Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado Volume 3 Article 9 Number 2 McNair Special Issue
January 2013 Censorship in History Textbooks: How Knowledge of the Past is Being Constructed in Schools Tyler Brunner
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Recommended Citation Brunner, Tyler (2013) "Censorship in History Textbooks: How Knowledge of the Past is Being Constructed in Schools," Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado: Vol. 3 : No. 2 , Article 9. Available at: http://digscholarship.unco.edu/urj/vol3/iss2/9
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship & Creative Works @ Digital UNC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ursidae: The ndeU rgraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado by an authorized editor of Scholarship & Creative Works @ Digital UNC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Brunner Brunner: Censorship in History Textbooks: How Knowledge of the Past is Being Constructed in Schools
Censorship in History Textbooks: How Knowledge of the Past is Being Constructed in Schools Tyler Brunner Mentors: Molly Desjardins, Ph.D., English Language & Fritz Fischer, Ph.D., History
Abstract: Pressure groups organized around political correctness and religious conservatism lead textbook publishers to self-censor. Such self-censorship ultimately results in dry, unenlightening textbooks. Lifeless material draws education away from more developed forms of teaching history. This study demonstrates how textbook publishers' censoring textbooks fosters a teaching of history that degrades knowledge and promotes specific ideologies.
Keywords: censorship, education, history, textbooks
The purpose of the following article is to The following study focuses primarily on high examine how pressure groups organized around school history textbooks. Though the divisions political correctness and religious conservatism between middle school and high school textbooks lead textbook publishers to self-censor. Such self- are often blurred, as well as the divisions between censorship enacted by publishers ultimately high school and college textbooks, the main results in dry, unenlightened prose in modern concern in this paper is with high school textbooks. Covert forms of censorship, finding textbooks due to the fact high school textbooks leverage in the effects of commodification, are more affected by the current construction of adversely affect the teaching of history. Dull text educational curriculum than textbooks associated textbooks points to censorship’s present with lower grade levels and also due to the fact infiltration of school curriculum. Lifeless, that high school is the highest level of education to be reached by a sizeable number of the nation’s uninformative material draws education away from conceivably more highly-developed forms of population. High school textbooks are the last teaching history. This study demonstrates how the certified material one-half of non-college bound censoring of textbooks fosters a teaching of adolescents will encounter that might actually history that degrades knowledge and promotes the fully articulate for them “the order and meaning ideologies of pressure groups. of U.S. history, world history, and society” (Perlmutter qt. in Maoz 2). As a result, at the high High school textbooks offer researchers many school level history textbooks account for our benefits in completing an in-depth, analytical society’s knowledge base in terms of the past and investigation into the construction of knowledge its functions within the present more so than at as it is employed through means of education. By any other grade level. And, being that the last time the time students reach high school they are many see history is at a point in their adolescence considered old enough to be able to grasp when they are still rather susceptible to believe important moral and ideological concepts while whatever it is authority instructs them to believe, also considered to still be too young to escape the dialogue found within such texts is especially being vulnerable to the influence of such important. Dialogue presented to young people concepts. When, in particular, moral and during high school can have a lifelong impact, and ideological concepts with vast implications are so it is imperative that we know what messages endorsed by those students see as highest in are being instilled into our children's minds, power—those they see as society’s great messages that may possibly reside in young comptrollers of knowledge—the process through person’s minds for indeterminate lengths. which students may become most susceptible to indoctrination is rather clear. The goal of working within a discourse framed specifically around high school history
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textbooks is to give the best understanding worth quoting in full here as a means of setting up possible of how adolescents today, who are the a further look into the concept of constructed leaders of tomorrow, have inadequate opportunity knowledge and ideas: to learn the actual functions regarding historical Texts are really messages to and about analysis. Such disadvantages in student learning the future. As part of a curriculum, they means students today are more likely to find participate in no less than the organized themselves conformists to the status quo than knowledge system of society. They individuals able to think critically for themselves. participate in creating what a society has When students in high school, the place where recognized as legitimate and truthful. They young people are expected to learn to think for help set the canons of truthfulness and, as themselves, are taught a “right”-and-“wrong,” such, also help re-create a major reference black-and-white version of history, their ability to point for what knowledge, culture, belief, break free from the monotony of a fundamentalist and morality really are. culture becomes bogged down and lost within an abject mind crystallized in uncritical modes of Yet such a statement—even with its thinking. Therefore, what is covered in high recognition that texts participate in school history textbooks holds great importance in constructing ideologies and ontologies—is discovering how a constructed hegemony can misleading in many important ways. For it shape a society at large. is not a ‘society’ that has created such texts, but specific groups of people. ‘We’ High school history textbooks provide the haven’t built such curriculum artifacts, if quintessential example of how economic markets, ‘we’ means simply that there is universal political pressure groups, and easily-influenced agreement among all of us and this is what publishers construct America’s education system. gets to be official knowledge. In fact, the It is true that bias will always have some existence very use of the pronoun ‘we’ simplifies in the teaching of history, no matter how matters all too much. miniscule it may be. Gary Tobin, in his work The Trouble with Textbooks, claims “bias in textbooks As Fred Inglis so cogently argues, the has been around as long as textbooks have existed pronoun ‘we’ . . . The role of textbooks as creators of civic ‘smoothes over the deep corrugations values demands that a particular point of view, a and ruptures caused precisely by struggle specific set of ideals inform the lessons” (Tobin over how that authoritative and editorial 7). But as this paper discusses, within today’s ‘we’ is going to be used. The [text], it is teaching of history the existence of ever present not melodramatic to declare, really is the bias is really a shroud behind which the real battleground for an intellectual civil war, operations forming textbooks hide. and the battle for cultural authority is a The simple fact that biases exist within wayward, intermittingly fierce, always textbooks should be accepted. But the specific set protracted and fervent one.’ (The Politics of ideals and biases to be implemented and, most of the Textbook 4) importantly, how it is they are in fact “We” is constructed today based on the implemented is what cannot be dismissed as landscape in which textbook publishing finds simply just the direction in which education is itself: a landscape overrun by concern for headed. Today’s high school history textbook has profitability. In terms of today’s textbook, “we” is moved away from an actual historical account of not really a concern that has to do with bias, but is what happened and on to an understanding of instead a concern that revolves around figuring history as constructed by that which is most out how particular ideologies can be marketed. appealing in terms of money, power, politics, and There is great danger in this, which I will show by personal interests. I believe Michael Apple is formulating for my reader the current
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commodification of constructed ideology According to Apple, “teachers are being functioning in the production of high school deskilled as more and more of the curriculum, history textbooks. I will also examine the way in pedagogy, and evaluation is standardized or which a distinct constructed-ideology has come to prepackaged . . . and . . . the accompanying form the commodified textbook as we know it, ideological tensions that result from these and, ultimately, how such a textbook is processes have all become increasingly visible” responsible for bland material which fails to (Teachers and Texts 24). The result has been a enlighten students’ minds beyond a realm of departure from resourceful classroom curriculum reiterating knowledge. developed with teachers in mind, and, as stated by The current state of textbooks is an important Diane Ravitch, “To have no curriculum is to leave matter due to the sheer blatant inclusion and decisions about what matters to the ubiquitous exclusion of material, essentially caused by means textbooks” (The Life and Death of the Great of pressure from liberals and conservatives. Given American School System 273). Due to the fact that the fact that scholars point to textbooks as being textbooks “‘are a crucial index of the perspective the de facto curriculum defining history, the a school exhibits,’ and due to the fact that ‘they are common and required . . . they are used for textbook has become a main point of contention, a point that increases as the obsessive use of testing . . . [and] they often occur in a series, textbooks within the classroom becomes more having a return engagement for as many as five or obvious to those seeking to direct discourse in six years. . . . [textbooks have] a cumulative their own favor. A survey taken as part of a impact on the learner that no other element of the periodic appraisal of student achievement in school environment can muster’” (McCarthy qt. in American history by the National Assessment of Glenn 32). The power already granted to Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that 45 textbooks is enlarged by teachers’ dependence percent of eighth graders read from textbooks upon them. The more teachers come to rely upon almost daily (“A Consumer’s Guide to High textbooks, the more the textbook itself becomes the definitive account of knowledge. As a result, School History Textbooks” 14). In the same survey, “44 percent of twelfth graders reported both conservatives and liberals, realizing the reading from the textbook ‘about every day,’ possibilities of controlling education in this while another 38 percent did so once or twice country through the utilization of the textbook, each week” (“A Consumer’s Guide to High work strenuously to have their discourse School History Textbooks” 14). In other words, championed in texts across the nation. Nearly half of student class time was When the knowledge that is shaping students’ spent using textbooks. And those numbers minds is based on a manipulative construct of . . . most likely understate teachers’ and power, meaning a controlling power used students’ true dependence on textbooks. intentionally to shape knowledge, then that which Shadow studies, which track teachers’ students learn is no longer based on fact, but is activities during the school day, suggest instead based on the manipulation of power and that 80 to 90 percent of classroom and control and the very perpetuation of such homework assignments are textbook- manipulative constructs. Education based on driven or textbook-centered. History and supremacy does not require reality to be social studies teachers, for example, often understood as objective. Education based on the rely almost exclusively on textbooks, power to construct the knowledge to be obtained instead of requiring students to review and digested by future generations relies strictly primary sources and read trade books by upon the values and ideals of those in control of top historians. (“The Mad, Mad World of said power. Today, due to teachers’ current Textbook Adoption” 1) overwhelming dependence on textbooks, a fight
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for such control has become more clearly visible Textbooks can do powerful things. than ever. “Textbooks remain the main source of historical The power of education lies in providing information for most students,” and when read students with knowledge. But such knowledge is each day and reinforced by an authoritative adult narrowly defined when it is based upon the power who students are taught to trust and to regard as a to justify certain values over others. Susan Lehr true source of knowledge, “textbooks and delves deep into this matter in her work “Literacy, curricula taught in school become means by Literature, and Censorship: The High Cost of No which to indoctrinate, socialize, and control” Child Left Behind”: (Alridge 680) (Amey, vol. 2, 617). In being able to mold a dominant hegemony, which here “refers The goals of censors, combined with to an organized assemblage of meanings and the rigid interpretation of NCLB, have practices, the central, effective and dominant blended effectively and have impacted system of meanings, values and actions which are reading materials across the curriculum, lived,” textbooks offer pressure groups the thereby supporting a climate that opportunity to “largely determine how a nation discourages multiple perspectives . . . votes, what it becomes, and where it goes” Standard interpretations of history are so (Ideology and Curriculum 5) (Gabler qtd. in Lehr ingrained in school curricula that it is 26). In the words of Mel Gabler, “textbooks difficult to bring in multiple perspectives across the nation are selected by a tiny percentage that challenge conventional historical of the educators and since children become what myths. Perpetrating the myths becomes they are taught, the philosophy selected by this synonymous with being patriotic. tiny percentage will become the philosophy taught Approved textbooks provide approved to our children” (Gabler qtd. in Lehr 26). interpretations of history, a practice that can be linked to this narrow worldview. According to theories posited by post- (Lehr 29) structuralist Michel Foucault, there exist ‘blocks’ where within “power relations constitute regulated A battle has erupted, one that has been and concerted systems” (Foucault 787). One such brewing for over the past fifty years, over who block, in Foucault’s mind: an educational shall be in control of the power to be harnessed by institution—“the disposal of its space, the dictating our nation’s textbooks: liberals or meticulous regulations which govern its internal conservatives. Each side of the political spectrum life, the different activities which are organized has been strongly invested in establishing its there, the diverse persons who live there or meet ideology as most dominant within textbooks over one another, each with his own function, his well- the past five decades. In his reading of Michael defined character—all these things constitute a Apple, textbook analyst Jason Nicholls comes to block of capacity-communication-power” rationalize the struggle for power over textbooks (Foucault 787). The pledge to teach and the in terms of their highly regarded status as tomes attainment of proficiencies or forms of conduct is which can be used to reinforce certain ideals: “For developed in schools through a collaborative of Apple, the role and function of textbooks in “regulated communications (lessons, questions capitalist societies is of central importance. First, and answers, orders, exhortations, coded signs of because ‘it is the textbook which establishes so obedience, differentiation marks of the ‘value’ of much of the material conditions for teaching and each person and of the levels of knowledge) and learning in classrooms’ and, second, because ‘it is by the means of a whole series of power processes the textbook that often defines what is elite and (enclosure, surveillance, reward and punishment, legitimate culture to pass on’” (“The the pyramidal hierarchy)” (Foucault 787). philosophical underpinnings of school textbook research” 27). On a political level the possibilities are endless within a power-relations block such as
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schooling. Because teachers depend so much upon engages in such tactics is to maintain order and textbooks today, what publishers include in stability within the society. The leadership seeks textbooks has an overwhelming opportunity to to create an obedient and docile citizenry by deeply influence students when they participate in restricting and shaping the mass media to which a “block” as described by Foucault. The fact that citizens are exposed” (Amey, vol. 2, 616). Surely, introducing young people to harsh truths of the Americans are far from a police state . . . or so one real world and humanity’s history is a tricky would hope to believe. And yet, “institutions of business is something on which everyone can cultural preservations and distribution like schools agree. But the answer should not be to whitewash create and recreate forms of consciousness that reality in favor of simpleminded idealization. enable social control to be maintained without the Unfortunately for students though the fight for necessity of dominant groups having to resort to the power to perpetuate ideals, the push by any overt mechanisms of domination” (Ideology and side to get out a white paintbrush, has become the Curriculum 3). How would we ever know if a norm—it has become the standard means for police state was being constructed if such publishers wishing to turn a profit in the industry. developments were kept in a shroud of darkness— a shroud of darkness such as one that might As Gary Tobin argues, “While it is sensible and logical that interest groups would want to have a consist of a commodified form of education and say in the way their particular stories are told or other economic imperatives as its cover? their value represented, in many cases these Liberal and conservative groups attempt to groups have superceded the scholars charged with control education and what students learn by ensuring the accuracy of the textbooks. Bias may means of infiltrating the textbook publishing enter the textbooks, therefore, through the most industry and running amuck censoring that with effective lobbying groups wanting the narrative to which they disagree. Because of teachers’ high say what they want” (Tobin 6). The power to be dependence upon textbooks, these educational had at the hands of instilling beliefs into textbooks materials become the source of much controversy now outweighs the importance of fact and surrounding attempts to conform history to a scholarly debate. Today’s construction of the U.S. certain set of ideals. Today, both censors on the history textbook hinges upon vainglorious left and censors on the right seek to distort history material provided to publishers by pressure in order to teach a certain set of values as groups far more than it depends upon on actual, universal truths for all to adhere by. Both camps credible historical reporting and analysis. do so through their influence upon the textbook Synonymous with textbooks is the idea that publishing industry. Liberals and conservatives in such products are gifts of knowledge given to America have for years been aware of the children by those whom they entrust as the possibilities to be had by overwhelming textbooks guardians of all that will one day make them as with their own ideological material: history with strong and wise as their predecessors. In other which one side does not agree can be erased by words, our children’s knowledge is quite literally that side and replaced with their own version of in our hands. In such light, if a political faction history based upon that which with they would wanted to control a nation, its most important task agree—that which they find just based upon their would be to mold coming generations to their own values. specifications. What better way to do this than A nation removed from actual historical through the means of education? occurrences and the effects of such occurrences becomes reliant upon opinion and the highest “A critical component common to police state rule is the desire to control the information flow to ranking ideals instead of on reality and fact. What citizens through censorship and propaganda actually happens in history becomes no longer the campaigns. The main reason a police state real event, but the event as seen through a specific set of eyes, a set of eyes opposed to any other
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outlooks besides those upon which they formulated entirely around the ideologies of the themselves rely. Two definitive ideologies have political left and the political right, and also in been a part of the formation of a hidden leverage terms of how the content of textbooks has been which allows pressure groups to have their say in turned into a commodity—a complex economic the writing of the history students are learning in process reduced to its most simple undertakings— public schools. Such a hidden leverage has, in its a quote from Diane Ravitch’s The Language dominance, created an atmosphere of ignorance. Police is worth quoting at length: We cannot expect students to learn from . . . current [bias] guidelines . . . went textbooks which privilege specific ideological far beyond the original purpose of beliefs over more substantial content, especially eliminating bias and had devolved instead when it comes at the cost of teaching students to into an elaborate language code that bans analyze critical arguments from multiple many common words and expressions. I perspectives. This result, which has arisen through am not speaking of epithets, scatological the manipulation of the textbook’s utilization and terms, ethnic slurs, or name-calling; their its inherent capabilities in terms of cultural unacceptability is so obvious that they are control, has been the cause of substantial drop off not even mentioned in the guidelines. The in the proficiency of material found in textbooks. guidelines prohibit controversial topics, A vast and informative reference book on even when they are well within the bounds censorship consisting of 997 essays from a total of of reasonable political and social 353 scholars sums the situation up: discourse. They combine left-wing Liberals have been effective in quietly political correctness and right-wing pressuring textbook publishers to make religious fundamentalism, a strange stew their products inoffensive to their own of discordant influences. The guidelines views. Consequently, most books aim to create a new society, one that will published for classroom use offer positive be completely inoffensive to all parties; examples of gender equality, racial and getting there, however, involves a heavy ethnic minorities in professional positions, dose of censorship. No one asked the rest and other images characteristic of the of us whether we want to live in a society liberal agenda . . . Conservatives have also in which everything objectionable to every had success at influencing the publishing contending party has been expunged from process. The result has been a widely our reading materials. (The Language lamented trend in textbook publishing in Police 32) which engaging, detailed, and opinionated How did this form of left-right ideology in books are forced out of classrooms in textbooks begin? As I stated earlier, the problem favor of bland, general, and inoffensive erupted a little over five decades ago, at the height books. (Amey, vol. 1, 238) of the Cold War. The multivolume reference book on censorship which I have previously mentioned A division has opened up between the describes “The onset of the Cold War in the ideology of the left and the ideology of the right, 1950’s and the subsequent ideological battle forming tensions so far removed from the between Soviet-sponsored communism and teaching of history as it actually occurred and Western democratic capitalism [as having] a beyond basic opinion that textbooks today are profound impact upon American historiography watered down and filled with overly abundant and [helping to usher] in a period of self- material. This division is a hegemony of ideals censorship in American education” (Amey, vol. 2, which are responsible for the current ideological 354). During this time of hostility, Americans felt constructs found in textbooks. In terms of the the need to defend the American dream by means construction of today’s textbook as it is of censoring information that was being created
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with the hopes of reaching the masses. As a result especially those who sold to large markets such as of the Red Scare, a number of ways of life were Texas and California, began to reference deemed threatening to American culture. In order traditional American values as a means of to cut off any un-American activities, certain deciding that which they would consider as groups sought to control the knowledge which acceptable in accounting for factual history. citizens would be able to receive. Nowhere were In the end, textbooks would come to mainly such moves more prevalent than in places which serve as mere reflections of only the most positive concerned the teaching of children. Once again, of American values. If material did not fit the way many viewed the textbook as a critical tool in America should be in the eyes of those most bent shaping the minds of the youth. Overwhelming on tradition, then it was to have no place within censorship prevailed, with the Red Scare serving the textbook. Slavery might have been viewed as its defense. Opportunities to censor were differently during the 1950s, but according to the plentiful, and conservatives, who for years had logic being followed by textbooks written during made timeless attempts at maintaining values dear the 1950s, when slavery did occur it was to them, were the first to jump onboard. The result acceptable simply because it was an American was a stream of unregulated censorship which way of life, it was merely the tradition then. And adversely affected a number of schools’ so, by this logic, whatever is believed in the instructional materials—textbooks in particular. present to be just and righteous in our minds is in During the 1950s, censors on the right who fact just and righteous regardless of any real alleged material covered in textbooks was latent world implications such beliefs may actually with communist references overwhelmed elicit. Everything is exactly the way it should be American textbook publishers. The move made by and it has always been this way, according to such conservatives was to pressure textbook publishers a mentality. Many scholars echo this analogy: to remove any material which they considered to Cherryholmes (1983) states that ‘social be harmful towards American principles or in studies education has to do with teaching promotion of communist ideals. Speaking on the about our knowledge and understanding of results of the early history of forms of censorship society’ (p. 341). However, if we fail to in textbooks, which we see the results of today in critically examine the ideological roots of their most extreme forms, “Jack Nelson and Gene the thoughts, ideas, language, and power Roberts, Jr., state in their 1963 study of textbook present in the U.S., then our understanding censorship, The Censors and the Schools: ‘Since of history will be shaped by those the early days of the Cold War, textbook crises ideologies dominant in society—that is, have come in an almost unbroken stream, each the ideologies which support the present controversy providing fuel for another. . . . The inequities. (Mendiola 4) charges are essentially the same: the texts are blamed for what a censor dislikes about the world Censorship allows for the replacement of past in which he lives” (Amey, vol. 3, 800). beliefs without the task of having to keep such beliefs around for critical examination. Each A number of conservative groups began to generation is thereby allowed a chance to spring up during the late 1950s and into the formulate its own value system based solely on 1960s, each charging textbook publishers with subjective opinion while ignoring any lessons writing un-American texts and promoting secular from the past which might direct a populous in an ideals with which they disagreed. Under alternative direction. After all, there is no reason unrelenting pressures, and due to the special to be critical of values when they are defined as circumstances of the Cold War, textbook universal laws. What is right is right. publishers began to seriously buckle. The result was textbook publishers beginning to do Such a method of teaching students—the something odd: the publishers of textbooks, American way is the right way and that is just the
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way it is, anything outside of this does not subservient roles, rather than as scientists, actually contain agency—quickly became the professionals, and business leaders” (The passive majority standard. One would not be Language Police 25). hard-pressed to find evidence comparable to the Liberals would eventually stand up to following quote taken from a 2004 report by the challenge the right’s censoring, though, and Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute would begin to attempt to fend off such overtly which provides further evidence of the extremely dramatic patriotism in texts. However, the left nationalistic fanaticism which infested textbooks would challenge right-wing censorship in an during this period: unexpected fashion. Triggered by the abundance As Frances FitzGerald documented in of patriotic information which made up the bulk her 1979 book, America Revised, of material within textbooks, liberals began a textbooks from the 1950s and 1960s were campaign that would later come to function as a overloaded with patriotic pabulum, at the less obvious form of censorship. cost of honest examination of where the In the late 1960s, beginning immediately after nation had failed to live up to its creed of the right’s incredibly effective censorship equality. Women and immigrants were campaign began to show its effects, the left largely invisible in history textbooks, and showed up on the scene. Liberals charged the settlers’ brutal treatment of Native textbook publishers with being prejudiced in their Americans was minimized. African selection processes, thereby marginalizing the Americans seemed to appear in history voices of those believed to be or who were in fact textbooks only as slaves, and the horrors living in direct contrast with the American way of of the transatlantic slave trade were life. The answer liberals would propose would be papered over. After Vietnam, the feminist to comprise a fusion of voices as a means of movement, and the race riots of the 1960s, providing more fair and accurate portrayals of all textbooks desperately needed revision and people involved in the subjects history textbooks updating to eliminate stereotypes and were to cover. sexist or racist language. (“The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption” 8) California would serve as a focal point for liberals, becoming the state from which left-wing Textbooks depicted many minority groups pressure groups would launch a counter against negatively, portraying such groups as the “Other”: conservative’s annexation of the nation’s the opposite of all that was just and American. curriculum. The following lengthy quote serves as American exceptionalism within textbooks hit its a prime example of the intensity with which peak during the 1960s, due in major part to liberal pressure groups would pursue their own specific conservative groups openly seeking to preferred construction of education: control the thoughts of their children’s minds, as well as the minds of others’ children. Textbooks To redress the use of stereotypes, had become weighty with information that was California enacted its well-intentioned documented based solely on the values of one ‘social content standards’ in 1976. These group, conservatives. Women were portrayed as required the state textbook review housewives and husbands as breadwinners of the committee to approve only instructional family, despite any real life examples which materials that ‘accurately portray the might lead to the contrary. For example, in the cultural and racial diversity of our society, words of Diane Ravitch, “activists complained including the contributions of both men that women were shown only as housewives and and women in all types of roles . . . [and mothers, rather than as scientists, professionals, the] contributions of American Indians, and business leaders. African Americans American Negroes, Mexican Americans, complained that they were portrayed only in Asian Americans, European Americans,
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and members of other ethnic and cultural history had a chance to rise to the occasion and groups.’ . . . At first glance, California’s truly make a difference, they were stifled in order social content standards—at least as to include those of obvious less importance. The applied to minorities and women— new form of censorship imparted by liberals and appeared to be a common sense and meant to counter conservative’s censoring of overdue effort to redress the use of textbooks was run under the title of stereotypes and prejudicial language. No multiculturalism. doubt, in the early years, those guidelines Censored in this instance were some of the did force publishers to eliminate racist and more important voices throughout history. For sexist stereotypes. But the implementation instance, Mediterranean antiquity probably does of the social content standards by the not have the same resonance for youth today as California department of education in its the study of World War Two does. When studies ‘legal compliance reviews’ soon attempt covering two such subjects equally, outstripped common sense. Since nothing neither subject is given the amount of concern it could reflect ‘adversely’ on any group, deserves. The study of both Egyptian history and even, say, a reference to Hell’s Angels World War Two include extensive informational would have to cite the motorcycle gang’s content, and treating both of them the same means positive contributions. The state education treading over the two subjects without department also interpreted the law to acknowledging their depth. In other words, mean that ethnicity, gender, and students who must study every subject “fairly” orientation had to be portrayed in an end up with a basic knowledge of numerous ‘equitable way’ (not just accurately), subjects, some being more monotonous than which led both the state and ethnic and others. Ultimately, knowledge students have an feminist groups to count and categorize opportunity to harness is censored from them every reference to men, women, people through the textbook, leaving them with small bits with disabilities, members of ethnic of information on the most important subjects in groups, and the like. A . . . chapter in a history—small bits of information which are social studies textbook, might lack literary exemplified and promoted within textbooks as a quality or skew history. But if it had the means of covering a vast array of topics. right numerical balance of genders and minorities, the textbook could be Multiculturalism began with admirable approved. If, however, it contained elegant intentions. But quickly thereafter, writing and classic stories, yet failed to multiculturalism turned into another form of adhere to the multicultural bean-counting expurgation of important information and a rules, it could be rejected. (“The Mad, whitewashing of facts. The connection between Mad World of Textbook Adoption” 8) the multiculturalist push for inclusion and the form of censorship such a movement would Such a shift meant that historically eventually evolve into is best summed up by the superfluous individuals would be allotted the following quotes from the reference book same amount of book space as all other historical Censorship: personages. This is inclusion, and it would effectively become a form of censorship in the Although a goal of multiculturalism in world of textbook publishing. When every group education is to promote ethnic tolerance, is allotted uniform esteem based solely on the its censoring effects via institutionalized foundation of some predetermined multicultural public intimidation may cause racial calculation, all discourse becomes identical, segregation. Furthermore, a curriculum thereby discouraging hope for truly unique that focuses on atonement for past wrongs dialogue. Where the most resounding voices in also encourages a victim mentality and
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collective guilt; this assignment of blame tagged on at the ends of chapters . . . As a contributes to the idolizing of non-Western result, textbooks were watered down to the cultures and a demonizing of Western extent that they would offend neither a cultures. Thus, the current discussions of left-wing radical from Berkeley nor a multiculturalism in the classroom take an right-wing radical Fundamentalist either-or structure, forcing students to Christian from Texas; some critics judged choose between Eurocentrism or ethnicity. such books to be so without anything that (Amey, vol. 2, 517) might be offensive that they were quite Critics maintain that the multicultural dull. (Amey, vol. 3, 799) movement minimizes any form of critique Once multiculturalism began to spread into in which uncommendable qualities of textbooks, the right countered back. The original minority cultures are highlighted. Acts of complaints conservatives had inserted into the hostility, racism, sexism, and elitism folds of the argument during the Cold War era had within minority cultures are ignored or never actually left the scene, and now they would disregarded . . . Critics of multiculturalism come on stronger than ever. What conservatives in education argue that when students are argued was that liberal multiculturalism was encouraged to make judgments based on actually an overt form of secularism and that such ethnicity alone, they are discouraged from teachings fostered anti-American and anti-family bona fide evaluation and critique, skill values, which conservatives held to be absolute necessary for thoughtful and responsible truths. A second wave of censorship from the citizenship. (Amey, vol. 2, 517) right began as an attempt to reestablish the Suddenly textbook publishers were being patriotic narratives that they had worked so hard overwhelmed by pressures coming from both the to instill into textbooks during the 1950s and 60s. left and the right. The left wanted publishers to A great deal of commentary on this period in begin giving more fair consideration to all of textbook publishing exists, assuring a mass of those involved in history, all major perspectives. opinions from all the different angles involved. Publishers already caught up in trying to promote A report from the Thomas B. Fordham patriotism were now expected to also adhere to Foundation provides the following view: the mandates that multiculturalism simultaneously The liberalization and multicultural infringed upon them. As a result, textbooks additions to textbooks in the 1970s set off throughout the 1960s and 1970s grew further a backlash among Christian away from teaching factual history and closer to a fundamentalists in the 1980s. plethora of mushed together ideologies. To quote Organizations on the religious right, such the reference book Censorship, as Focus on the Family, Phyllis Schlafly’s During the 1960’s and 1970’s, a Eagle Forum, and Rev. Jerry Falwell’s dramatic shift took place in the censorship Moral Majority pressured school districts wars when new protesters appeared on the and supported a series of local lawsuits to scene: the liberals, who before had have ‘immoral’ textbooks dropped from generally resisted censorship. Many books school curricula. (“The Mad, Mad World were charged with being racist and sexist. of Textbook Adoption” 12) To counter this, nonwhite faces were The reference book on censorship takes a added to textbooks, African Americans similar stand: and women were pictured as professionals rather than slaves and housewives, and the achievements and writings of minorities By the late 1970’s, many conservative and women were included, although often Christians were expressing the belief that
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the problems of American society were publisher had complied with the demands of the due to America’s straying from Christian critics, both from the left and right. Publishers had truth. American school and the American imposed self-censorship to head off the outside media, from this perspective, were censors, as well as to satisfy state adoption spreading ideas that were opposed to reviews” (The Language Police 96). Due to self- Christianity and that were undermining the censorship, the publishing of textbooks has now nation’s moral character. Therefore, some basically become just an influx of ideological conservative Christians saw attempting to jargon as found acceptable by major pressure exercise control over the schools and the groups. The regulation of the material to be media as both a religious and a patriotic implemented in textbooks now rests in the hands duty. (Amey, vol. 3, 674) of pressure groups as opposed to its being enacted The attack orchestrated by conservatives by an objective observer on the outside looking in. during this period would come on even stronger The ideologies of the left and the right, through than the first. All of the objections raised by the the power dynamics each have seen formed, enjoy right would “share the same roots: dependence on sole ownership over material selected for textbooks. It is no wonder then that textbooks biblical authority as opposed to any form of logic, creativity, self-reliance, or self-definition; and today lack substance in their favoring of certain total commitment to one religious and culture moral outlooks over all others. group, to the exclusion of globalism and Self-censorship is incredibly destructive in the multiculturalism. At bottom, the fundamentalists business of textbook publishing. As a result of the who launched the textbook challenges of the unrelenting pressures placed upon textbook 1980s opposed the time-honored view that a publishers beginning in the 1950s, publishers have central purpose of schooling was to teach children been left with only one option: to fold to both to think for themselves” (“The Mad, Mad World conservatives and liberals. Such a practice calls of Textbook Adoption” 13). for the alteration of voices in order to allow those This second wave of textbook censorship, who have established the most power by cogency beginning at the onset of the 1980s, would have control over the knowledge to be harnessed by the an overwhelming impact on what textbook youth. In this way agency is lost, or abandoned. censorship would eventually progress into. The textbook is written by power relations Publishers seemed to throw their hands up at this directly associated with political groups. Due to point and begin to act as accomplices in special hegemonic institutions becoming solely interest groups’ seeking to control the narrative responsible for the selection of material which constructions within textbooks. As a result of enters the textbook, the same material which in these years of bipartisan bickering, a period which the long run our children secrete as knowledge, has evolved in to the current situation we see authorship has become obsolete. today, resistance against censorship within No one person can consider himself to be textbooks became more and more passive. simultaneously for and against a subject without Ultimately, both sides of the political spectrum running into the problem of himself disproving his would hold enough leverage within the realm of own points through pure contradiction. In this textbook publishing to be able to directly same way, no one person can write a textbook influence every piece of material printed. which thoroughly promotes right ideology while At the close of the 1980s, textbook publishers also exhaustively promoting left ideology since, for the most part, the two cancel each other out. It were beginning to take it upon themselves to enact censorship, hedging off any conflict before is possible to create such a textbook though by it could even take place. In the words of Diane allowing political special interest groups, Ravitch, “By the end of the 1980s, every ideologies, and moral absolutes to construct our textbooks as opposed to authors. Indeed, this is
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how it is done in the world of textbook publishing concepts in school, may still find reason to today1, the result of publishers’ voluntary distrust the knowledge and prose put forth. censoring. An author’s name on the cover of a In the end, the only textbooks that enable textbook has become simply for show, to give the publishers to sustain a legitimate flow of profits illusion that it has been written rather than are textbooks which attempt to reconstruct the developed based upon a construction of the world world as seen through the eyes of either liberals or formed within political binaries. conservatives. As a consumer report from the But it is not only pressure from interest groups Thomas B. Fordham Institute claims, the “writing on both the left and the right that is cause for and editing [of textbooks] are done with one eye publishers today resorting to self-censorship and on the marketplace, the other on sundry interest therefore abolishing genuine authorship. groups” (“A Consumer’s Guide to High School Economic pressures, as they are combined with History Textbooks” 8). Publishers must either ideological pressures from conservatives and bend to the two major political ideologies in liberals, play a rather important role as well. The America by means of self-censoring or cease textbook publishing industry functions as a having a business. The market creates an monopoly, a matter exacerbated by the limitations atmosphere which encourages self-censorship publishers face when pressured by censors to and, thus, the elimination of authorship. In a include certain subjects in textbooks. Because fascinating article by Sue Jansen entitled textbook publishers are limited in their mission to “Ambiguities and Imperatives of Market provide teachers with informative textbooks by Censorship,” Jansen argues that self-censorship, realistic necessities (such as profit-margins to often disregarded as a bogus phenomenon, is meet)—necessities pressure groups work actually an extension of market censorship—a far tirelessly to exploit—there is only so much less refuted theory. Regardless of whether or not it influence today’s giants of textbook publishing has yet been assigned a proper appellation, the hold over what is printed. In other words, even if market does indeed force textbook publishers to a publisher strongly supports a textbook due to its take means of censoring upon themselves. strong content, organization, and writing style, the Ultimately, this has resulted in “quality work . . . market, which for over the last twenty years has not being produced, published, and/or distributed remained consistent with those most deeply because it is not profitable enough, thereby concerned with their children learning ideological diminishing or ‘dumbing down’ public discourse” (Jansen 19). Self-censorship becomes very much
1 “For publishers, the quantity imperative and the tight time and coherent ‘story.’ To make their textbooks look more deadlines in state adoption processes all but guarantee that learned and substantial, some el-hi publishers add the name quality will be neglected. The image of a distinguished of a distinguished scholar to the list of textbook authors, author beavering away for years to write a compelling though the famous professor may have done nothing more textbook is largely a thing of the past. Today, publishers than ‘consult’ with the publisher at some point during the often start with a unified checklist of all the names, early stages of preparing of a textbook” (“ The Mad, Mad standards, facts, and subjects that must be covered to win World of Textbook Adoption” 33). approval in California and Texas. Next, a team of consultants is hired to prepare study aids and draft questions “Notably absent from many of the chop shops are subject and student exercises. A separate team prepares the matter experts in history, religion, civics, and so on . . . The illustrations, graphics, maps, tables, and charts. In-house chop shops cannot substitute for genuine scholarship . . . editors and committees review the text for bias, sensitivity, With such an emphasis on pedagogical expertise and so and compliance with state criteria. The actual writing of little on subject knowledge, it is no surprise that the these tomes, however, is generally farmed out to textbook developers in such agencies would be susceptible, ‘development houses’—where teams of writers who are not for example, to the kind of information supplied by interest subject experts collaborate on the text, which can often run groups” (Tobin 10). to 1,000+ pages. The tag team approach to constructing these books is one reason they lack a single authorial voice
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responsible for work produced which fails to U.S. history textbook is of particular enlighten thinking. importance because other states that do not Jansen further suggests that “market gate hold the financial positioning and keepers systematically bar access to or influence of this state are forced to adopt marginalize the voices of minorities and thereby this book and the curriculum found within contribute to and amplify social injustice” (Jansen . . . Due in part to these financially-based 19). Hence the tremendous influence exerted by variables, textbooks become commodities the textbook publishing industry’s “market gate influenced not only by ideologies, but by keepers,” Texas and California. Each state reflects economics as well. (Mendiola 6) one end of the political spectrum, liberals in Publishers can therefore base their self- California and conservatives in Texas, a parallel censoring on the two states likes and dislikes enhanced by each state’s massive population. As without risking wasted efforts. such, publishers find it easy to pull their Textbooks are now written with only the most references on what left and right will accept from economically viable regions of the nation in mind. these two states. What we have today are textbooks that do not In Texas, publishers are pushed to include irritate either liberals of California or conservative ideals while hushing the voices of conservatives of Texas. Due to the large influence those in direct contrast with such beliefs. In both Texas and California exert over economic California, liberals push publishers to produce fair markets and the majority rule they both inherit as and balanced reporting on a number of different a result, the two states’ choices as to the material topics, some of the louder voices being censored they wish to see in textbooks affects the rest of the down to size in order to make room for a more nation by sheer power in numbers alone. A quote wide-ranging, all-inclusive coverage of events. If from the American Civil Liberties Union shows a textbook fails to gain acceptance in either of just how greatly one state’s economic influence, these adoption states it spells doom for the combined with its personal ideological fervor, can textbook since “getting one’s volume on such [an affect our nation’s textbooks: adoption] list can mean all the difference in a Because Texas purchases tens of text’s profitability” (The Politics of the Textbook millions of textbooks every year, it has a 32). As so, textbook publishers use the two states huge influence on the content of textbooks more or less as product-testing states. Publishers used all over the country. In fact, between realize that both Texas and California, in making 45 and 47 states use textbooks based on up such a large portion of the nation’s economy as Texas' curriculum. So these board compared to the other forty-eight states, can be members' ideologically narrow view of the used to base generalizations off of as to what world won't just harm Texas public school ideology all Americans will support. Annalisa de kids, it has the potential to harm kids Mendiola’s dissertation Traditionalists versus nationwide. (“Fight the Texas Textbook multiculturalists sheds further light on the subject Takeover!”) of prefabricated textbooks as based on the nation’s largest states: Immense factors which affect the publishing of textbooks, such as the states of Texas and California combined with political pressure By virtue of their large purchases, groups across the nation, are directly responsible these states hold greater power than for publishers resorting to self-censorship. Since smaller states that do not possess the same publishers can limit the amount of time and fiscal ability . . . because textbooks are money spent in the production process by means written to their specified curriculum of working directly with liberal’s largest market (Ravitch, 2002). The Texas version of the and conservative’s largest market, the states of
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California and Texas become an easy way out for the textbook industry has been taking place. Once publishers in that the textbooks they write can liberals stepped in matters became even more simply be molded by the opinions of the two streamlined. Eventually, the pressures liberals and states. The process is much easier for publishers conservatives placed on publishers (the form of when its construction takes place in a centralized leverage they both created, not each group’s manner. Therefore, when publishers begin work specific beliefs) forced the industry to revert into on a new textbook they are well enough aware of submission. Earlier, the idea that bias is not the what to place within the textbook before it is even main issue at hand was mentioned. What was to reach anyone in the public eye. Publishers now meant by this is that my contention is not with censor themselves because years of working with what forms of bias get into the textbook (it could the same two markets—Texas and California— be any form of bias, really, it just happens to be has made them very knowledgeable of the left and right), but the system of infiltration that ideologies found within the two large states. The has been established, overtly (though probably not entire process now works off of centralization. As intentionally). Such a system has created the soon as material reaches the hands of publishers possibility of forming a hegemony through the they know immediately rather or not either state controlling of info to get into textbooks. It is will find such material suitable. obvious that a form of control has opened up The end result, of course, is textbooks which within the textbook which rides high on either are formulated around two political ideologies political end. But I argue that it goes much deeper from the moment of their inception. In other than this. I argue that this system is helping to words, this current process of textbook publishing create a hegemony of stupidity. Beneath the is only producing guide books based on morality surface of a hegemony of ideals being created by rather than actual historical events. Children now left and right pressure exists the true problem: a struggle to think critically about subjects due to hegemony of stupefying. Such a formulated the fact that from the moment textbooks meet text hegemony as actively pursued by those with the most power brings out real possibilities of police- there is an ideal being formed which proclaims itself as the all-mighty word. Teaching students a state control. liberal world-view while simultaneously teaching This is all possible because of specialized them a conservative world-view means that in centralization in the textbook publishing industry. terms of historical events students are learning Control over a system which actively “dumbs- only the opinions of either the left or the right. down” the population easily takes place due to Because of the control Texas and California exert centralization. Because publishers of textbooks in terms of economic power the rest of the nation can construct their textbooks based on is stuck with a small number of textbooks to consolidated interests, more attention is paid to choose from, the overwhelming majority of which such interests, and so the more it grows and the conform directly to Texas and California’s more competition to be heard is weeded out in the ideologies. There is no independent California or name of capital gains. When a business industry Texas textbook, so to speak, but textbooks which resorts to appealing to a centralized consumer are a collage of both sides’ ideologies. Textbook base which generalizes a multitude of its future publishers are truly caught in a bind which leaves users and their beliefs, it is not wrong to believe a only one option: self-censorship. chain of unification has been built which ignores Specific groups actively promoting their bias rationale and reality in favor of profit. Exactly as has led to the creation of a system which allows is the case today with the industry of textbook for the construction of textbooks as seen through publishing. Making profit, supplying schools with particular sets of eyes. Beginning with the material (textbooks), is an impossible goal for pressures publishers faced from conservatives publishers unless they are willing to submit to the during the 1950s, a continuous reformulation of industry the market and pressure groups produce.
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For publishers, it’s either work towards textbook censorship is one of active stupefying. centralizing or cease to exist. The following quotes back this notion: And so publishers submit to centralization. Textbooks pivot on what Roland This means that all of the nation’s textbooks are Barthes called the ‘referential illusion,’ the based on the wants and needs of a few. It is easier, notion that the way things are told is after all, to generalize. It is easy to see why this is simply the way things were (1970: 145- a problem in terms of one side or another side 55). To achieve this illusion, textbooks being heard within the textbook. But this is to be exploit various stylistic conventions. First, expected, for there will always be bickering over textbooks eliminate ‘metadiscourse,’ or what side should be heard, as stated before. The places in the text where the author intrudes problem today is that the process of partitioning to suggest judgment, emphasis, or for your side to be heard has been commodified uncertainty. Metadiscourse is common in and therefore centralized in order to consolidate the writing historians do for one another, the process down to its bare bones. Maybe we all but it is edited out of the writing they do should have expected this, but, once again, that is for schoolchildren (Crismore 1984: 279- not the ultimate argument in this paper. No one 296; Paxton 1997: 235-250). Second, can deny the fact that within the world of traces of how the text came to be are textbooks today we have an industry easily hidden or erased: Textbooks rarely cite the infiltrated by those who, most want to and have documentary record, and—if primary the most power to, construct narratives of their material appears—it is typically set off in own making and manipulation. But this is not ‘sidebars’ so as not to interfere with the where the focus should be settled. There will main text. Finally, textbooks speak in the always be a fight for such control, and while it has omniscient third person. There is no gotten way out of control, it is still not our main visible author to confront the reader; issue in the problems education faces in terms of instead, a corporate author speaks from a the textbook. position of transcendence, a position of The main problem is that the fight between knowing from on high. (Wineburg 87) conservatives and liberals to have their ideology Such processes lead to the following effects as reign supreme in the textbook has become a outlined by Stephen Gottlieb: unique concert of workings which allows for Textbook censorship has serious dominance on what is a level hard to fathom for intellectual as well as political costs. In those living in the land of the free. But it is subtly order to simplify English and avoid taking place within the textbook industry. The controversy, textbooks routinely omit the leverage formed by means of back-and-forth word ‘because.’ Shorter sentences are between left and right has resulted in a basis for considered more readable, though a the molding of a dominant institutionalization of paragraph or book consisting of short, the culture. Whether done so intentionally or not, unconnected sentences lacking causal there is a means by which hegemonic attitudes connectives is far from readable. Students and/or norms may be instituted, and it is by must guess whether facts strung together following the specializations liberals and are causally related. Texts present a conservatives have developed, specializations ‘crabgrass’ or ‘natural disaster’ theory of outlined in all that is aforementioned. history; problems unaccountably grow So, if it is not the ideology of liberals and until they become serious, at which time conservatives I am arguing is the hegemony being they keep on going until they stop. instilled through textbooks, then what is it? I ‘[H]istory is just one damn thing after propose that the hegemony created by means of another.’ (Gottlieb 418)
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Textbooks present students with material that Apple, Michael W., and Linda K. Christian- is far from informative. This happens because of Smith. The Politics of the Textbook. New the process this paper has worked to outline, and York: Routledge, 1991. Print. the end result is a commodified textbook which De Leon Mendiola, Annalisa. “Traditionalists lacks substance. Students go to school and are versus Multiculturalists: Discourses from the held to low standards in a schooling system that 2003 U.S. History Textbook Adoption in presents them with cheaply produced textbooks. Texas.” Diss. U of Texas at San Antonio, And these low standards along with an inability to 2008. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2008. ProQuest think analytically and form clear, fully articulate Dissertations and Theses. Web. Jan. 2013. thoughts extent into our society, hence my speaking of hegemony. Education has become a Glenn, Charles L. “PC Censorship of Textbooks.” farce, and it is all as a result of textbook Journal of the Historical Society 4.1 (2004): censorship. The censoring of textbooks has 31-41. Wiley Online Library. Web. Jan. 2013. molded an education system bent on the lowest Foucault, Michel. “The Subject and Power.” common denominator. It no longer matters what Critical Inquiry 8.4 (1982): 777-795. JSTOR. the mind of a student can do, it only matters how Web. Jan. 2013. easily indoctrination can be placed upon a student by means of setting low levels of achievement. Gottlieb, Stephen E. “In the Name of Patriotism: Finding the simple way to teach students and The Constitutionality of ‘Bending’ History in admiring them for simple achievements—in other Public Secondary Schools.” The History words holding them down—extends even into Teacher 22.4 (1989): 411-495. JSTOR. Web. academia. The bare minimum is consistently Jan. 2013. accepted in American education and praised as Ito, Suzanne. “Fight the Texas Textbook genuine accomplishment. No wonder whenever a Takeover!” American Civil Liberties Union. mirror is turned upon our culture we cringe: our ACLU.org, 22 April 2010. Web. 2 Sept. 2013. society has turned into one that appreciates the lower, easier bar to be surpassed. All it takes is a Jansen, Sue Curry. “Ambiguities and Imperatives controlling power such as the textbook being of Market Censorship: The Brief History of a infiltrated by those wishing to manipulate the way Critical Concept.” Westminster Papers in in which, as well as that which we learn to be able Communication and Culture 7.2 (2010): 12- to create a society molded by a hegemony of low 30. Print. standards, dullness, and stupidity. Lehr, Susan S. “Literacy, Literature, and Censorship: The High Cost of No Child Left WORKS CITED Behind.” Childhood Education 87.1 (2010): Alridge, Derrick P. “The Limits of Master 25-34. ProQuest. Web. Jan. 2013. Narratives in History Textbooks: An Analysis Maoz, Ifat, Gili Freedman, and Clark McCauley. of Representations of Martin Luther King, Jr.” “Fled or Expelled? Representation of the Teachers College Record 108.4 (2006): 662- Israeli-Arab conflict in U.S. High school 686. Teachers College Record. Web. Jan. history textbooks.” Peace and Conflict: 2013. Journal of Peace Psychology 16.1 (2010): 1- Amey, Lawrence, et al., eds. Censorship. 3 vols. 10. Taylor & Francis Group. Web. Jan. 2013. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1997. Print. Nicholls, Jason. “The philosophical underpinnings Apple, Michael W. Ideology and Curriculum. of school textbook research.” International New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research 3.2 (2003): 24-35. Web. Jan. 2013. Apple, Michael W. Teachers and Texts. New York: Routledge, 1986. Print.
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Ravitch, Diane. “A Consumer’s Guide to High Fordham Institute, 2004. Thomas B. Fordham School History Textbooks.” Washington, Institute. Web. Jan. 2013. D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2004. Tobin, Gary A. and Dennis R. Ybarra. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Web. Jan. 2013. Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great and Religion. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington American School System: How Testing and Books, 2008. Print. Choice are Undermining Education. New Wang, Chia-Ling. Power/Knowledge for York: Basic Books, 2010. E-Book. curriculum theory. Dec. 2009, Philosophy of Ravitch, Diane. The Language Police. 1st ed. Education Society of Australasia. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. Print. Wineburg, Sam. Historical Thinking and Other Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute. Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of “The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Teaching the Past. Philadelphia: Temple Adoption.” Washington, D. C.: Thomas B. Press, 2001. Print.
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