We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
We study American history for important reasons. We study because it helps us understand how events in the past continue to influence the present. We study because American history tells us who we are.
Yet teaching a full and honest history is much more difficult than it should be.
There are history textbooks that ignore the fact that white elites grew rich off the labor of the enslaved. There are textbooks that continue to minimize extraordinary struggles for universal suffrage. There are textbooks that fail to examine the long-term effects of forcing Indigenous young people into off-reservation boarding schools.
There are many people who want to hide parts of the past, by distorting it or simply making it disappear. There are those who want to prevent classroom lessons that they claim might cause some to experience discomfort, guilt or some other form of “psychological distress.”
I taught American history in high schools for more than three decades and, for the most part, I used approved textbooks. I often struggled with how the material was presented and I struggled with what was left out, but I continued using the texts.
An extensive 2024 report by the American Historical Association found that with the increasing availability of technology, some instructional materials and student assignments have moved online, but hard copy and digital textbooks continue to be used in 87% of high school classrooms.
In much of the research on what students know about American history, it is the textbooks that are blamed for most of the deficiencies. As a retired educator, I finally have time to puzzle out what I had to deal with, and it has motivated me to write a series of ScheerPost columns on what I call “Missing Links in Textbooks.”
In writing about what textbooks ignore, I have discovered that neglect of uncomfortable information can be limitless. That has led me to wonder why high school history textbooks are so different from the written work of real historians. Are the textbooks really meant, as Frqnces FitzGerald wrote, only “to tell children what their elders want them to know?”
The act of writing about what essential information is missing has led me to ask why. As a result, in my last column, I looked less at what is missing and began to focus on why the textbooks miss so much of what I consider essential.
I even asked myself if textbook publishers alone could be responsible for presenting such an incomplete, and often boring, history. Perhaps there is something more fundamental. Perhaps there is something all textbooks have in common. It turns out that it was obvious from the start. High school textbooks are simply an end product in a long complex process.
The Standards Came First
High school American history textbooks must meet state standards in order to be approved for classroom use, and those standards are only meant to determine what is minimally required. Textbook publishers can go beyond the required material, but very few do. Why risk controversy? Why risk losing sales?
Taken together, the California Content Standards provide the “what” of an instructional program, and the California History-Social Science Framework helps flesh out the “how.”
After reviewing the documents, I was surprised by how minimal they are. But minimal or not, I now believe that many, if not most, of the missing links I have identified in the textbooks are rooted both in the standards and in decisions by publishers not to do more than is required.
California’s Content Standards, adopted in 1998, and the California History Social Science Framework, adopted in 2016 together are quite large. To facilitate comparisons between what is missing in the standards and textbooks, I refer you to three previously written ScheerPost articles I wrote on Indigenous Peoples, Women, and the roots of the Vietnam War.
In case you want to download the Standards and the Framework and use them along with what I have written, I have indicated the page numbers for both documents in the text of this column.
Indigenous Peoples In The California Standards (CS) And The Framework (HF)
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race.
Martin Luther King Jr. Why We Can’t Wait 1963
In Missing Links in Textbook History: Indigenous Peoples I wrote that knowledge of the historical relationships among Indigenous Peoples and the United States is vital to understanding who we are as a nation. I found that the textbooks tend to explore U.S. history by relegating Native Americans off to the side or by ignoring them altogether.
In the Content Standards (CS) for high school, the term “Indigenous Peoples” is not found, but the term “Indian” is scattered throughout lessons at different grade levels. In the history standards, there is very little focus on Indigenous Peoples other than the requirement that high school American history students “discuss the relationship of the American Indians to the Civil Rights Movement of African Americans.” (CS page 53) Here is that standard exactly as written:
Discuss the diffusion of the civil rights movement of African Americans from the churches of the rural South and the urban North, including the resistance to racial desegregation in Little Rock and Birmingham, and how the advances influenced the agendas, strategies, and effectiveness of the quests of American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans for civil rights and equal opportunities.
As in the Content Standards, the word “Indigenous” in the high school History-Social Science Framework (HF), is replaced by the word “Indian.” Consistent with what is in the content standards, the first mention of Indigenous people in the high school history framework is in the context of the Civil Rights Movement.
It is written (HF page 416) that, due to the existence of the Civil Rights Movement, “American Indians … became more aware of the inequality of their treatment in many states where Indian tribes are located.”
The very idea that Indigenous Peoples became “more aware” of unequal treatment because of the Civil Rights Movement seems unlikely. I am certain that most Indigenous Peoples were well aware of their unequal treatment, but they were also likely to regard any successes of the Civil Rights Movement as compatible with the actions described below.
American Indians engaged in grassroots mobilization as follows:”… from 1969 through 1971 American Indian activists occupied Alcatraz Island; while in 1972 and 1973, American Indian Movement (AIM) activists took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C., and held a standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.” (HF page 419).
Significant to me is the fact that nowhere in the high school standards is there mention of the series of massacres that plagued the Indigenous Peoples. The only mention of these massacres is in the standards for fifth grade (CS page 17). Nowhere in the high school standards is there any specific mention, for example, of coerced attendance at American Indian boarding schools meant to culturally assimilate Indigenous children. Nowhere in the standards is there mention that such coerced assimilation is a form of genocide.
Of course, a complete history would include all of that and more, but it is not a requirement.
American Women In Content Standards And The Framework
In that solemn solitude of self, each soul lives alone forever… Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Before the Congressional Committee of the Judiciary Jan. 18, 1892
It is no secret that the stories of men dominate almost all recorded history. Unfortunately, male dominance is also found in the Content Standards, explained in the framework, and then written into the textbooks.
In my article Missing Links in Textbook History: Women I wrote that throughout American history, women have been overtly excluded, by law and custom, from participation in many areas of life outside the home. I also referenced an article published in 1975 by Phyllis Arlow and Merle Froschl, “Women in High School Textbooks.” In it they examined the content of 14 textbooks for coverage given to women and found that even in areas where women played important roles, they remained anonymous.
The Standards continue the practice of ignoring the laws and cultural traditions that excluded women from participation in so many aspects of life. And again, what is neglected in the standards is neglected in textbooks.
According to the Sacramento County Office of Education the standards are “designed to encourage the highest achievement of K–12 students by defining the knowledge, concepts, and skills students should acquire in each grade level.” Here is what I found that defines “the knowledge, concepts, and skills” that students in high school are required to learn about the roles of women in American history.
The Standards require that students analyze the passage of the 19th Amendment and the changing role of women in the society that followed. They are also required to discuss … the roles of women in military production and to describe the changing roles of women as reflected in the entry of more women into the labor force in the 20th century. (CS pages 47, 51, 53)
That is the extent of what is required, but again, the textbooks could have included more, such as the laws and traditions that restricted women’s participation in American life. At the very least, the standards should have required teaching about colonial laws of coverture which remained in place after the American Revolution and meant that when women married, they lost their legal identity. They could not own property, control their own money or sign legal documents.
The Standards should also have required teaching how, before the establishment of women’s colleges in the U.S. in the 19th century, higher education was almost always exclusively for males. For more about “the changing roles of women” in the United States, please refer to my article here.
In a section in the History Framework entitled “Industrialization, Urbanization, Immigration, and Progressive Reform,” there is a list of four questions that high school teachers are invited to focus on while teaching the early years of the 20th century, generally called the “Progressive Era.” This is how one of those questions, focused on women, is introduced:
“This question can frame students’ exploration of the women’s suffrage movement: Why did women want the right to vote, and how did they convince men to grant it to them? (page 381).
I was puzzled by the first part asking: Why did women want the right to vote? After all, one would think the answer to be obvious. Nevertheless, in the framework (on page 388), the explanation of how teachers might approach the question begins by saying that women wanted the vote because of progressivism: “Because progressivism called for an expanded government to protect individuals, it is only natural that expanding voting rights were deemed equally important.”
I wish I could make sense of the suggestion that ” progressivism” is what made women want to vote, but I can’t. In the real world, well before the Progressive Era (usually considered 1900 to 1929), women, and women’s organizations, were working for social reform. Women’s clubs across the nation were working to promote suffrage, better schools, the regulation of child labor, and prohibition.
Well before the Progressive Era, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton called a women’s convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Delegates to that convention stated in writing, in 1848, that “all men and women were created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.” Then, in a list of male-imposed abuses, they noted that men had compelled women to submit to laws in which women had no voice in adoption.
At least a decade before the Progressive Era, Susan B. Anthony was arrested and tried for voting in the election of 1872. After her 1873 conviction she addressed the court explaining to those who would listen: that it was, “… we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union …”
But the Framework suggests that it was because “progressivism” called for “expanded government” that women were inspired to want voting rights. If students had been prepared properly, they would have known that many women demanded the right to vote because they were citizens with “unalienable rights.”
The second part of this same “focus question” is worse than the first: How did they (the women) convince men to grant it (the vote) to them?”
Again, if prepared properly the students would already know that the women did not change the situation by politely saying “please.” They repeatedly demanded their right to vote.
Some organized, like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Some voted illegally, like Susan B. Anthony and then lectured a courthouse of men when given the opportunity.
Some organized, like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who founded the National Women’s Party, picketed the White House and were arrested. Some went to prison with Alice Paul, who had organized a hunger strike to protest their illegal imprisonment and was force-fed through tubes.
All of these women refused to be ignored. They had no choice. In the words of Rose Schneiderman (union organizer, feminist, and a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union): “We must stand together to resist, for we will get what we can take — just that and no more.”
If the point of the standards and the framework were really to educate “critical thinkers,” one of the four questions that should have driven this unit should have been: Why did the majority of men want to deny women the vote for so long, and how did women organize to force them to see reason?
The Vietnam War In Content Standards And The Framework
Do you hear me when I say this war is a crime? When I say I am not as bitter about my wound as the men who have lied to the people of this country? Do you hear me?
Ron Kovic, Speaking outside the Republican Convention Miami Beach, Florida 1972
In my article on Missing Links in textbook treatment of the Vietnam War, I suggested that to understand events in Vietnam, students need to understand both the long-term Vietnamese-nationalist struggle against France and the working relationship between the Viet Minh and the American OSS during WWII. Neither are required by the Standards or the Framework and neither are in the textbooks.
In the Content Standards it is stated that students be required to “analyze U.S. foreign policy since World War II.” The specific requirement is that students should be able to “trace the origins and geopolitical consequences (foreign and domestic) of the Cold War and containment policy.” However, that complex requirement simply ends with a list of U.S. foreign policy events since World War II. (CS page 51).
That list is followed by the requirement that students “Understand the role of military alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), in deterring communist aggression and maintaining security during the Cold War.” The suggestion that SEATO actually deterred “communist aggression” rather than providing an excuse for the U.S. to prevent a unified Vietnam is purposely misleading.
When SEATO was created in September of 1954, its members were the United States, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan. Only two members were in Asia.
SEATO expanded the concept of anti-communist collective defense to Southeast Asia regardless of whether a nation or a territory was a member. In the Content Standards the connection between SEATO and Vietnam is left unexplained. And that explains why it is usually unexplained in textbooks and clearly not understood by students.
According to the U.S. State Department, as the conflict in Vietnam expanded, Vietnam, although not a member, was considered under SEATO “protection,” giving the U.S. a legal framework for continued involvement. “The United States government used the organization as its justification for refusing to go forward with the 1956 elections intended to reunify Vietnam.”
None of this is in the Standards and, as a result, I have never seen any of it explained in an American history textbook.
The first time Vietnam is mentioned in the Framework is on page 408. “Foreign policy during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations continued Cold War strategies—in particular, the ‘domino theory’ that warned of the danger of communism rapidly spreading through Southeast Asia.” This claim is an attempt to mislead.
Certainly, the domino theory was a “Cold War strategy,” but it required acceptance of a convenient, but mythic, monolithic communism. Evidence, even at the time, made it clear that communism in Vietnam was nationalistic and not a product of Soviet influence.
I would argue that mentioning the domino theory as a warning against rapidly spreading communism is an attempt to suggest causation without evidence. In other words, it is an attempt to suggest that communism was a Soviet virus, Vietnam was susceptible, and therefore American intervention was necessary.
Use of the domino theory, I believe, was a scare tactic, but at the very least its accuracy is debatable and debate is fundamental to any history course. The framework ought to encourage it by outlining that debate honestly and requiring it be discussed in classes.
Immediately after mention of the domino theory, the Framework requires that students be taught “how America became involved in Southeast Asia, particularly after the French conceded to the Vietnamese in 1956.” (HF, page 408)
I am not even sure what is meant by “the French conceded to the Vietnamese in 1956” because, in the real world, the French were decisively defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.
The suggestion that students should study American involvement in Southeast Asia “particularly” after 1956, is another attempt to mislead. The Geneva Conference in 1954 would have been more relevant because it led to agreements that Vietnam would soon be one nation and formally ended French colonialism. The 1954 Geneva agreements are not required in the Standards.
Much of this is explained in detail in my article on Missing Links in Textbook History: Vietnam, so I will not repeat it here. Nevertheless, if textbook treatment of the roots of American intervention in Vietnam is based on what is in the Standards, students will learn very little about the American war and nothing about why it failed.
What Is History Anyway?
Historical writing always has some effect on us. It may reinforce our passivity; it may activate us. In any case the historian cannot choose to be neutral; he writes on a moving train.
Howard Zinn, The Politics of History
I have learned a lot from Howard Zinn, but I do not necessarily agree that it is impossible for the historian to be neutral; I would agree that historians can and should be fair.
In his books, Zinn focused on a wide range of historical issues including race and racism, the power of social movements, the reality of class, and the brutality of war. His histories include stories of people representative of all Americans.
He wrote about the Indigenous Peoples as deserving equal rights. He praised their accomplishments before the colonists arrived. He acknowledges the victories of the labor movement and criticized the excesses of the Robber Barons.
He suggested that the United States entered World War I for political reasons. And he was vigorously against the American war in Vietnam. These may not always be neutral positions, but the way he argued them was always fair.
What Howard Zinn did urge was “value-laden historiography,” not because he thought that historians should determine answers, but because he felt they should suggest questions.
Perhaps, for some of my fellow citizens, suggesting essential questions is the new definition of bias.
I am convinced that neutrality and fairness both have their place in history books and I am certain that the required American history standards as written in the California Content Standards and the History Framework should be both. They don’t come close.
But what might it mean if standards were both neutral and fair? A fair and neutral history, I think, must embrace differences of opinion. A fair history should not put the Indigenous people on the sidelines. A neutral history should not ignore evidence of genocide.
A fair history cannot fail to mention the laws and traditions that have prevented women from participating in so many areas of American life. A neutral history should not ignore the usefulness of the Pentagon Papers in teaching about American intervention in Vietnam.
What I have labeled “Missing Links” in both textbooks and standards refers to information that is both missing or misleading. As such, “Missing Links” define what is seldom taught and therefore seldom learned. History, written with essential information missing, transforms high school history textbooks into pretense, pretending to be something they are not.
I suggest that those who produce standards or publish textbooks or those who teach should insist that an accurate history contains emotion and empathy. More than 2,500 years ago, the Greek historian Herodotus admitted that he was obsessed with memory. He was fearful on its behalf because he felt that it was something defective and fragile.
Today we live with an illusion that knowledge is at our fingertips, but encyclopedias and textbooks are famously unreliable largely because they lack emotion — the one thing that makes events memorable.
If a textbook tells the history of genocide against the Indigenous Peoples, it must convey injustice, pain and suffering, just as textbooks that recount the history of slavery should leave students feeling pain and injustice. These examples of historical events cannot be reduced to dates and places.