Departments

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textbooks

  • 1/15/2023

    50 Years Ago, "Anti-Woke" Crusaders Came for My Grandfather

    by Max Jacobs

    In 1972, "Search for Freedom" was rejected for adoption in Texas classrooms after conservative activists launched a national media campaign to attack it as unamerican and corrupting. The author's grandfather wrote the book. 

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    10/26/2022

    Partisan Politics on a State Standards Revision

    by Stephen Jackson

    The South Dakota Department of Education discarded the recommendations of a work group of scholars, educators and elected officials in favor of a second group appointed by the governor, including political allies and an emeritus professor from Hillsdale College, seriously undermining rigor in the state social studies curriculum. 

  • SOURCE: New York Review of Books
    9/5/2022

    The Complicity of Textbooks in America's Racism

    by Eric Foner

    Donald Yacovone is an inheritor of the legacy of WEB DuBois, slogging through the nation's history textbooks to identify the propaganda of white supremacy, says reviewer Eric Foner.

  • SOURCE: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
    8/16/2022

    Texas District Removes Graphic Version of Diary of Anne Frank

    “It’s disgusting. It’s devastating. It’s legitimate book banning, there’s no way around it,” Laney Hawes, a parent of four children in the Keller district, told JTA about the order. “I feel bad for the teachers and the librarians.”

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    8/15/2022

    The Context of the New History Wars is Our Missing Sense of a Shared Past

    by Jonathan Zimmerman

    Grievances over secular issues like teaching racism have replaced Christian concerns over evolution and prayer in the battles over curriculum. Have advocates of progressive curricula opened the door to this attack by undermining a shared national historical narrative? 

  • SOURCE: Righting America
    8/4/2022

    Kathleen Wellman on How the Religious Right Hijacked History

    "These textbooks, unlike the work of historians, dismisses much of human history and denigrates most human accomplishments. Only human efforts undertaken to support 'biblical truth,' meaning evangelical Protestantism, are godly and have any value; all others reflect sinful 'humanism'."

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    5/19/2021

    When a Right-Wing Attack on Textbooks Was Stopped

    by Jonathan Zimmerman

    A McCarthy-era attack on a leading civics textbook fell short because of both organized resistance and the unpopularity of the ideas behind the ban. Supporters of academic freedom today can potentially draw on both of those elements, too. 

  • 2/20/2022

    Lessons from the History Textbook Wars of the 1920s

    by Bruce W. Dearstyne

    Historians helped defuse a national tempest over allegedly unpatriotic textbooks in the 1920s by explaining the nature of professional historical research, interpretation, and dissemination, and insisting on the right and duty of professionals to exert expertise. That kind of work is needed again today. 

  • SOURCE: Texas Standard
    5/19/2021

    Five Things Missing From Asian American History In Texas Schools

    KERA spoke to educators including historian Madeline Hsu about what Texas students are missing out on when it comes to Asian American history. They said the lack of diversity, notable figures and modern-day connection are some of the key issues.

  • 5/9/2021

    Are Campus Bookstores Undermining Student Learning?

    by Elizabeth Stice

    Today’s undergraduates are increasingly being cornered into ongoing financial commitments for everything, while they never take possession of anything. Rejecting digital book programs run by campus bookstores outsourced to third parties could help reverse this trend.

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    12/22/2020

    Billion-Dollar Book Companies Are Ripping Off Public Schools

    Although they tout the advantages of learning technology, major publishers exploit copyright law and licensing agreements to force school districts to pay $27 per student per year for temporary access to digital copies of books like "The Diary of Anne Frank."