44 CHAPTER 2 | FRom REAding As A WRiTER To WRiTing As A REAdERWhat are some strategies to cope with the cross-cutting demands
on history textbooks? Three possible ones are these: muddling
through with modest improvements; turning over the task of writing
textbooks to experts; or devising texts that depart from the model of
state-approved truths and embrace instead the taking of multiple per-
spectives. Each of these has some advantages and faults that are worth
contemplating.
Muddling through may seem sensible to people who believe that
there is a vast gap between superheated policy talk about the defects of
textbooks and the everyday reality teachers face in classrooms. Is all the
debate over bad textbooks a dust-devil masquerading as a tornado? For
many teachers, the big challenge is to prepare students for high-stakes
tests they must take for graduation, and textbooks are a key resource in
that task.
Teachers tend to find the status quo in textbooks more bearable than
do the critics. When a sample of classroom teachers was asked their
opinion of the textbooks they used, they generally said that the books
are good and getting better. Teachers rely heavily on textbooks in their
instruction, employing them for about 70 percent of class time.
A commonsense argument for muddling through, with gradual
improvement of textbooks, is that pedagogical reforms rarely work
well if they are imposed on teachers. Study after study has shown
that teachers tend to avoid controversy in teaching American history
(indeed, being “nonpartisan” is still judged a virtue, as it was in the
past). And parents and school board members, like teachers, have their
own ideas about what is “real history.” Too sharp a turn in the his-
torical highway might topple reform. So some teachers argue that the
best way to improve education is to keep the old icons and welcome
the newcomers in the textbooks. And hope that the students in fact do
read the textbooks! Common sense — that’s the way to cope amid all the
confusion.
An alternate approach to reform of textbooks is to set good state
or local standards for history courses and turn the writing of text-
books over to experts — an approach used in many nations and some-
times advocated in the United States today. Muddling through just
maintains the status quo and guarantees incoherence in textbooks
and hence in learning. In the current politics and commerce of text
publishing, “truth” becomes whatever the special interests (left or
right) pressure textbook companies to say. Current textbooks are
often victims of commercial timidity, veto groups, and elephantiasis
(888 pages!).
What is missing, proponents of this view argue, is a clear set of national
standards about what students should know and a vivid and cogent text567891002_GRE_5344_Ch2_029_054.indd 44 11/19/14 4:03 PM