CHAPTER 12: WHY IS HISTORY TAUGHT LIKE

THIS?

1 Herbert Butterfield, quoted in Stephen Vaughn, ed., The Vital Past (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1985), 222.

2 Marc Ferro, The Use and Abuse of History (Boston: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1981), 225.

3 Quoted in Joan DelFattore, What Johnny Shouldn’t Read (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1992), 120.

4 Brooks Mather Kelley, interview, 7/2006.

5 Textbook editor, interview, 7/2006.

6 The American Adventure has fewer than one note per chapter. Discovering
American History has no footnotes but does furnish marginal notes giving
sources for its longer quotations.

7 Robert Moore, Stereotypes, Distortions and Omissions in U.S. History
Textbooks (New York: Council on Interracial Books for Children, 1977);
Frances FitzGerald, America Revised (New York: Vintage, 1980); Gerald
Horne, ed., Thinking and Rethinking U.S. History (New York: Council on
Interracial Books for Children, 1988); Diane Ravitch and Chester E. Finn Jr.,
What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (New York: Harper and Row, 1987),
which did not single out textbooks but had harsh words for what students don’t
know about history; Harriet Tyson-Bernstein, A Conspiracy of Good
Intentions: American’s Textbook Fiasco (Washington, D.C.: Council for Basic
Education, 1988); Paul Gagnon, Democracy’s Half-Told Story (New York:
American Federation of Teachers, 1989); Chester E. Finn Jr. and Diane
Ravitch, The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption (Washington D.C.:
Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2004). Other critics have lambasted U.S. history
textbooks from specialized viewpoints; for instance, the 1982-83 Michigan
Social Studies Textbook Report (Lansing: Michigan State Board of Education,
1984) found seven textbooks deficient in their treatment of Canadian-U. S.
relations.
On the other hand, O. L. Davis Jr., et al., reviewed fifteen junior high and