Not only do textbooks fail to blame the federal government for its opposition to the civil rights movement, many actually credit the government, almost single-handedly, for the advances made during th...
Native Americans also insist that squaw is a derogatory term. Some believe it derives from a French corruption of an Iroquois epithet for vagina, analogous to cunt in English. Others believe it meant...
K-12 teachers. Many work in classrooms for as many as thirty-five hours a week; on top of that they must assign, read, and comment on homework, prepare and grade exams, and develop next week’s lesson...
If you truly want students to take an interest in American history, then stop lying to them.
History through red eyes offers our children a deeper understanding than comes from encountering the past as a story of inevitable triumph by the good guys.
The first panel misquotes the preamble and conclusion of the Declaration of Independence, leaving out five words from within its selected excerpts. The architect requested the omissions so the text wo...
The Civil War had been about something other than states’ rights after all. It began as a war to force or prevent the breakup of the United States.
Socialization is not primarily cognitive. We are not persuaded rationally not to pee in the living room; we are not to. We then rationalize and obey this rule even when no authority figure lurks to e...
Recovering the memory of the increasing oppression of African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century can deepen our understanding of the role racism has played in our society and con...
Other lakes get similar treatment. According to Michigan markers, whites discovered Lake Michigan, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Superior. Lake Erie gets a more complex marker: Named for the Erie Indians,...
Indian history is the antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that European Americans are God’s chosen people. Indian history reveals that the United States and its...
History textbooks still present Union and Confederate sympathizers as equally idealistic. The North fought to hold the Union together, while the South fought, according to 'The American Way', 'for the...
Everyone named in our history made a positive contribution (except John Brown, as the next chapter shows). Or as Frances FitzGerald put it when she analyzed textbooks in 1979, In all history, there is...
Critical thinking requires assembling data to back up one’s opinion. Otherwise students may falsely conclude that all opinions are somehow equal.
By 1970, exclusion was so complete that fewer than 500 black families lived in white suburban neighborhoods in the entire Chicago metropolitan area, and most of those were in just five or six suburbs.
As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols of the Iroquois League. Although one arrow is ea...
Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we arrived at this point. Understanding our past is central to our ability to understand ourselves and the world ar...
The actual cabin fell into disrepair probably before Lincoln became president. According to research by D. T. Pitcaithley, the new cabin, a hoax built in 1894, was leased to two amusement park owners,...
Since healthy communities are able to recognize past mistakes, they went on to pledge to work toward the common good in building a community where people of all races and cultural backgrounds are welc...
Or guides might initiate a discussion of slave names. Many owners insisted on the right to name their newborn slaves—rather than allowing their parents this pleasure—and then deliberately gave them de...