they feel defensive about the United States, especially in front of minority
students. Like authors, teachers can feel that they are supposed to defend and
endorse America. Even African American teachers may feel vaguely
threatened by criticism of America, threatened lest they be attacked, too.
Teachers naturally identify with the material they teach. Since the textbooks are
defensively boosterish about America, teachers who use them run the risk of
becoming defensively boosterish, too. Compare the happier state of the English
teacher, who can hardly teach, say, Langston Hughes’s mildly subversive poem
“Freedom Train” without becoming mildly subversive. Similarly, it is hard to
teach Holt American Nation without becoming mildly boring.
Social studies and history teachers often get less respect from colleagues
than faculty in other disciplines. When asked what subject might be dropped,
elementary school teachers mentioned social studies more often than any other
academic area.^81 Especially in the Midwest and South, high school principals
often assign history to coaches, who have to teach something, after all, since
there aren’t enough physical education classes to go around. Assigning
American history classes to teachers for whom history lies outside their field
of competence—which is the case for 60 percent of U.S. history teachers,
according to a nationwide study—obviously implies the subject is not
important or that “anyone can teach it.” History teachers also have higher class
loads than teachers of any other academic subject.^82
Students, too, consider history singularly unimportant. According to recent
research on student attitudes toward social studies, “Most students in the
United States, at all grade levels, found social studies to be one of the least
interesting, most irrelevant subjects in the school curriculum.”^83 Many teachers
sense what students think of their subject matter. All too many respond by
giving up inside—not trying to be creative, making only minimal demands,
simply staying ahead of their students in the book. Students, in turn, respond
“with minimal classroom effort,” and the cycle continues.^84
Relying on textbooks makes it easier for students as well as teachers to put
forth minimal effort. Textbooks’ innumerable lists—of main ideas, key terms,
people to remember, dates, skill activities, matching, fill in the blanks, and
review identifications—which appear to be the bane of students’ existence,
actually have positive functions. These lists make the course content look
rigorous and factual, so teachers and students can imagine they are learning
something. They make the teacher appear knowledgeable, whereas freer