Frequently, I see stories in the education news reporting on a textbook company, school board, or curriculum attempting to minimize or erase the history of slavery in the United States. One recent example made national news: a textbook published by McGraw-Hill that described the Atlantic slave trade as bringing “millions of workers from Africa to the United States to work on agricultural plantations.”
Roni Dean-Burren—mother of the student who noticed the “error” and herself an educator—pointed out, writes NPR, that “while the book describes many Europeans immigrating as indentured servants,” there was “no mention in this lesson of Africans forced to the U.S. as slaves.” It’s pretty egregiously bad historical framing; describing slaves as migrant “workers” is at best gross understatement and at worst…
Source: The Anti-Slavery Alphabet: 1846 Book Teaches Kids the ABCs of Slavery’s Evils | Open Culture
If they keep whitewashing and re-writing the history books, before too long it will be impossible to trust any education.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Frightening thought but you’re right. The end result is that we will go on making even more mistakes than we do already from not learning about our past.
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wow – this is stunning
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