Historical Bias and Schoolbooks . . .

by R. Elgin on March 14, 2010

As some readers have noticed, it looks as if other countries — like America — have problems with history and schoolbooks too.

{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }

1 justinkraus March 14, 2010 at 3:47 pm: The idea that history can be objectively told is extremely dubious. Keeping this in mind when talking about so-called “historical bias” in student’s textbooks is really important. Every historical account is biased towards some set of ideals, so the question is not whether or not textbooks are biased, but what are the ideals that that bias is founded on? Liberals will prefer one type of history, while conservatives another, but we shouldn’t let either side claim that their account is unbiased. Exposing students to a variety of views without privileging any of them, so that children themselves can iteratively decide what they believe, is a better way to approach teaching history.
2 alexwon March 14, 2010 at 5:02 pm: Indeed, the idea that history can be objectively told is extremely dubious. And with that in mind, is this about exposing students to a variety of views or is this about exposing students to a particular view? For me , it is always about particular views. And this is no different. Texas with this decision, wants America to be a Christian nation, created by god. Thomas Jefferson does not exist in this history and it is independent of Darwin. ‘Variety’ in this case is a euphemism for promoting a particular ideology.
3 lollabrats March 14, 2010 at 5:18 pm: “The idea that history can be objectively told is extremely dubious.”

This may be so. However, we do have a duty to raise flags on nonsensical “biases” contained in the competing histories as set forth by professional historians and chroniclers of current events. It would be irresponsible for us as a people to offer future scholars no counter claims made by, say, proponents of trutherism, and pretend as if that was just another account of valid history. Trutherism is interesting not because what they say reflects historical events, but because it itself is a historical event and studying its pathology as a social phenomenon tells us something about how the human mind and society works–or fails to.
4 alexwon March 14, 2010 at 5:43 pm: pathology

true dat
5 justinkraus March 14, 2010 at 6:42 pm: Of course people acting in bad faith or exhibiting “nonsensical bias” should not be taken seriously. However we need to be very careful whom we put in that category. Only the clinically insane truly spout nonsense. Everyone else (and I do mean everyone) simply has an agenda. From my reading of the revisions in Texas I can’t see any “nonsensical bias.” They have agendas, sure, but labeling the ideas of people with whom you strongly disagree as nonsense is really just unhelpful ideological bullying.
The history textbooks before the revision were just as “biased” as they are after it. Its just a different bias now.
By all means disagree with the new bias and support the older one but don’t frame the debate, as this posting seemingly does, as if the textbooks after the conservative revisions are more “biased” than they were before them. Setting yourself up as an ideological gate keeper, someone who can decide what is bias and what is the “truth,” just (rightly) pisses people off.
People with differing views ought to negotiate with each other on projects (like a student textbook) without hiding their particular ideologies behind arrogant veils of objectivity. Unfortunately liberals and conservatives fail to be so transparent in pretty much equal measure in my estimation.
6 Maximus2008 March 14, 2010 at 8:31 pm: it looks as if other countries — like America

It looks as if the writer also have issues with geography…since “America” is a large continent…
7 lollabrats March 14, 2010 at 8:37 pm: “Only the clinically insane truly spout nonsense.”

“Of course people acting in bad faith or exhibiting “nonsensical bias” should not be taken seriously.”

Truthers, it seems to me are not acting in bad faith. And they tend not to be clinically insane. Most truthers are completely rational and sane. I just happen to think that what they say happened did not happen. And even if they may have an agenda, that does not mean that they are insincere in their beliefs. But you are making it sound like we should let all voices go without rebuttal:

“They have agendas, sure, but labeling the ideas of people with whom you strongly disagree as nonsense is really just unhelpful ideological bullying.”

Here is the problem. Fundamentally, most disagreements are not over the interpretations of facts, but what the facts themselves are. If I say that there is no God and you disagree and say there is, then we are no longer fighting over ideological concerns. We are instead squabbling over what reality is. We cannot both be right. One of us is indeed being nonsensical. If I say that terrorists highjacked and flew planes into buildings, but you say that that is not so, then we are not fighting over agendas, we are fighting over what reality is.

And what 8675309 objects to is the fact of the matter regarding whether Japanese interment was driven not by racism but by other concerns. His comment, linked above, indicates that German and Italian American civilians were not interned. But we can see by his objection that he makes an assumption about reality, which is that those civilians indeed had not been interned. However, Wiki says that we interned 10,000 German Americans during WWI and over 11,000 German Americans during WWII, including 1260 German Americans immediately after Pearl Harbor. What Wiki cannot tell us is whether racism had any part in the decision to intern 110,000 Japanese Americans. We only know that a Democratic Congress and President Reagan, many decades after the fact, said that it was a racist policy, for which they apologized.

Which is to say that it is also dubious to assume that political disagreements occur because of ideological concerns merely motivated by opaque agendas.

In this Texan case, however, everyone freely admits that the fight involves ideological concerns:

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

For instance, one of the conservative pushback involves the well-known ideological issue over the legality of the doctrine of the separation of church and state:

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

This conflict involves legal tradition, conflicting Supreme Court decisions, and issues arising from practical policy making.

The concern here is not who is actually objective. The concern is how much more of one constituency’s bias should be allowed into the textbooks at the expense of another constituency’s. In other words, in important policy decisions where there are necessarily going to be winners and losers, everyone already knows what the stakes are. It is up to politicians and lobbyists to fight on behalf of their constituency as best they can.

And at any rate, in such cases, the vast majority of the people can tell that the fight is ideological and agenda-based.

I understand that you are against certain rhetorical strategies. That’s fine. But I do not see that being more transparent in many cases will lead necessarily to a more informed public or wiser policy-making because I do not necessarily think that only transparency or “truth” are at the heart of the issue. I think the problem often is that we generally do not know what the facts are. This is especially the case whenever policy making involves unknown future risk. And we will never solve this.
8 Sonagi March 14, 2010 at 9:19 pm: Exposing students to a variety of views without privileging any of them, so that children themselves can iteratively decide what they believe, is a better way to approach teaching history.

Adults, not children, determine which standards are taught during the 180 days of instruction that comprises one school year, and how heavily the standards are weighted on the achievement tests mandated by NCLB. Curriculum design requires selection and choices that limit and weight the information presented. The introduction of state standards in the 90s is a vast improvement over the previous textbook-as-curriculum approach which gave teachers and schools too much discretion in deciding what to teach.
9 WeikuBoy March 14, 2010 at 9:34 pm: “I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state … I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

It’s in the 1st Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof …”

I’ve had this same argument with many Christians. Even when shown the 1st Amendment, they say, “Well, I don’t see the words separation of church and state; do you?”

Opiates for the stupid, etc.
10 Bipolar Mindscrew March 14, 2010 at 9:59 pm: Maximus2008 March 14, 2010 at 8:31 pm:
It looks as if the writer also have issues with geography…since “America” is a large continent…

Why do Americans insist on including Canada and Mexico as part of America. I suppose “America the Brave” is about the continent to which you refer? “America the Beautiful” likewise also obviously refers to the U.S.A.

Anyway, the same people who spout this mindless argument forget that actually they are referring to “North America” while “The Americas” refers to two continents…
11 justinkraus March 14, 2010 at 10:25 pm: @WeikuBoy

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof …”

Even as someone who thinks separation of church and state is a good thing, I find it interesting how you can call people “stupid” who don’t automatically interpret the above quote as endorsing a strict church/state separation. Surely you can admit that the matter is not entirely black and white?
A very restricted interpretation of the statement “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” would not forbid, so long as no Congressional legislation was passed, tax dollars being used to support religious charities, or any number of non-congressionally legislated state/church interactions. And in fact the US government engages in all sorts of such behavior. It pays for military chaplains, and imams, gives tax credits to religious organizations (I believe?) and prints money that says “In God we Trust” daily.

Not acknowledging the ambiguity, and room for contestation, of the Constitution on matters of church/state separation, only makes you look “stupid.”
12 WeikuBoy March 14, 2010 at 10:56 pm: “A very restricted interpretation of the statement “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” would not forbid, so long as no Congressional legislation was passed, tax dollars being used to support religious charities, or any number of non-congressionally legislated state/church interactions.”

@11: Case closed
13 WeikuBoy March 14, 2010 at 11:01 pm: justinkraus: don’t quit your day job, babe.

Sorry (to The Hole) to appear disrespectful, but I’m just drunk enough to let my true feelings be known about non-lawyers who insist on telling us what the 1st (or 2nd, or 4th or 5th, etc.) Amendment really says.

And justinkraus, if you ARE a lawyer, shame on your law school.
14 8675309 March 15, 2010 at 9:27 am: lollabrats #7

However, Wiki says that we interned 10,000 German Americans during WWI and over 11,000 German Americans during WWII, including 1260 German Americans immediately after Pearl Harbor.

Thank you lollabrats for that information. I was not previously aware that 11,000 German American — among them Germans from Latin American countries — were interned by the U.S. after Pearl Harbor during WW2.

I also found out from this source — Judgment without trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II by Tetsuden Kashima, (University of Washington Press, 2003) that many of these Germans were used in deals with Germany to swap for American citizens.

That said, when you consider that a whopping 110,000 Japanese Americans (both 1st gen., 2nd gen., and 3rd gen.), were isolated and interned after Pearl Harbor from a total population group that represented a mere fraction of all 1st generation German Americans in 1940, you’ll clearly understand the “logistical dilemma” the U.S. government encountered when it sought to round up ALL enemy aliens under the Enemy Aliens Act of 1798, meaning, any idiot can point out a person of Asian ancestry, but how do you identify the dangerous German or Italian among us?

According to the 1940 U.S. Census, foreign-born 1st-generation Asian Americans of ALL nationalities (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese) — numbered only 85,924 people in 1940 (or 0.2% of the U.S. population). As there was no breakdown for individual Asian nationalities in 1940, and assuming that perhaps 1/4 of this number were Japanese — my guess — at 110,000 total Japanese Americans incarcerated during WW2, you are looking at a J.A. incarceration rate at over 300 to 400% of the ostensible “enemy” population as identified by the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

On the other hand, a measly 11,000 foreign-born Germans — many of them deported from Latin American countries — were rounded up and incarcerated in the U.S. as individuals, sans families out of an ostensible “enemy” population of 5,236,512. This under-incarceration rate that favored whites over Asians either shows an uneven application of the law, playing favorites on the basis of race and nationality, or is evidence of just how difficult it is to round up 15.1 percent of the U.S. population.

And let’s not forget to mention that the U.S. for all intents and purposes basically ignored all U.S.-born German Americans, whereas U.S. born Japanese Americans were routinely incarcerated with no regard for their citizenship. Many of these men later fought with the U.S. Army in “nisei” or 2nd generation units, most notably the 100th BTN of the 442 RCT. Ultimately, this uneven application of the law along racial lines created a disparate impact on how so-called “enemy aliens” of European origin were treated vs. “enemy aliens” of Asian origin.

Finally, according to The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Part 769: Personal justice denied (University of Washington Press, 1997), the author, Tetsuden Kashima states:

“The population of alien Germans in the United States – not to mention American citizens of German birth – was far too large for a general policy of internment comparable to that used in the case of the Japanese in America. Instead, Germans and German Americans in the U.S. were detained and evicted from coastal areas on an individual basis. The War Department considered mass expulsions from coastal areas for reasons of military security, but never executed such plans.
15 WeikuBoy March 15, 2010 at 9:45 am: Sorry about last night.

What got me was justinkraus’s phrase, “so long as no congressional legislation was passed.” I took offense because ALL federal spending originates with “legislation” — as it does at the state and local levels.

That is just the kind of cutesy yet stunningly ignorant formulation Christians have created (and Bush-Cheney implemented) to rewrite history and remake the U.S. into a fundamentalist theocracy.

It angers me that religious conservatives succeeded in putting “In God We Trust” on coins and “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, then used those very examples to try to negate the church-state separation.

It angers me that for the last thirty years religious conservatives have used raw political power to try to force their beliefs on the public. As in Texas, rewriting history in the case of its schoolbooks.

It angers me to see the corporate media falling for false equivalencies. There are not “two sides” — much less two equal sides — concerning evolution, global warming, the separation of church and state, or the need to regulate business. (I doubt even Brendon really wants to live in a fundamentalist theocracy or return to the days of children working in unsafe mines for pennies a day.) There IS only superstition versus science; the insatiable greed of corporate criminals versus consumers and employees; and the cynical use of 9/11 to invade and occupy Middle Eastern oil fields. Oh look: I have just described the three wings of the modern Republican party.
16 justinkraus March 15, 2010 at 2:51 pm: @WeikuBoy

Do you not see how your string of simplistic good/evil (false) dichotomies, i.e. evil corporations vs. exploited consumers, global warming skeptics vs. global warming adherents, superstition vs. science, etc.) and your denial that there can be middle ground on any of these issues makes you sound like the extreme all-or-nothing theocratic fundamentalists whom you claim to despise so much? Your principles may be different, but the fundamentalist (dare I say religious?) zeal with which you expound them and your denial of the possibility of other views is pretty unappealing. Nor do your anger (and drunkenness) lend credence to your arguments. Diversity is a good thing. Tolerance is a good thing. Display a little with your conservative brothers, even if they don’t return it to you.

Step back and relax a little bit, more peace and love bro. If you weren’t in Korea, I’d say a good doobie might help. I know I could use one every now and again.
17 lollabrats March 15, 2010 at 3:25 pm: @8675309

For the record, I am in agreement with you: the internment of the Japanese was indiscrimnate and went far beyond what could be reasonably justified. I think that if you trust minority members of your society enough to let them fight and die for you in your armies, then you shouldn’t be herding their families into concentration camps and holding them with armed guards and dogs.
18 WeikuBoy March 16, 2010 at 9:17 am: @16 “Do you not see …”

No, I don’t. The Earth is not 6000 years old. Adam & Eve did not ride to church on dinosaurs. The U.S. was not founded as a Christian theocracy. Thomas Jefferson was an important revolutionary; and the separation of church and state is enshrined in the opening phrases of the Bill of Rights. These are facts. There is no “middle ground” or “gray area” despite the religious beliefs of the majority Republicans on the Texas school board.

The goal of these conservative Christians is to create a false equivalency between their religious beliefs “on the right” and science and history “on the left.” They pervert words like “tolerance” and “diversity” by pleading for equal time in the public square — for intelligent design (or whatever they are now calling Biblical creationism), for example, to be taught in public schools alongside science and history, at taxpayer expense. As if science and fundamentalist Christianity are equally valid belief systems; as if the difference between their respective adherents on the right and left is merely a matter of politics; and as if relegating religious instruction to Sunday school, where it has always belonged and where it rightfully belongs, is itself a form of intolerance.

Don’t fall for it.