“From its origins at the Gablers? kitchen table in Hawkins, Tex., in 1961 to its incorporation as Educational Research Analysts in 1973, the mom-and-pop textbook-criticism enterprise grew to occupy a prominent niche in the nation?s conservative pantheon. For more than four decades, the couple influenced what children read, not just in Texas but around the country.
“The reason was Texas’ power to be a national template; the state board chooses textbooks for the entire state, and of the 20 or so states that choose books statewide, only California is bigger than Texas. It is difficult and costly for publishers to put out multiple editions, so a book rejected by Texas might not be printed at all. . . Texas has the buying power to influence the development of teaching materials nationwide, and a textbook edition chosen for Texas often becomes the sole edition available.”
“The Gablers were first to seize on the Texas textbook process as a means of pushing their conservative principles, and their success baffled and angered civil liberties advocates and progressive educators. Publishers, with much to lose if Texas rejected their books, were often willing to make changes to please the Gablers.”
It sohuldnt be “who is doing it from our side of the aisle?” our goal should not be to hijack history for our own propaganda, and yes Ive seen textbooks in my Cambridge high school that was full of liberal biases and outright distortions (FDR could have stopped the holocaust). Instead we have a responsibility to tell true histroy and simply educate our children about that, no more propaganda in textbooks please!
I don’t believe so. And it will always be a struggle among various camps over what is in them (much like newspapers).
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And for the record, the US could have bombed the rail lines going to Aushevitz.
I’m reminded of our Liberal Talk Radio thread: So many liberals will listen to NPR and would not like a liberal equivalent of Limbaugh. “Our” side would be unlikely to try to replace U.S. History textbooks with Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United State but we would want to see a balanced and fair accounting: in other words both then Monroe Doctrine and its critics. Not the
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We folk on the left, we just don’t trust ourselves. Where’s your liberal pride?
in other words both then Monroe Doctrine and its critics. Not the Monroe Doctrine and a lot of flag waving.
With the Internet, schoolbook publishers could produce multiple versions of a textbook, for download (via PDF) over the Internet. It isn’t that complicated.
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Regarding the swipe at Japan, the way I put it is as follows. The Germans are incessant about their history (it’s true, particularly regarding the Holocaust). The Japanese want to deny their history (also true: they have never acknowledged their rape of Nanking Dec 1937-Mar 1938–the forgotten Holocaust of WWII). And the Americans want to ignore their history (the sequestering of the Amerinds in the reservations in the 1800s; so-called “manifest destiny”).
You make great points about Japan, Germany, etc.
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History is always written by the victors . . .
Turkey is also struggling with how to remember its role in the Armenian massacre. It’s one of the issues that frced the recent elections..
…that kind of distances the Zitat from the 3-way Haltung, which is much easier to comprehend. The US was never really an enemy of die Turkei. Japan, yes. Nazi Germany, Yes. And the Amerinds, most definitely, yes.
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So I simplify the matter.
It would help if you quoted one of them, because my book was just as much a fan of the politically correct drivel as the next. However, it was nice to see that it acknowledged that American law had a lot of basis in the 10 Commandments.
Re: Raj-I am quite sure the average school child knows that we slaughtered native americans, even the objective textbooks I read included that. Nobody is covering that one up.
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also the sentiment “we could have bombed the railines into Auschweitz” is in fact the exact liberal drivel that was in my shitty AP History textbook.
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a)they were in Poland our bombers could not penetrate
b)we would be killing Jews on those rail lines
c)they could easily rebuild the rail lines so it would have needlessly risked Americans in the air and Jews on the ground to delay and not stop the holocaust
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Had the French gone on the offensive during the Phony War it could have been avoided, but I do not buy the bombing railroads line at all.
Where did it acquire its ideological coloration?
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I haven’t seen this point debated before. I didn’t even think there was a controversy. (Cue praise for a life of learning.) Is this criticism particularly liberal? I can imagine various neo-conservatives arguing for this, just to pick on one species of conservative.
…exercised their powers under the Treaty of Versailles in 1936, when Hitler re-militarized the Rheinland, WWII in the European theater would probably have been avoided. The French and the British did not, of course, probably in part because more than a few of their elites were enamored of the Nazis.
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Why? Because the Nazies got rid of the trade unionists. That was why Henry Ford was enamored of the Nazis, too. Remember Rev. Niemoller’s famous Zitat? According to the Niemoller Stiftung (foundation) it went “first they came for the trade unionists…”
Ford was a horrid anti-semite Pre-WWII and actualy suffered a major nervous breakdown when footage of the camps were shown to him. He would compulsive watch them over and over again in his offic and cry. A terrible way to go out but I guess it was pain he earned through his anti-semetic writing and financial support to the regime. A lot of the elites were anti-semetic and enjoyed the facist outlook of the corporatist state, many even attempted a coup.
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Currently in my view both parties have very corporatist ideas that are incredibly dangerous and even though we arent at the facist level of totaltarianism yet, individual rights are being subjected for the needs of the collective, we are increasingly becoming indentified and subjected to corporate collectivization, our education systems are becoming tools of corporate recruitment, and our wars are being fought for corporate gain. Just something to think about. All my ranting in favor of the free market is in fact diametrically opposed to the chocking corporatism (when you really look at their values its something socialists and libertarians share)
hanging on the wall at the Holocaust Museum in Wash DC arguing against bombing is the key footnote to cite, in how we failed to act to stop the holocaust.
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What’s interesting is how this ties back with the notion that actual historical documents and the challenge of interpreting them.
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And how history is written by the victors.
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And how text books that pretend to be objective are political footballs.
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And how the way history is taught as a collection of facts is totally inadequate.