Ally Action Project Week 10: Racism in History Textbooks

Our focus this week were America's children in grades K-12 going back to school. America's most popular history textbooks (MacDougal, Littell, Hall) contain myriad innacurate references to slavery, the civil war, and civil rights events, in many places leaving them out altogether, in favor of a more 'white-washed' version of American history.

Part of our immediate concern was a lack of accurate and recent reporting on this topic. With the need for students to remote learn in the Fall semester of 2020, reporting of what children are rote learning in schools is critical. MacDougal includes this quote in one of their recent popular textbooks; “This [reliance on slavery] was not the case in the Northern colonies, due mainly to an economy driven by commerce” (McDougal Littell, 2006, p. 78), showcasing just one example of some of the subtle racist misinterpretations students are being taught.

We suggested several options to push local schools for more accurate history textbooks, including the 1619 Project, a comprehensive online magazine publication by the New York Times, that was popular with many K-12 teachers as a way to teach a more rounded and accurate version of American history. Another program that is distributing lessons and teaching materials aimed at combating this racism is the Zinn Education Project, which showcases free, online history lessons, which we offer as an ideal solution to the problem of remote learning using textbooks and assignments.

In order to start unlearning the systematic racism we teach in America, we must start by learning history accurately. Reject racist implications and outright falsehoods about slavery in textbooks by ensuring our future generations can access free and accurate textbooks and teaching materials. As we move into the realm of remote learning in the next few years, online publications and open-source historically certified sources are more accessible by more schools, with 99% of American public schools now having constant highspeed internet. It is critical to ingrain anti-racism through education, discussion, and rejection.