By Duane Campbell
The following is the text of a presentation which Campbell gave to students at California State University, Sacramento, sponsored by the Serna Center on Nov.30,2009.
Textbooks for California schools are selected by the State Board of Education based upon recommendations of their Curriculum Committees and the state frameworks and standards. It is urgent that the History-Social Science Framework be revised to provide an accurate history of the contributions of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Latinos and Asians to the history of the state and of the nation. The current Framework reflects the historiography of the 1950’s. It was written in 1986 by senior scholars, they in turn were educated in the early 1970’s or before. It is substantially out of date.
California has the largest population of any state, with more than 6,252,000 students in school in 2008. California students make up more than 11 percent of the United States total. California, along with some 16 other states, adopts textbooks for the entire state instead of district by district purchasing. This makes the California adoption the largest single textbook sale in the nation. Gaining this market is an important goal for textbook publishers. Many publishers write and edit their books in a targeted attempt to win control of the large and lucrative California and Texas markets. Publishers promote and try to sell books developed in California and Texas throughout the nation in an effort to increase their profits.
The 1980’s were the age of Ronald Reagan. As Governor he appointed members of the State Board of Education. His influence continued long after he became President of the U.S. The view of history that won the battle in California in 1987 was crafted by neoconservative historian Diane Ravitch and supported by Paul Gagnon and former California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, among others (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995).
The 1987 Framework still in use today expanded African American, Native American, and women’s history coverage but remains totally inadequate in the coverage of Latinos and Asians. The only significant change between the 1985 and the 2005 adopted Framework was the addition of a new cover, a cover letter, and additions of photos such as of Cesar Chavez . Latinos currently make up 48.1 percent of California’s student population and Asians make up 8.1 %.
The dominant neo conservative view of history argues that textbooks and a common history should provide the glue that unites our society. Historical themes and interpretations are selected in books to create unity in a diverse and divided society, a unity from the point of view of the dominant class. This viewpoint assigns to schools the task of creating a common culture. In reality, television and military service may do more to create a common culture than do schools and books.
Conservatives assign the task of cultural assimilation to schools, with particular emphasis on the history, social science, and literature curricula. Historians advocating consensus write textbooks that downplay the roles of slavery, class, racism, genocide, and imperialism in our history. They focus on ethnicity and assimilation rather than race, on the success of achieving political reform, representative government, and economic opportunity for European American workers and immigrants. They decline to notice the high poverty rate of U.S. children, the crisis of urban schooling, and the continuation of racial divisions in housing and the labor force. In California they decline to notice that Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Latinos as well as Asians contributed to the development of this society.
This consensus conservative viewpoint history dominates textbook publishing in California , but these partial and incomplete histories do not empower students from our diverse cultural communities. By recounting primarily a consensual, European American view, history and literature extend and reconstruct current White supremacy, sexism, and class biases in our society. When texts or teachers tell only part of the story, schools foster intellectual colonialism and ideological domination (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995).
When the 48.72 % of students who are Latino , and the 11.5 % who are Asian do not see themselves as part of history, for many their sense of self is marginalized. Marginalization negatively impacts their connections with school and their success at school. It contributes to an over 50% drop out rate for Latinos and some Asian students. An accurate history would provide some students with a a sense of self, of direction, of purpose.
History and social science classes should help young people acquire and learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and responsible citizens throughout their lives. Instead, the current history textbooks tell a fairy tale of what happened here in the Southwest.
In 1995, the author James Loewen described what students learn about history, “High school students hate history. Whey they list their favorite subjects, history invariably comes in last. Students consider history the most irrelevant of the 21 subjects commonly taught in high school.
Bor-r-ring is the adjective they apply to it. When students can, they avoid it even though most students get higher grades than in math, science, or English. Even when they are forced to take classes in history, they repress what they learn so every year or two another study decries what the seventeen year olds don’t know.
African American, Native American, and Latino students view history with a special dislike. They also learn history especially poorly. Students of color do only slightly worse than white students in mathematics. If you’ll pardon my grammar, non white students do more worse in English and most worse in history. “ Lies My Teacher Told me. P. 1. (1995.)
California should be leading the way in preparing our young people for civic life in a multicultural society. We are not. Instead, California students are currently restricted by the out of date and substantially limited History-Social Science Framework. The Framework needs to be updated to include scholarship developed since 1980 and the development of Ethnic Studies.
Incomplete and inaccurate history, along with incomplete and inaccurate economics for example, harms not only Latinos and Asians, but the Anglo majority as well. When Anglo students are taught an inaccurate view of Latino /Mexicano history in the state, they fail to understand the major demographic shift presently occurring.
This poor understanding contributes to fear, misunderstanding, and conflict such as that peddled by the Militia and the Minutemen . These extreme right wing forces, along with talk radio, offer a fear based narrative that divides our society. Fear, lack of information, and lack of mutual respect led to the passing of Propositions 187, 227, and others.
A committee appointed by the State Board of Education worked in 2008/2009 to revise the Framework and thus to change the criteria for textbook selection. I and others testified before the committee on the need to revise the Framework, Unfortunately the California budget crisis this year resulted in a cut of $800,000.00 for California textbook publications.
As a result of the budget cuts further work on the frameworks for history-social science, science, health, and mathematics has been stopped. On July 17, 2009, the Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission (Curriculum Commission) approved the draft update of the History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools for field review. The draft framework has been posted on the CDE Web page at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/hs/cf/, but the actual field review and online survey will not occur at this time. At present there are no plans to continue with the revision of the Framework, thus the current outdated, culturally imperialistic document remains as the guidelines for teaching and text book adoptions.
You can follow developments on this story at the Institute for Democracy and Education web site at http://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/
Duane Campbell is a professor in the CSUS Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department, and a member of Democratic Socialists of America.
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