LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Virginia History Textbooks Are Filled With Wrong, Vetting Finds

Didn't we already know this?


However, there had to be an official review, of "five professional scholars," which did find that, as we knew, Our Virginia: Past and Present, "should be withdrawn from the classroom immediately, or at least by the end of the year."  Along with the glaring error that "thousands of black soldiers fought for the South," are these and many, many more, pages-worth:
New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).
Then there are the further glaring errors in another textbook approved for Virginia schools, called Our America, from Harcourt.  Historian Mary Miley Theobald, a former Virginia Commonwealth University professor, reviewed Our America and concluded that it was "just too shocking for words."

"Any literate person could have opened that book and immediately found a mistake," she said.

Theobald's list of errors spanned 10 pages, including inaccurate claims that men in Colonial Virginia commonly wore full suits of armor and that no Americans survived the Battle of the Alamo. Most historians say that some survived.

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