. For example in the very first chapter, while talking about all the gold and silver Spain was getting from the New World, we're shown the living conditions of young children working down in the mines. The book doesn't go into graphic detail, but it does mention the warts of history, times and places where evil things happened.
Be warned, in many ways this is a sad book, it focuses mainly on the wars, revolutions, and civil strife over the last 150 years. This is probably its biggest weakness. The book makes little mention of positive things that have happened over the last 150 years. Most of the discussions of changes in technology, business, or other areas of life have to do with how the changes affected war.
... The books, written by Joy Hakim, an independent writer and grandmother from Virginia, are a refreshing exception in the otherwise bleak textbook scene. A former schoolteacher and journalist, Hakim was appalled by the dullness of the textbooks she saw and decided she could do a better job herself. As she began writing her first book, she tested it on children at a local Virginia elementary school and she paid them to comment on her manuscript, marking passages that were interesting, dull, or unclear.The article ("The Betrayal of History," by Alexander Stille) also has some interesting comments about the current sad state of American history textbooks.
Even though she was only circulating computer printouts, other classes that were using regular textbooks began asking to use her book. While virtually all the other textbooks are written by committees in as neutral a tone as possible, and do little more than present a series of events, dates, and people, Hakim tried to make story-telling central to her work. Her books have a distinctive personal voice and are enjoyable to read. They have been praised by, among many others, cultural conservatives such as Lynne Cheney, back-to-basics educators such as Diane Ravitch, liberal teachers in inner-city schools, and prominent professional historians. ("I was impressed by the accuracy and the depth of her research," said James McPherson, a professor of American history at Princeton University.) And while Hakim's books contain more of the traditional subjects of American history than others, they also include more about women and minorities. In this respect, McPherson told me, "I thought her book did a good job of inclusiveness without being obtrusive."
It is not politics, however, that sets A History of US apart, it is its prose. Hakim believes in the value of narrative history for children. She was impressed by a study showing that children retained far more of what they read when the texts were written by professional writers rather than education specialists. Three pairs of writers—composition instructors, linguists, and Time-Life journalists—were all asked to rewrite the same passages from a widely used history textbook. The texts by the education specialists produced no improvement in students' comprehension, while students retained 40 percent more from the passages written by the two professional journalists.
"In trying to avoid anything that might be offensive to either the left or the right, we were reduced to producing totally bland, middle-of-the-road pabulum," says one Macmillan/McGraw-Hill editor who, unsurprisingly, was not eager to be identified. ...
Many of the changes urged by this or that pressure group can be justified and defended, but the overall result is what has been aptly called a "conspiracy of good intentions"; the need to please or not offend every possible constituency has paralyzed textbook writers. Each paragraph is a carefully negotiated compromise, making it virtually impossible for a textbook to have a distinctive voice, not to mention humor, moral outrage, or evocative prose.
"It is a process that is destined to produce a dumbed-down product," says Byron Hollinshead, the head of American Historical Publications, and formerly president of American Heritage and Oxford University Press. "The Harvard Education Letter," he told me, "once compared textbooks to pet food. Pet food is not really concocted for pets, it's meant to appeal to pet owners. Textbooks are not written for children, they are written for textbook committees who flip through them to make sure they have the right ethnic balance and the proper buzz words."
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
Check for home-school supply places for history textbooks? They have pictures and charts!
posted by disillusioned at 7:26 PM on September 18, 2006