Lies My Teacher Told Me

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560) and available at no cost to
high school teachers, often treats pre-Columbian Native American societies.
My own 1992 book, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus
(New York: New Press, thenewpress.com), is a posterbook intended for
classroom use in early October; it introduces students to issues of
historiography and textbook analysis as well as the Great Navigator. Beverly
Slapin and Doris Seale, Through Indian Eyes, published by Oyate, contains
useful poetry and essays by Michael Dorris and other Native writers, a
checklist for evaluating books for their treatment of Indian issues, and an
extensive resource list. For teachers, Gary Nash’s Red, White, and Black
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1974) is a masterful overview of race
relations in colonial America.
The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the Smithsonian
Institution (A&I Building, Room 1163, MRC 402, Washington, D.C., 20560)
distributes Teaching the Constitution, a summary of their 1987 “Symposium
for Educators” by that title. It offers ways to use documents, projects to make
the issues come alive today, and a bibliography of resources for classroom
use. See also Teaching About the Bill of Rights (Bethesda, MD: Phi Alpha
Delta Public Service Center, c. 1987).
Histories of black-white race relations, such as African American History
by Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer (New York: Scholastic, 1990) on the
high school level and Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett (Baltimore:
Penguin, 1966 [1962]) and From Slavery to Freedom by John Hope Franklin
(New York: Knopf, 2000) on the advanced high school level relate to many
issues in American history. In 1994 the Anti-Defamation League (823 United
Nations Plaza, New York, NY, 10017) put out a new edition of David Shiman’s
The Prejudice Book, with classroom exercises on issues of race and gender
relations. Several books by James A. Banks have useful ideas, including
Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1987) and
Multiethnic Education: Theory and Practice (Boston: Allyn and Bacon,
1994). See also Carl A. Grant and Christine Sleeter, Turning On Learning
(Columbus, OH: Merrill, 1989). We Shall Overcome, PBS Frontline video (1-
800-328-7271), tells something of the impact of American antiracism
overseas.
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (1250 N. Pitt
St., Alexandria, VA, 22314-1453), concerned that textbooks ignore religious
ideas in our past, publishes a collection of primary documents by Charles C.