Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts Over American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the Present

What makes us proud to be Americans? What historic traditions unite us? Moreau, who teaches history at New York City's Trinity School, demonstrates how the search for and conflicts over national identity have been presented in American children's textbooks. He bases his book on an analysis of more than 100 pre-college textbooks published from 1824 to the present. Moreau says the debate over what liberals call""multiculturalism"" or""inclusion"" and what conservatives denounce as""multicultural revisionism"" is long-standing and that""Americans have continually renegotiated their myths... in the changing content of textbooks."" Today, many teachers, politicians and even some historians believe the call for a multicultural history curriculum is a direct, spontaneous result of the social revolution of the 1960s. But Moreau disagrees, writing that minorities (including African-Americans, Native Americans, Catholics and Jews) have appeared and disappeared in our children's textbooks over the past 175 years, with their portrayals (or lack of them) depending on the views of the day's historians, politicians, parents and school boards. The textbooks yield some surprising findings. For example, Moreau refers to 19th-century textbooks that amply cover Native American cultures, with""detailed maps showing the dispersal of tribes and languages."" But later, in the 20th century, as historians stressed the economic advantages of westward expansion, it appears textbooks deemed""Indians"" to be""essentially irrelevant,"" Moreau notes. Although academic in tone, Moreau's work should attract historians, educators and politicians interested in establishing national teaching standards, as well as those interested in the history of American education. FYI: Diane Ravitch's The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn covered similar ground and makes a good complement to Moreau's more historical survey.