Why Bias Will Make History Repeat Itself
The truth behind our history textbooks and why we are getting an inaccurate and unfair view of America.
As Americans, we have been taught that textbooks are the most reliable, infallible, go-to source in our education system. From learning the alphabet in kindergarten to throwing graduation caps into the air at high school graduations, we’re instructed to recognize that those schoolbooks are practically sacred — as in the key to all the knowledge we will ever need. But that isn’t true, nor is it acceptable. And that’s because of the nature of many of those textbooks in the first place.
Since the beginning of America’s rise, its history — when it comes to the nation’s schools — has largely been told from only one perspective: elite, white, and male. And this view has mostly been at the core of textbooks across the country for generations. This concept becomes especially problematic with issues like U.S. foreign wars or this nation’s racial history. Generally speaking, the history of racial conflict in the United States seems to be glorified to the point of insensitivity and misrepresentation. And that can’t be emphasized enough as this ongoing debate over teaching “critical race theory” becomes more intense across the country.
Yes, history is harsh. There is no denying that. Yet, when teaching children, a problem arises as to how unvarnished the history should be presented to them. In my opinion, history textbooks put white Americans on a high ground to the point where true facts are warped, and it is completely unacceptable. As a society, we tell children that “we should learn from history and our mistakes” and to “never let it happen again.” But by teaching an inaccurate depiction of history, we are completely throwing those concepts out the window.
This issue has persisted over the years with the handling of slavery in textbooks. Large publishers, including McGraw Hill, as The Atlantic reported in 2015, have been criticized in recent years for portraying slavery and its introduction into the United States as a working opportunity, almost treating it as if it were immigration. Those who were quite literally and very brutally forced into this labor, are depicted as “helpful” and “workers,” making it seem as if they were necessary for the business of the “superior” white people. Stacy Nisman, an AP U.S. History teacher at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, really said it best when she recently described this issue in textbooks by saying that, “black people were portrayed during slavery as [having] lower intelligence and requiring the assistance of the white people.”
And that isn’t the only problem as it relates to slavery. When textbooks mention the Three-Fifths Compromise, I have noticed that there is rarely, if ever, any mention of how brutal and disgusting this decision was. The AMSCO Perfection Learning AP US History textbook, my personal learning material, says, “The delegates agreed to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted each enslaved individual as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of determining a state’s level of taxation and representation.” By omitting the vicious reality of the dehumanization of slaves by making them property, these textbooks are desensitizing the brutal realities to make it more palatable for young readers. But doing so deprives history, and us, of the truth.
And on the issue of sharecropping, the AMSCO history textbook depicts newly-freed slaves as inferior and unable to fend for themselves. It also tries to justify the inhumane acts of the former white slave owners and farm owners by blaming it on the conditions of their time. The textbook adds that: “African Americans’ insistence on autonomy, however, combined with changes in the postwar economy, led White landowners to adopt a system based on tenancy and sharecropping.”
By no fault of the teachers, the historical “facts” and teachings are filled with an immense bias. Despite this situation being clear, there seems to be little to no recognition of it with the intention of finding a solution. And now states like Florida are passing laws that are designed to simplify the teachings of American history by sanitizing it in the stated interest of providing students with a more “positive” view of our country.
We all deserve an accurate representation of what happened in our past. With regards to children, if the history needs to be presented in a less severe manner to avoid emotional trauma, that’s one thing. But changing, or ignoring, historical facts is something else completely.
Having an objective view of our past is entirely acceptable and critical to the learning process for us all.
