The First U.S. History Textbooks: Constructing and Disseminating the American Tale in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

First U. S. History Textbooks: Constructing and Disseminating American Tale in Nineteenth Century Barry Joyce. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015.Does there exist a tribal creation myth of United States? First U.S. History Textbooks explores how what has been taught in history classrooms has created a metanarrative of history of US, comparing it to creation myths crafted throughout time: narrative.. .explains our origins, migrations and makeup. It can be considered a tribal myth that celebrates our triumphs and accomplishments, reconciles our defeats and rationalizes our shortcomings (4). Interestingly, Joyce not just examines role of various myths in US history and debunks them but also explores what these myths imply about US character and impact debunking has on national Zeitgeist-unique to this work.The first four chapters explore the context for emergence of American History (11) and possible origins of American textbook (12). Chapter 1, A People's Story, details how history textbooks were vestiges of ultimately unsuccessful systems of instruction, such as Lancasterian and Pestalozzian methods (26). Chapter 2, The Text is Teacher, explores how texts came to inform pedagogy in emerging, and rapidly growing, early Republic. Chapter 3, Mnemonics, Methods, and Memory, shows how history texts deviated from norms of time by focusing on storytelling instead of on popular techniques of mental development such as mnemonics and mind training (64). Chapter 4, An American Character, details how historians came to be certified storytellers (103) and relationship between history and legend.Chapters 5 through 7 are the heart of book (12), exploring both how textbook narrative provides key cultural elements around which can coalesce (12) as well as very different reality not portrayed by narrative. Chapter 5, Genesis: Emergence and Migrations, uses (inaccurate) myths of Columbus, John Smith, and Pocahontas to demonstrate shift from Old World to New World. Chapter 6, Apologetics: Why We Are Who We Are, problematizes both stories told and those who tell them. Chapter 7, Slaying Monster, shows how American Revolution narrative came to become dichotomized as a story of right and wrong, good versus evil (184).The book's remainder explores how controversial is consensus narrative that explained our origins as a people (14). …