Metro Pulse/Cover/Back-to-School Issue

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Quo Vadis?
Whither goest a troubled University of Tennessee with a classics scholar at its helm?

Shiny or not, textbooks are as dry as ever

by Bill Carey

Like most high school students, I wasn't too interested in history. At least not until the 11th grade, when I took Mr. Dravecky's American history class at my high school in Huntsville, Ala.

I remember the first day well. Dravecky handed out the textbooks to us. I don't remember much about them except that they were new and they were huge. And I remember what he told us on that first day of class. Take the textbooks home and leave them there, he said. Read them when I tell you to read them. Don't lose them, and don't write on them. And don't bring them back until the last day of school, because they are terribly boring.

For the rest of that year, I learned more about the story of my country than I had ever learned. Every day, Dravecky wandered around his cramped, bland classroom in the miserable "history pod" at Grissom High School, waving a stick that he carried and taking us to places we had never been. His lectures were funny, they were interesting, and at times they were controversial. I remember one lecture about how a card game may have turned the tide of the American Revolution. I remember him talking about frontier battles, about mountain men, about robber barons, and about soldiers. He told us how tall, skinny and mean Andrew Jackson was (he called him Andy "By God" Jackson). And he told us about how before the mid-20th century, doctors probably killed more people than they saved. In short, he made history come alive for us.

It's hard to know all these years later how much influence that man had on me. But since that time I've been fascinated with history.

In part because of my 11th grade experience, I've always been a bit suspicious of textbooks. And so I decided to take a look at five of the social studies books that students in Knox County will be issued this year (a 7th grade book called People, Places and Change; an eighth grade text called Call to Freedom: Beginnings to 1877; a 9th grade book called Civics ; an 11th grade book called A History of the United States, and a 12th grade text called Economics: Principles in Action). In some ways, the books weren't as bad as I feared; they are colorful, complete and more accurate than one might think. They are also all brand new; this is the year Knox County spent about $3 million to buy new social studies books for its students (in some cases, the books cost as much as $60 each). But new or not, they are still boring. Heaven help the fresh, eager student who has to learn the story of human civilization from the textbook.

After looking through the five books, I came to the following conclusion about school textbooks: History is still treated as a series of deeds by politicians and military people. The rest of us are along for the ride. In an attempt to squeeze in everything from the formation of Native American tribes to the fall of the Iron Curtain, the story of civilization is glossed over in broad, bland strokes. Entire Civil War battles are either ignored or summarized in a paragraph that gives the names of the generals and a casualty count. Some of the most important ways that the world has changed — such as the fact that in the old days, the infant mortality rate was much, much higher than it is now — are hardly mentioned. Very few times do any of the textbooks actually try to explain to the students what it was like to have lived in other periods of history, like what it was like to be sent off to war.

Behavioral or migratory patterns, such as the shift of the American population west and south, are explained in a way that they sound inevitable. "After 1960, a new migration of whites from North to South more than made up in numbers for the departing blacks," one of the books says, without giving a single reason for the movement (such as the invention of air conditioning).

I also noticed that, in an attempt to be uncontroversial and politically correct, weak verbs are used in place of more appropriate ones. For example, the eighth grade book says that in the Soviet Union, "religious practices were discouraged." The book could and should point out that in the 1920s, the Soviet government systematically destroyed most of Russia's church buildings with no regard for spirituality, history, or architecture. In describing the Cuban boat migration of 1980, the 11th grade book says that Castro allowed "dissatisfied" citizens to leave. Dissatisfied? Try "threatened," "oppressed," or "desperate."

There are also many places where the textbooks completely miss the significance of something in its attempt to shove numbers down the throats of students. Take, for example, the five sentences in the 11th grade book that deal with the creation of the nation's Interstate highway system. At the risk of losing some readers, here it is: "In 1956, the nation began the largest road construction program in its history. Under President Eisenhower, Congress voted $33 billion for a 10-year program to build a whole 42,500-mile network of interstate superhighways. By 1975, because of inflation, it would cost $39 billion just to finish the last 5,500 miles of the system. By 1978, President Carter signed a highway bill that provided $9.3 billion a year for three years. Many more billions were spent by states and localities."

That's it. The book doesn't say that Interstate highways may have done more to change American cities than any other government program. The book also doesn't point out how much smaller the country got because of Interstates. But it does tell them that the initial appropriation was $33 billion. I'm sure the kids will be fascinated with that tidbit.

Another thing that struck me as I looked at the history textbooks is how they rarely, if ever, mention religious influences in America. Churches and denominations have had an enormous impact on American thought, migratory patterns, political shifts, literacy, and higher education. Before the late 19th century, for example, most universities were started by religious denominations. However, the books make little if any note of this phenomenon.

The other thing that I noticed about textbooks today is that, in their attempt to add color to the layout, the publishers have gone crazy with graphics. In order to explain the causes and results of World War II, the eighth grade textbook contains a colorful flow chart with arrows and boxes. Among the "effects" are "millions of deaths and widespread destruction in Europe and Asia." Wouldn't a picture or a paragraph be more appropriate to illustrate this point than a USA Today-style flow chart?

In addition to the history books, the 12th grade economics text made an impression on me. In some ways, Economics: Principles in Action succeeds. Some of the work on it was done by staff members of the Wall Street Journala, and as a result it contains pretty good and clear data about free markets and about the idea of supply and demand. But as I looked through the book, I wondered about the appropriateness of the information. Among the terms that the students are apparently forced to learn are "diversification," "financial intermed-iaries," and "prospectus." The book even contains a page-long biography of investor Warren Buffett.

But the book does not explain the tax advantages of buying a house over renting an apartment (at least, I couldn't find it if it did). It defines what a credit card is, but does not point out that hundreds of thousands of Americans are in credit card debt up to their eyeballs. And it doesn't explain such worldly practicalities such as the folly of borrowing money from a pawnshop or a check- cashing business. I would rather that kids learn all this before they can give a good book definition of taxable income.

The good news in all this is that I'm not the only one who realizes that textbooks aren't the most interesting things in the world. "The books are just one resource for us to use," says Alfred Bell, supervisor of social studies for the Knox County School System. "If you just go by the textbook, you won't do an effective job of teaching to the students."

Bell lists several history teachers in Knox County who bring their subject alive by doing things like dressing up as historic characters, staging skits, and showing slides. He also points out that these days, textbook publishers also produce teaching aids to try to make the subject a little more palpable to students.

Nevertheless, I don't know how much good can come about by using videos and computer programs produced by the same publishers who came up with the boring version of social studies in the textbooks. That leaves it up to the teachers, that small group of men and women who have the thankless job of making history, economics, civics, and economics interesting to the post-MTV generation. My heart goes out to them. I only hope that they feel as free as Mr. Dravecky to tell students to take the books home and leave them there.