Korean Job Discussion Forums

[IncognitoHFX]

So, I teach American social studies textbooks at my hagwon. I use the textbooks to teach grades 1 to 9. Sometimes I find them very useful, and can easily spend three classes on one page, other times I find them very difficult to extract anything out of the kids can relate too; especially the grade 1 textbook (try explaining to eight year old Korean kids what the constitution is).

Anyway, how come the American textbooks spend so much time talking about the history of the United States without mentioning anything bad that the United States has done?

There are many mentions of the first black people who came over and even the fact that some of them were slaves, but there is absolutely no detail about the slavery or the life of slaves. Like, slavery is mentioned briefly when talking about Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, but even in the textbooks for older students, I can scarcely find any real detail about it. There is no mention of plantations, or any kind of real hardship. The students don't get any palpable feeling of anything reading the textbooks; which is the problem. Sure, history is not supposed to be subjective, but omitting aspects of history which some students might find depressing is an outright lie. American history textbooks are guilty of this and so obviously done so to stir up feelings of patriotism.

There is absolutely no mention of the slaughter of Native Americans, either. There is plenty of talk about Thanksgiving, the different kinds of Natives and their histories, but none of which show Americans killing them or speak of conflict between European settlers and Natives. Its all very eerie.

The textbooks are overly politically correct and try to exemplify the plurality of American society (even when it gets annoying): but in the section of the book that deals with faith, it says that everyone has the right to choose their own religion. Then there is a list of religions to choose from, but there is no option or mention of "freedom from religion".

On the same subject, when the terms AD and BC are introduced, BC is said to be "Before Christ" (which is correct) but the textbook also says, "before the time of Jesus Christ, who was born in 0 BC". What? Why did they not say "before the time of Jesus Christ, according to Christians, who was supposedly born in 0 BC--but actually, 7 BC because thats the astronomical date the three wise men would've seen the star of david..." Sparing the fact that we use CE and BCE now, not BC and AD (these are brand new textbooks too). The textbooks actually speak of Jesus like he was definitely a real person, even when that is highly debatable empirically. If I were a teacher in an American school... oh man.

In the grade five textbook, which is actually very good for historical purposes, there is a section in the book that tries to summarize the entire story of the Bible. It is in context however, as it pertains to ancient Rome and Constantine, but the summary doesn't say anything about Christianity's connection to Rome... only a spark notes version of the teachings of Jesus. Why can't there be a similar mention of the story of Muhammed?

Another complaint about American textbooks is that they're 100% focussed on America, and hardly focussed on other countries in the world at all, ONLY if they have some kind of relationship with the United States. Actually, in all five textbooks I haven't seen more than three words about Canada, and hardly anything about any other countries. The only time the books talk about culture is to explain all the "weirdos" you'll run into the street from other countries, but never any indepth comparison or look into another culture. This goes for the Grade 9 textbook as well. This is social studies from crying out loud. I know this probably does pick up later on in the High School textbooks, but from what I remember from my school years, I learned a lot about other countries and nearly nothing about Canada. There was actually complaints about it and Canadian history courses became mandatory after I graduated. The American system seems to be the reverse; there is tonnes of talk about American history, but hardly any talk of the history of other countries. Patriotism should hold no grounds in history textbooks (or anywhere in a school).

On the geography side, there is hardly any incentive to remember the location of any other countries. There is never any test that comes with the textbook that requires knowledge of any other country aside from the United States, it's location or otherwise. In the Grade 8 world history textbook, there is a lot of indepth knowledge required of ancient Rome, Egypt and other ancient "important" civilizations, but its only one textbook and the Grade 9 textbook dives right back in to full blown American history. Too little too late. Maybe this is the reason lay Americans are notorious for having bad geography?

My last point: there is no criticism of the administration, or talk about any other administrations. There are lots of pictures of Bush, with captions like: "this is Bush, he is the leader of our country". The pictures are always triumphant and show him in his best strides. Other presidents are scarcely mentioned, and you can literally find phrases like: "our country is great" and "isn't America wonderful?" accompanying such pictures. Objective my ass. It looks like the American version of something they would've given to Hitler Youth.

Between Grade 1 and Grade 9 textbooks, I can find no criticism anywhere of any American political decision, administration, president or other American political figure.

After spending some time with these textbooks, I can see why people complain about American history textbooks so much.

[reactionary]

*yawn*

[reactionary]

anyway, you're all over the place. I sincerely doubt Canadian social studies before grade 8 is any better, but i'll bite.

Early education is a process of socialization. No, critical thinking doesn't come into play too much until middle and even then not really until high school. Find some high school textbooks.

Second, about not mentioning any other countries (which I doubt). Uh..is the textbook you're referring to perhaps called "American History?" Just because everything in CAnada is related to American history doesn't mean the reverse is true.

Even in middle school I remember my Jewish grade 7 teacher spending a lengthy unit studying Islam - even bringing in middle eastern food. Maybe the textbooks you have are crap, maybe you're not reading them closely enough. True, I don't remember studying atheism in middle school, but I guess there's plenty of time to learn that from pseudo-intellectual recent grads on Dave's ESL in case they don't catch it in their early education.

[IncognitoHFX]

[reactionary]

so you're telling me a "World history" book only mentions canada three times and not any other countries?

it's a crap book then.

[IncognitoHFX]

[reactionary]

roots of western civilization. i don't see anything wrong with that. like i said, i studied islam in middle school. i will admit to never studying east asia once. but in high school i opted for "AP european history" rather than general world history, so I cannot say what the content is for that class.

[reactionary]

honestly, i don't know. maybe in a canadian 5th grade class, the children talk about how their forefathers killed the native people, pushed them off their land, etc. however, it seems to me the education of children in most countries talks about the bad things OTHER countries have done (in america, for ex: it was the bad slave traders! what was it, the slave triangle? in canada, look! the americans had slaves!) rather than what their own country did. like i said, public school, ESPECIALLY AT THOSE AGES, is about socialization. critical thinking starts to come in at high school and is full steam in university.

trust me, no one critiques america as well as americans. reagan didn't call Cal the "people's republic of berkeley" for nothing.

[kat2]

World Geography is a separate class (and textbook) in high school. That's where most of us learn geography. It's also where more social/cultural things are covered about the world.

I will fully admit that american educatin is american centered, but I have to say tehre's not really any reason for a 12 year old to learn about the colonization of Africa at that age.

And I'll probably offend a ton of people here, but, seriously, Canada wasn't even it's own country until fully until 1982 and it really didn't have much affect on American history. Go ahead, flame me.

Americans do need to learn more about hte world around them, but the point of elementary/middle education is to get and keep kids interested in teh subject, and at that age, that means you ahve to find soemthing they can relate to. For american kids, it's easiest to relate to, well, america!

[Smee]

If you feel the need to add something to the lesson, supplement it with an age-appropriate handout or article, or even ask the students to provide their own opinions on the topic. If you're going to sit there and slam their textbook with biased opinions on the US, on President Bush, on Thanksgiving, on US-Indian Relations, on the Colorado Avalanche, or other topics, you're just as slanted as your accusations. No doubt there is bias in textbooks. There are several fields of post-graduate study propped up by this phenomenon. But a classroom with young children is not the place to implement your own (misinformed) opinons, nor is it your place to make (misinformed and incomplete) judgements on a textbook's appropriateness.

[reactionary]

exactly. from what i remember the flow of social studies education for me went something like this:

learn about pilgrims, thanksgiving, etc..ok..starts getting more serious around grade 4

californian history...oh ok..so the first whites here were spanish and they made churches to convert the natives...then there was a war...then there was a goldrush...ok

US history - ah there were slaves. brought to the caribbean and the southern US by bad europeans...not california though! and abe lincoln took care of that anyway

european/near east history: oh so most people in america come from the foundations of ancient rome and greece and some from the middle east..and hey over in india some people believe in a cow-god. quick gloss over the far east..

then middle/high school:

holocaust - what, you mean germans, other white people, did something bad? well, that's germany, not america. crap! what if i'm german american???

then, of course, natives, slavery, and civil rights. frankly i'd be surprised if it's possible not to know what the trail of tears, 3/5ths compromise, and brown vs board of education are and still be able to graduate HS.

if i was making those exit exams, those things and a lot more would certainly be on there. anyone actually seen one of those before? they started that a couple years after i graduated.

but like i said, i'll be the first to admit: i never learned CRAP about east asia until college. but that was because of my course choices, not necessarily that it wasn't availale.

[Sleepy in Seoul]

I haven't read those books so I can't comment on them, but I do recall comments such as the OP's directed at Japanese history books. Interesting...