Revised 2/5/2025…First published in 2022.
Editor’s note: The view count showing is an error message. Views for 2/5/25 are 243, according to admin statistical data.
One evening, while attending a degree program connected to a well-known California university in the mid-1990s, I opened the assigned history textbook, flipped the pages to the week’s history chapter, and began reading the following paragraph.
“Occasionally, slaves from South Carolina tried to reach Spanish Florida, but most slave runaways merely wanted to visit friends or relatives or avoid their normal work routine for a few days or months.”
Stunned, I stared at the page as I tried to process what I had just read. Puzzled, I turned to the copyright page. I thought this text might have been written in the 1950s …or 1940s. ..1800s?? But the copyright was current.
So, I turned to a student seated nearby. I did not know her, but I said, “Could you read this?” And I pushed the textbook toward her. She read it, and I won’t repeat what she said.
Eight years later, I came across my notes from that evening and sent the textbook excerpt to a famous author and African American history professor.
Recently, I looked at my citation class notes closely for the first time. I checked the educational background of the edition I had read…. educational credentials were Ivy League.
The textbook edition I read in class is missing from many online listings and could not be found on World Cat.
Wonder why.
The textbook was issued by a best-selling publisher that opened for business in the early 1900s; more than a hundred years later, its 11th edition will be published in August 2022.
Unfortunately, the example in the earlier paragraph is not unusual from many other seemingly reputable sources on history across all education levels.
For instance, according to Time magazine, one reason Black families have turned to homeschooling during the pandemic at three times the rate of other racial groups is because of the teaching materials used in the educational system.
William F. Spivy writes to educate about the potholes in history taught in traditional school systems. One of his recent articles on Medium titled St Augustine: America’s Oldest City: What They Don’t Tell You in the Brochures is an eye-opening look that underscores some of the significant ways history is twisted other than in textbooks.
Source: Abe Books.com
Sources
For Black Parents Resisting White-Washed History, Homeschooling Is an Increasingly Popular Option. Time Magazine, Katie Reilly, February 28, 2022
https://time.com/6151375/black-families-homeschooling/
A People and A Nation: A History of the United States, Volume 1, fourth edition, 1994.
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30893324068
St Augustine: America’s Oldest City: What They Don’t Tell You in the Brochures by William F. Spivy: https://medium.com/black-history-month-365/st-augustine-americas-oldest-city-604fdc693f7d
Views: 82