EXPLAINER: Institutional racism persists through textbook design
In an effort to tackle the issues of racism and anti-blackness of the present, educators look to the past for answers. However, America’s past and the way it is portrayed in textbooks can fall short because the teaching of history is political.
Early guerilla textbook revisionism/activism and the UDC
While scholars and politicians have contributed some of the historical inaccuracies and whitewashing of history, since at least the late-1800s, there has been an active effort to push against any account of history that does not uphold white supremacy.
Before book burnings were more widely used, community organizers and activists like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) implemented some of the most effective ways to spread lies about what the organization considered real history. The current UDC website states that one of its goals is “to collect and preserve the material for a truthful history of the War Between the States.” Its textbook revisionism campaign had some of the most enduring effects on the teaching of history to students.
The Rutherford Committee, created in 1919 at a reunion of the United Confederate Veterans, brought together the UDC and other Confederate heritage associations. This committee published pamphlets and small booklets for creating and sustaining the “Lost Cause” mythology. The mythos includes various inaccuracies like slavery was beneficial for Black people, abolitionists lied about the realities of slavery and that the Ku Klux Klan were the protectors of an endangered white race.
The Rutherford Committee literature directed librarians and community members to reject and/or deface books that did not comply with the committee’s standards rooted in white supremacy. Other groups like the short-lived Women of the Klu Klux Klan enacted their own methods of guerilla textbook revisionism.
Though UDC is often cited for its legacy in the distribution of memorials and statues to Confederate soldiers, it remains referenced because of the mobilization of the organization and its lasting impact. Its work supplemented the whitewashing and inaccurate historical revisionism that was carried out by politicians, scholars, community leaders and teachers among others.
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Where the story starts and when the story ends
If students were to rely on the history of the United States based on textbooks and films, it would appear that Black people only are of note and active in their suffrage twice: on the eve of the Civil War and in the middle of the second major civil rights wave in the 1960s. Other marginalized groups like those of Latinx and Asian heritage are mentioned less. A 2015 study from Pennsylvania State University found that 87% of content taught in K-12 about Indigenous communities fails to tell anything past the 19th century. Some children grow up believing that Indigenous people are extinct.
Lisa Jones, professor of multicultural education and department chair of counseling, special education and diversity, previously taught high school in the past and saw firsthand how students interpret their limited representation in textbooks.
“What this says is, it sends the message that you are not important enough. That your narrative, your personal history, your historical history – is not seen as valuable.”
“When students don’t get to see that history or it is just ‘that one chapter,’ the joke is that the [chapter] is always called ‘Trouble Ahead: The Civil Rights Era,’” said Christina Cedillo, assistant professor of writing and rhetoric. “Trouble for who? We’ve been having trouble this whole time.”
Cedillo notes that “this chapter” often comes at the end of the textbooks so students do not “even get [to cover the entirety of the civil rights movement].”
Texas’ influence on textbooks
The Texas textbook market is the second largest in the country. In 2014, a debate on different aspects of Texas-approved curriculum became a nationwide discussion, with the cause of the Civil War being the most discussed aspect.
The Texas State Board of Education’s ruling made teachers teach that state’s rights were the cause of the Civil War as opposed to the abolition of slavery. This teaching fails to reconcile that the Civil War was fought for the states’ rights to decide if Americans could own other human beings. The first Ordinance of Secession, published by the Confederate States of America, disproves anything slavery was the main cause fo the Civil War. The document outlines the reasons South Carolina left the U.S. and cites slavery 18 times.
During Summer 2020, students from the Greater Houston area launched a petition to update what is taught in eighth and 11th grade history. The Texas Board of Education is not set to review curriculum standards for social studies until 2023 and changes, if any, would be implemented years later.
“Today you have state governments like Arkansas in the news trying to monitor higher education,” said Anne Gessler, clinical assistant professor of first-year seminar and humanities.
“Monitoring what they are teaching and the materials they’re distributing to their courses, particularly those who are teaching critical race theory. You see the questioning of academic freedom. There is definitely a government presence in shaping the materials that you read in the public primary and secondary schools. That filters up into the college level as well.”
What is happening now
The push and pull of correcting textbooks and teaching a more accurate representation of history with printed materials continues.
Textbook publishers, including Pearson, McGraw Hill and Cengage, had materials in the 2010s called out online for racist and/or whitewashed depictions of history. Some of these were in textbook materials and others in supplementary learning materials, like a worksheet associated with Pearson where students had to list the pros and cons of being an enslaved person.
Publishing, like other industries, spoke out in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement in Summer 2020. While the publishers promised change, schools cannot afford to replace textbooks regularly. Some of these books will have longer shelf lives when they are housed in libraries and other community spaces.
What can be done
Gessler, Jones and Cedillo were each asked what could be done to address the issue of whitewashing textbooks.
As educators:
“Culturally responsive pedagogy talks about how we need to change our classrooms to meet the needs of a diverse student population,” Jones said. “We can’t keep teaching how we used to teach. That doesn’t work. You are losing a lot of narrative that plays very valuable roles in history.”
Jones, Cedillo and Gessler emphasized different elements of this pedagogy like student-centered learning and the teacher’s role as a facilitator.
“It doesn’t matter what field you are in,” Cedillo said. “Who are you going to center and who do you want your work to matter to? Do the materials here help you in that goal? Otherwise you can be as multicultural as you want but still be racist in your approach.”
Jones acknowledged that K-12 teachers are under pressure to teach to the test and keep numbers up, however she said “you still have to put the work in when you see there is something missing from that curriculum.”
Cedillo and Gessler also encouraged the use of primary documents as a method of counteracting inaccuracies in textbooks.
“Instructors have a responsibility to be critical consumers of information,” Cedillo said.
As civic participants:
“As a community member, follow what is happening at the local school board, because from primary to secondary school they will be talking about textbooks or guidelines for textbooks,” Gessler said. “Go to those meetings.”
Gessler said to follow the “Educating for Democracy Act of 2020.” This bipartisan piece of legislation was introduced to Congress by Chris Coons of Delaware and John Cornyn of Texas.
“If it were passed it would provide $1 billion a year for five years to improve civic and history instruction to primary and secondary schools,” Gessler said.
Gessler explained the bill is intended to address issues of inequity, erasure and make people feel invested as practitioners of democracy.
“We are all civic actors,” said Gessler. “We have a responsibility as citizens or residents of this country to participate in our civic institution.”
“Speak up and empower yourself with knowledge, “ Jones said. “At the end of the day we all need to become social advocates. We need to be able to see what is going on and address how that would look like [if done correctly].”
For more information
Academic journals and books
Books
- “Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (New Perspectives on the History of the South)” by Karen L. Cox
Academic Articles and Journals
Documentaries and videos
Documentaries
- PBS’s “The Revisionaries” (2013)
- PBS’s “Birth of a Movement” (2017)
Videos
- “How the ‘Lost Cause’ narrative became American history” Washington Post
- “Two states. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories” The New York Times
- “Lost Chapter” Vox Media
- “What children learn about African-American history depends on where they live” CBS Morning
- “How objective is your history textbook? | Jihyeon Kim | TEDxYouth@ISPrague” TEDx Talks
