Inaccurate History: the problem, its effects, and possible solutions

A paper presented by:

Zachary Elder for:

The John Glenn Institute Washington Academic Internship Program

The historian Howard Zinn states, “We can reasonably conclude that how we think is not just mildly interesting, not just a subject for intellectual debate, but a matter of life and death.”[1] Therefore, the institutions that from youth teach us how to think require thorough examination. From the beginning of our education, the teaching of American history influences our beliefs because it is the place that we learn about our past heritage, which in turn influences our self-image and our future thinking. The influence high school history courses can have upon students is even more important, since 80% of American citizens take no history courses beyond this point.[2] However, there is evidence that the history youth are being taught is inaccurate, biased, and unengaging, and the problem lies mostly in the textbooks, which make up more than 75% of the average American history curriculum.[3]

There are many consequences to this unique problem, because the teaching of history is how students learn to become good citizens of the United States. As James Loewen comments, “History is a heartrending, emotional subject.”[4] It follows that inaccurate history may be wrongly influencing students’ thoughts on citizenship, and their own backgrounds; it also may be producing the wrong emotions in their impressionable minds.

Zinn explains that the purpose of teaching history is to instill future citizens with the skills of critical thinking. Our current methods of achieving this goal are woefully inadequate and require immediate attention to prevent the miseducation of another generation of students. This paper will delve into the types of historical misrepresentations typically found in American history textbooks today, will illuminate reasons why this is such a problem, and also will present ideas to make history texts (and therefore, history courses and overall historical knowledge) more complete, more accurate, and perhaps even more thought-provoking.

Some Types of Historical Misrepresentation

The first problem that textbooks must deal with is the tendency toward non-objectivity; James Loewen calls this process “heroification.”[5] Often this process involves turning a complex, multi-faceted human into a unidimensional, airbrushed portrayal for the textbook biography. Textbook writers often leave out controversial facts and important events in the lives of historical figures. In many cases, the textbook writers are concerned with their books being banned by state textbook adoption boards or by local school boards for discussing controversial issues. For example, one textbook author left out facts relating to the assassination of Malcolm X, because he felt that if he left in the material, “no kids would get to read them anyway.”[6] Helen Keller’s life is one example of the historical controversy left out of American history.

The story most of us know is that she overcame her deafness and blindness in a heroic fashion to have a long career as a great humanitarian; she therefore teaches students the virtues of hard work and perseverance. However, the textbooks in high schools (and many in universities) choose not to teach us that she is regarded as a great humanitarian because she spoke on behalf of socialism and radical change in a period of staunch nationalism and capitalist control. She came to realize that social class was a controlling factor for opportunities, even in the “land of the free.” Many textbooks (e.g. The American Nation) simply end the story of Helen Keller when she learns to read and write as a child, because challenging the social hierarchy is a taboo issue for textbook writers. The textbooks deprive students of examining a dynamic humanitarian, in favor of presenting a bland, idealistic version of her, whitewashing away the bulk of Keller’s life experience. However, the inclusion of this information would allow students to gain more from Keller’s experience by discovering her motives as well as her deeds.

Heroification of American figures has quite an extended history, which closely parallels the surge of nationalism that began in the United States during and after the War of 1812, and continues to the present day. In the Congressional debate on whether to go to war in 1812, nationalistic pride took center stage for pro-war, pro-expansion Republicans, many of whom wanted to invade and rule Canada; Americans were led to engage in war against the British to, “defend our patriotic honor and advantage,”[7] although the nation was woefully unprepared to defend itself in such a war.[8]

When William Henry Harrison campaigned for the presidency in 1840, his supporters used the slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” and he won the Presidency as an American icon of military leadership. This motto was meant to remind voters of his “heroic” exploits in the Battle of Tippecanoe, commanding his troops to fight against Native American forces near the Wabash River, winning a decisive victory that belligerent Republicans could use as a reason to commit to war. History then proclaimed him as a great patriot, while ignoring several facts about the battle. First, Harrison did not have the permission from the government to attack the tribal settlements, which made his actions illegal. The fact that Harrison waited until the tribal leader Tecumseh had departed for the Mississippi valley to gather forces and set up camp disputes claims that he worked toward a peaceful resolution. Next, the impetus to attack stemmed from an informant who told Harrison that the tribes planned an attack at dawn. This is true, but the informant was also “whiskey-drunk beyon’ reason [and] had been unreliable and iltempered [sic].”[9]

Another discrepancy is that the “Battle” was little more than a skirmish. Though Harrison had over 1,200 troops and the number of Native American troops numbered over 1000, only around sixty on each side were killed, and the casualties were slightly higher on Harrison’s side; this was hardly the clear victory that Harrison suggested. Following this, Harrison proceeded to two more camps and, “finding no Indians, burned the settlements and their corn, then returned…finding only women.”[10] In addition, Harrison’s troops fired the first shots.[11] Harrison was even rebuked by some of his own men for the unprovoked offensive action, and an investigation was proposed.

History textbooks rarely even discuss the Battle of Tippecanoe in their sections covering the War of 1812, and fewer still mention that it occurred before war was declared or that it was a largely unprovoked attack. However, I can remember that I learned in high school history the patriotic presidential slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” I most likely had to memorize it for some quiz, though it was not required that I be knowledgeable of its context. Had I known that the famous motto came from a battle before the war of 1812, and that it was not the great act of patriotism that it was reported to have been, I would have had a greater understanding of history, how history influences future events, and would have been more interested in further study. Instead, I was even unaware that contrasting interpretations of the battle existed. Not only would this added information help make the story more accurate, but would encourage students examine other perspectives. This brings up another form of historical misrepresentation, that is, history removed from controversy.

Any historian will tell you that history, especially American history, is a “living thing.” Like any living thing it is always growing and evolving, and opposing viewpoints are a catalyst for such growth. There are many unsettled issues in American history today, though this is not apparent by looking at most high school textbooks. One textbook publisher suggests that, in the interest of conserving space in already lengthy texts, the authors typically only present one viewpoint (or none), not clarifying that the matter is of some dispute.[12] One method textbooks use to avoid controversy is by discussing nouns (people, places, and things) while leaving out an essential category: ideas.

Consider what one textbook tells students about Lincoln and his debates with Stephen Douglas over the abolition of slavery:

Even without his tall stovepipe hat, the six-feet, six-inch Lincoln towered over the Little Giant. He wore a formal black suit, usually rumpled and always too short for his long arms and legs. Douglas was what we would call a flashy dresser. He wore shirts with ruffles, fancy embroidered vests, a broad felt hat. He had a rapid-fire way of speaking that contrasted with Lincoln’s slow, deliberate style…Lincoln’s voice was high-pitched, Douglas’s deep. Both had to have powerful lungs to make themselves heard over street noises and the bustle of the crowds. They had no public address system to help them.[13]

This paragraph paints a wonderful literary picture of the event, but this is not a literature textbook. Perhaps it is good for students to have a sense of the event, but not at the expense of the event’s significance. Since this paragraph is the last in the book that deals with the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the students remain uninformed about the ideas presented in the debate, the same ones that led ultimately to the Civil War.

Another form of historical misrepresentation is outright fallacy. These fallacies have no basis in the primary sources of history, yet live on in textbooks because of repetition. The story in textbooks of abolitionist John Brown contains an example of outright falsehood. After outlining Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, American History describes him as “almost certainly insane,” The American Way states he was “proved to be mentally ill,” and The American Pageant says Brown was “probably of unsound mind.”[14] In the primary sources, this is not the case. Brown was not considered insane by any accounts his contemporaries left behind. On the contrary, Governor Wise of Virginia thought Brown exhibited “quick and clear perception,” “rational premises,” and “consecutive reasoning.”[15] Logically, it also does not fit that his 20-odd followers were also “crazy,” nor would it fit that his words and actions would strike such a chord in the North, creating such a surge of abolitionist sentiment. He was a martyr to his contemporaries, and yet textbooks portray him (and therefore his ideas) as “deranged.”[16] Though thoroughly disproved by historians, this and many other fallacies continue to live on, because history books often repeat from earlier editions and outdated secondary source literature.

Underlying Causes of Inaccurate History

This repetition of fallacies can sometimes be innocent enough, caused simply by placing literary accounts into historical ones accidentally. For example, the notion that everyone around Christopher Columbus thought the world was flat and that one could sail off of the edge is outright fallacy. In 1492, just as now, sailors could see that ships’ sails disappeared over the horizon after the ship, and that the earth cast a circular shadow across the moon. The credit for this myth, which continues to be perpetuated today, even in my cousin’s 4^th grade class play, goes to Washington Irving who wrote a best-selling biography of Columbus in 1828, and wanted to add some drama to the tale.[17]

However other fallacies, like that of John Brown’s insanity, stem from a more menacing source: underlying racist overtones that still pervade texts, often through this repetition. Despite the fact that much has been done in history texts to include minority and women figures and events, and to promote political correctness, there is much more racism in what goes unsaid in textbooks.

In fact, as Loewen points out in the twelve high school texts he studied, only five even mentioned the words “racism” or “racial prejudice.”[18] Even worse, though racism remains a major current issue, textbooks rarely try to explain the origins of racism, or even detail the processes involved. Of the twelve textbooks Loewen found only two that discussed such origins, and both dismissed racism as a simple bias of skin color, ignoring other forms of ethnic discrimination. [19] This is clearly only a partial explanation, which cannot be used to illuminate prejudices against the Jewish people in Nazi Germany and in the United States. By either failing to bring up racism, failing to discuss racism when brought up, or failing to clearly define it, American history textbooks fail to explain that racism is really a problem at all, or dismisses it as a problem of the past. Thus, racism can continue to exist, because few are aware of the root causes, or educated that racial prejudice is still alive and well. Worse still, if groups are still discriminated against while being taught that racism is a thing of the past, they are more inclined to accept it, continuing a vicious cycle.

The Exterior Causes of Inaccurate History

There are two major reasons why textbooks often do not help teach children the skills they should glean from the study of history: overuse of secondary sources and textbook adoption boards. First, secondary sources, which are used to create the textbooks, have not been examined critically. It is imperative to understand how textbooks are created using sources. There are three types of sources: primary documents which came from the people creating the history themselves (e.g. journals, newspapers of the period, law books, recordings, etc.). Historians analyze these documents to create secondary sources (research papers, theses, dissertations, articles, etc.). Finally, it is these secondary sources that primarily contribute to tertiary sources, i.e. the textbooks. When the learning text is finally produced, the original information may be filtered through several scholarly “middle men” before reaching the student.

Anyone who has ever played the “telephone game” realizes a problem with this method. Historical facts and historians’ assertions are passed down the line and can become distorted and/or missing, out of context from a secondary source; also an assertion can be passed off as factual. To paraphrase Joel Best, an error in one of the sources can be repeated, creating a chain of inaccurate history: bad history takes on a life of its own.[20]

The secondary sources also have another problem: many sources used to create American history textbooks are incredibly outdated, most dating from the late 19^th and the first half of the 20^th century. For example, the definitive work on Ohio History remains History of the State of Ohio by Carl Wittke, which was published in 1937.

In itself this is not a problem, but examine closely that in this era, Native Americans are still called savages in text, women cannot yet vote, segregation is in full force in the South (and North, to a lesser extent), and fervent patriotism and nationalism were sweeping the United States. Historical works are not written in a vacuum, and these cultural attitudes often are reflected in the historical source. These overly patriotic attitudes especially skew the reporting of events and historical figures. In The History of Col. Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, George Meyer often describes the former Kentucky Congressman as “brave,” “strong,” “courageous,” and “valiant.”[21] Though the historian mentions negative characteristics, he does so only to excuse them. For instance, Meyer states that, “though his family would get contracts to feed soldiers, the most careful reading of Johnson’s letters…shows that his vote for war was actuated by motives of patriotism and honor.”

Meyer also erroneously reports that Col. Johnson “killed the famed Indian leader Tecumseh, the scalper of settlers,” during the Battle of the Thames.[22] In reality, Col. Johnson was wounded in the battle, and admitted in his own journals that it was more likely that he was “shot by the brave, rather than I shot him.”[23] Also, there is no proof that the body found nearby was actually Tecumseh. Meyer’s non-objective nationalism and fervent Kentucky pride were all too common for the day and contribute to inaccurate, incomplete, and erroneous history.

High school American history texts, despite becoming more “politically correct” in recent years, still contain this sense of nationalistic pride. If, as previously noted, the purpose of teaching history is to instill critical thinking into the minds of future citizens, then impressing this sense of blind patriotism cannot be helping students learn to see the positive and the negative events in our nation’s history; nor can it lead them to interpret properly the events that affect their own lives. Right from the textbook titles however, the student gets slapped with this patriotic ideology:

The Great Republic, The American Way, Land of Promise, Rise of the American Nation. Such titles differ from the titles of all other textbooks students read in high school or college. Chemistry books for example are called Principles of Chemistry, not Rise of the Molecule.[24]

Why are there not more complete, accurate history textbooks that deal with controversial historical issues and present historical figures as imperfect human beings, instead of patriotic superheroes? The largest reason is textbook adoption boards, employed by almost half of the states in the interest of education. These boards act as a censoring body, making sure texts have the correct reading levels, number of pages, topics covered, and whether any material may be considered offensive to any parent. They also typically prefer books that take one side or another of a particular issue. Also, thus far boards have been made up of individuals with mostly conservative opinions.[25] To cite one common example of a conservative textbook adoption board member, Lynne Cheney chaired the Texas Public School Textbook Purchasing Board, as well as the National Endowment of the Humanities. When refusing a textbook grant, she once stated “It’s OK to talk about the barbarism of the Indians, but not about the barbarism of the Europeans.”[26]

To publishers of textbooks, the approval of these boards means economic life or death; it is a simple effect of capitalism. Publishers create history textbooks to sell them, and if an adoption board denies a book on the grounds that it would make students and parents (often the white students and parents) uncomfortable, then the publisher cannot make a textbook profitable. Therefore, the only textbooks available are the most conservative ones, and a teacher can be disciplined for using a textbook that has not received the approval of the board. Even states that do not have approval boards end up using the conservative textbooks, because alternative texts are unprofitable for the publishers. In the words of a representative of the publishing firm Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, “when you’re publishing a book, if there’s something that is controversial, it’s better to take it out.” [27]

There are consequences of leaving out this controversy and producing incomplete, inaccurate American history. First, teaching students facts and events without demonstrating how they shape, and were shaped by, a larger historical context causes them to forget quickly most of what they have “learned.” Worse yet, if students are taught material that negatively portrays (or simply does not portray) their background (e.g. Amerindian students), then they will be likely to forget even more. In fact, it begins to alienate students of color and many students of poor families, affecting their self-esteem. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once condemned minority-centered textbooks as misguided “psychotherapy” for such groups. However, if textbooks are still teaching Eurocentric history, then this produces an education that is “psychotherapy for whites.”[28]

Perhaps an even greater consequence is that, by using incomplete and inaccurate American history textbooks to teach, the students will not learn how history affects the present and the future, and will grow up unaware of “cause and effect” reasoning. Because they aren’t taught that events and people influenced the nation’s past, they will stop looking for the causes of their present conditions. They will also be less apt to think about the effects that their decisions will have upon the future, making more bad decisions; bad history will bring about more bad history. Today I just read a history textbook given to college students that describes in detail a “group of savage Indians who grabbed the man from his horse, killed him, and proceeded to eat his heart.”[29] Looking at the date of publication, I expected to see “1900” or perhaps “1910.” Instead, I saw “1996.” One can only imagine a young Native American child’s self-image after reading this national text, printed by the federal government, and available in the National Archives Library. This is not bad in itself, and it can be useful for students to learn the violence in history, but what white student has to hear about Christopher Columbus who taught his men to “knife Indians by the tens and twenties to test the sharpness of their blades.”[30]

Changes to Make History Textbooks More Accurate

There are many reasons why it is important that American history textbooks need to be reformed, and reformed quickly, before another generation of high school students goes off into the world without the slightest inkling that they were taught wrong. Rather than simply posit reforms that should make the American history textbooks much more accurate and salient to the minds of high school students, I would first like to show an example of a text which demonstrates several different reforms, and has been tested to work in public high schools. This text is called Congress and the Shaping of American History.

From the title, one can probably gather that this text does not offer complete coverage of American history; the portions it does cover include several major events in U.S. history, specifically how the actions, attitudes, debates, and legislation by Congress has affected that course of history. In fact, the first reform involved in the textbook is that it presents the concept that typically students only learn in physics class, that “action creates reaction.” One of the major problems with textbooks that Loewen, Zinn, Delfattore, and others present is that they fail to teach causality; without it, students cannot “use the past to illuminate the present…or think coherently about social life.”[31] For example, Congress and the Shaping of American History will demonstrate the ways the legislation and legislators involved in the Compromise of 1850 would be a precursor to Southern secession from the Union and the Civil War that followed.

Perhaps its more specified coverage will even be a positive force, helping students to learn by not burdening them with a massive amount of information on myriad topics. After all, the average high school text is only 888 pages long.[32] Also, Congress is designed as a supplementary text, to help students (and teachers) actively learn, going “beyond the facts presented in their textbooks.”[33] Through many different reforms, American history textbooks need to do just that, encouraging learning outside the texts.

Another innovation brought about by Congress is the use of primary sources in the learning process. When discussing a pivotal piece of Congressional legislation throughout a chapter, and the effects it has on American society, the textbook includes “full color, textured reproductions of the original document.”[34] In creating the chapters, the authors also utilized many primary sources, such as Congressional records, the private journals of Congressmen, and private documents. In addition, any secondary sources are thoroughly checked for validity and screened for unnecessary nationalistic overtones. By emphasizing the use of primary sources, the text attempts to bridge the gap between the world of history and the world of the student, the two of which remain far apart in high school American history textbooks.

Congress also makes an effort to “tell the whole story.” For example, when they present the life and career of John Randolph, they will not fail to mention that he was a rather oppressive, violent slave owner, nor will they leave out that other Congressmen used to make fun of him for his “feminine voice and appearance.” The text also will not fail to mention the exciting material of history, such as the practice of dueling among members of Congress in the early 19^th century, or the war wounds suffered by some Congressmen during the War of 1812. Presenting a critical, analytical version of history is likely to reduce the cynicism of students and make them more willing to learn, and not glossing over the gripping moments in our nation’s “soap opera of history” will keep students on the edge of their seats, ready to learn even more.

Finally the supplement will help instill citizenship in students, something that textbooks often fall short of, in several ways. First, by being a Congress-specific text, it can go more into detail on seldom-taught portions of the legislative process. For example, an insert in one chapter teaches students the role of committees in moving bills to a full vote and their role in amending and reforming language within a bill. Perhaps by gaining a fuller understanding of the process, students will be more encouraged to be active participants. One might argue that students are learning this already in civics classes, while this may be true in many instances, the only teaching I received on how a bill becomes law came from the television show, “Schoolhouse Rock.”[35]

Next, the supplement can encourage citizenship in students by teaching that the political process is ever changing. Logic dictates that if youth believe that the political process is static, they are less apt to become active participants, allowing others to make the decisions for them. By teaching students that the process and role of government is constantly in flux, and that individual and group activism is mostly what spurred these changes throughout history, they will learn the impact that individual citizens have had on influencing policy and history. In a chapter devoted to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the text will demonstrate the role of activists in influencing the actions of legislators.

As I present the benefits of this supplemental text to students, one may question how this text can get past the textbook adoption boards I previously mentioned. Here too, the Congress text is innovative. The creation and distribution of Congress and the Shaping of American History is funded by private donation, and produced through the Center for Legislative Archives. This means that the supplement, when finished, will be distributed at no cost to every high school in the country. While it may be difficult to get textbook adoption boards to pay for such a teaching tool, teachers do not have to go through such channels for free publications.

However, the problem of getting more complete, more accurate American history texts to be approved by textbook adoption boards continues, and must be neutralized to provide high school students with a better education in American history. By teaching these board members historical information that they have been mistaught, and by showing examples where they were lied to as young students, perhaps it will be easier to convince them to approve more accurate, better quality textbooks.

In presenting this to board members, one should also correctly use a form of peer pressure on the textbook adoption committees. Never underestimate the power of informing one state that their students will have less understanding of their nation than those in other states with more accurate, less nationalistic American history textbooks. Finally, it is important that the argument for more accurate, less nationalistic textbooks is presented delicately. Textbook boards, when being approached with this fairly radical concept, may be turned off by fiery rhetoric and bold assertions, even from those with the best of intentions. By basing the argument on logic and backing up assertions with published educational studies, the argument for how textbooks are inaccurate and why they should be reformed will be clearer and carry more weight. In addition, in this debate, it is important to always emphasize that the goals of such reform are not to make students unpatriotic or cynical, but to get them to think critically about both the great and the not-so-great aspects of American society; to appreciate the grand ideals this country was founded upon while still inviting students to improve upon those ideals.

In conclusion, it is clear that students deserve a complete, accurate history education, and textbooks have had a major role in providing it. It is also clear that students are not receiving such an education through current textbooks. This inaccurate education has many deleterious effects on their future both as critical thinkers and as citizens. However, by improving textbooks, and how history is taught to our students, it is possible to correct this problem, giving students the full understanding of history and providing the skills of critical thinking that they deserve.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

American Historical Association. Guidelines for Textbook Adoption. January, 1998.

Best, Joel. Damn Lies and Statistics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Brown, Roger. The Republic in Peril: 1812.

Congress and the Shaping of American History: Project Description. Washington, D.C: The Center for Legislative Archives, 1999.

Delfattore, Joan. What Johnny Shouldn’t Read. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Goldstein, Paul. Changing the American Schoolbook. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1978.

Jenkins, Keith. Re-Thinking History. London: Rutledge Publishing, 1991.

Loewen, James. Lies My Teacher Told Me. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Millet, Allan and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1999.

Zinn, Howard. Declarations of Independence. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1990.

Textbooks

Bailey, Thomas A. and David Kennedy. The American Pageant. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1991.

Garraty, John A. et al. American History. New York: Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich, 1982.

Meyer, Leland W. The Life and Times of Col. Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932.

Matloff, Maurice ed. American Military History. Washington, D.C: United States Army Publishers, 1973.

[1] Zinn, Declarations of Independence. pg. 2.

[2] Paul Goldstein, Changing the American Schoolbook. Pg. 9.

[6] Delfattore, What Johnny Shouldn’t Read, pg. 67.

[7] National Intelligencer editorial by James Monroe, 4/14/1812.

[8] The entire U.S. army numbered 4,711, most who were untrained; see Millet and Maslowski, The Common Defense, 121-129.

[9] Letter from Col. Adam Boyd to Sen. Thomas Worthington, undated

[10] Thomas Worthington to Ohio Gov. Return J. Meigs

[11] Roger Brown, The Republic in Peril: 1812, 118.

[12] Loewen, 111. Also, Fry, Textbooks are a Cultural Battleground, contains a similar statement from another publishing official.

[13] From American History, Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich (1992), cf. Loewen

[14] from Loewen. However, these quotes remain in editions printed after Loewen’s book was published in 1995.

[15] Statements to Virginia Legislature. 12/5/1859.

[19] Out of these 12 textbooks, only ten are currently being published as this paper is written.

[25] American Historical Assoc; Guidelines for Textbook Adoption, pg. 3.

[27] Delfattore, What Johnny Shouldn’t Read, pg. 120.

[30] Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 6.

[32] Loewen’s figure. Delfattore estimates the avg. History textbook length at 952 pages.

[33] Center for Legislative Archives Project Description, pg. 4.

[35] While this show was a positive influence, it presented extremely rudimentary knowledge.