History in High-School Textbooks: A Note

Abstract

The aim of this paper (1) is to determine whether, by errors of omission or commission, the history of the United States, as presented in some current high-school history textbooks (2-12), is being distorted. Three periods of American history are examined: the Revolutionary period, the Civil War period, and the Cold War. Are our students being asked to accept stereotyped or chauvinistic accounts of events in American history that moder scholarship has often challenged and found wanting? During the last half-century historical scholarship has produced some notably new and plausible reinterpretations of the people and the events of the Revolutionary period in American history. One important reinterpretation deals with the element of internal revolution in the War for Independence; another reappraises the critical nature of the Critical Period from 1781 to 1789; the third re-evaluation examines the accuracy of the Legend of the Founding Fathers. To what extent do current high-school history textbooks take note of such twentieth-century historical scholarship? Do authors incorporate in their works new discoveries by and insights of modem historians?