Kirby and Nancy B. Julian, “Treatment of Women in High School U.S. History
Textbooks,” Social Studies 72 (9/1981): 203-7; a special issue of Social
Education 51, no. 3 (3/1987); and earlier, J. W. Smith, An Appraisal of the
Treatment of Females in United States High School History Textbooks (PhD
diss., Indiana University, 1977), and Janice Law Trecker, “Women in U.S.
History High School Textbooks,” Social Education (March 1971): 249-60.
Also thought-provoking is Patricia Higgins, “New Gender Perspectives in
Anthropology,” Anthropology Notes 11, no. 3 (Fall 1989): 1-3, 13-15. Two
very readable books introduce women’s history effectively: Ruth Warren, A
Pictorial History of Women in America (New York: Crown, 1975), and
Elizabeth Janeway, ed., Women: Their Changing Roles (New York: Times/
Arno Press, 1973).
7 If you agree, email me at jloewen@ uvm.edu and bring them to my attention.
Please know that whatever omissions and distortions I have perpetuated here
have been accidental; to paraphrase Ernst Borinski, long-time professor of
sociology at Tougaloo College, “What I have not learned, I do not know.” If my
tone has been too certain, know, too, that my own conclusions, whether about
the causes of the War of 1812 or the effects of the civil rights movement, are
still in flux.
8 Postman and Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity; term used
throughout.
9 Neither do their teachers: several teachers I have met who taught from
Triumph of the American Nation never noticed that it mildly counters the flat-
earth notion, and continued to teach the myth to their high school students.
College professors, too, can miss facts that go against the archetypal grain.
After I lectured on the Pilgrims and the plague at a university in Atlanta, a
history professor came up to me, amazed to learn of the plague, and decried the
monograph from which he had learned colonial history for leaving out such an
important fact. We withdrew to his office so he could check sources to prove
to himself I was right about the plague; he grew further amazed to find the
plague story mentioned in precisely the book he had criticized for omitting it!
10 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Pantheon,
1954), 46.
11 For teachers, here are a few references to get you started. James Percoco, a
fine high school history teacher, has written two books of tips: A Passion for