An observation on what sounds like an interesting article:
As I chat with diverse people on Facebook, I run into those educated "in
the south", who were clearly the product of bad textbooks! And it is
interesting that they all graduated armed with the firm belief that
anything contrary is "revisionist" and to be dismissed.
I would like to see textbooks replaced by use of online sources for
information. Instead of doing Chapter 12, students could study, label,
and rank the Founding Fathers. Seems the Internet could be a means of
giving students access to the "best in their field" ...
Anne
On 3/21/2012 2:55 PM, Tarter, Brent (LVA) wrote:
> I have just received a copy of the current issue of Civil War History
> that contains a very interesting article by Carol Sheriff, "Virginia's
> Embattled Textbooks: Lessons (Learned and Not) from the Centennial Era,"
> Civil War History 58 (March 2012): 37-74. A professor at the College of
> William and Mary, Sheriff (with the aid of her daughter) brought to
> public attention in the autumn of 2010 the fourth grade Virginia history
> book that contained a great many factual and interpretive errors,
> leading ultimately to the removal of the textbook from the state's list
> of approved texts.
>
> Looking for reasons why that book was defective led Sheriff to the
> records of the Virginia State Textbook Commission that oversaw the
> publication of three standard Virginia textbooks during the 1950s, books
> that were controversial in their time and were withdrawn during the
> 1970s. Sheriff's article traces how the state's ham-fisted attempt to
> dictate the contents of textbooks in the 1950s ultimately left the field
> wide open for publishers to issue textbooks without proper vetting for
> accuracy or reliance on the best available scholarship.
>
> It is fascinating reading, which I highly recommend to everybody, not
> only to people who have a particular interest in the Civil War period,
> because the article is not about that, only, or even chiefly. It is
> about textbooks and education.
>
> Brent Tarter
> The Library of Virginia
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at
> http://www.lva.virginia.gov
>
>
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--
Anne Pemberton
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http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
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