This paper explores the representation and non-representation of slavery in US school textbooks from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the US Civil War. It reviews the major readers, almost none of which mentioned slavery despite the anti-slavery sentiments of many textbook editors. The few readers that addressed slavery did so in…

The United States and Brazil were the two largest slave societies in the history of New World slavery, and the legacies of that history remain salient in both nations. Slavery and the slave trade are important topics to be taught in history courses, and future generations need to be given accurate information about the history and legacies of…

This article explores Alexander von Humboldt's influence on the education of young women in early nineteenth-century America. In the past decade, the English-speaking world has seen a resurgence of interest in Alexander von Humboldt. To date however, scholars have devoted relatively little attention to Humboldt's influence on American education,…

This study investigates how 19 third-grade students developed their understandings of enslavement during a six-week social studies inquiry. Using Teaching Tolerance's key concepts as my analytic framework, I analyzed the students' pre- and post-concept maps and classwork to understand their learning. The findings show that students conceptualized…

During the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, 1861-1876, formerly enslaved men and women demanded access to education. Aided by northern white missionaries, free blacks and some southern whites, freed men and women throughout the American South built schoolhouses, hired teachers and purchased textbooks. Some of these textbooks were…

This essay explores social and political values conveyed by nineteenth century world and universal history textbooks in relation to the antebellum era. These textbooks focused on the histories of ancient Greece and Rome rather than on histories of the United States. I argue that after 1830 these textbooks reinforced both the US land reform and the…

While the distortions and omissions in traditional U. S. history textbook accounts of slavery have been well documented (Alexander, 2002; Brown & Brown, 2010; Banks, 1969; Council on Interracial Books for Children, 1977; Elson, 1964; Gordy & Pritchard, 1995; Kane, 1970; Kochlin, 1998; Washburn, 1997), no study has analyzed digital U. S.…

Tony Waters, a sociologist at California State University, Chico, has raised an interesting issue about the intellectual conflict some of his students experienced when they arrived on campus and enrolled in American history classes. He reported students were perplexed to find there were two kinds of American history--the version they learned in…

The authors conducted a content analysis of North Carolina history textbooks to explore how the definition of immigration has changed over the last century. They also examined how immigrant groups and involuntary Americans have been portrayed throughout the state's history. Findings suggest that as a burgeoning gateway state for immigrants, North…

This article reexamines texts published during the period of the initial formation of the nation, from 1783 to 1815, or from the end of the American Revolution through the War of 1812. This examination of thirty-one textbooks (sixteen geographies and history texts, and fifteen readers and grammar books), most written by New Englanders but also…

Slavery in the pre-Civil War United States is a hard topic to teach, not only because it raises issues of racism and injustice, but also because students assume so much. Often, they think all northerners were abolitionists or "good guys" and southerners were "bad guys" who enslaved African Americans because they viewed them as inferior. England,…

One of a series of pamphlets about the American Revolution in Georgia, this document explores the role of the black population during the Revolutionary War. Designed for junior and senior high school students, it can be used as supplementary reading or a one-week unit. A teacher's guide is included. Black life in the Revolutionary era, for both…

Introduces a new series of U.S. history textbooks geared to grade five (or grades four, five, and six). The 10-volume series, divided into short, manageable chapters, aims to make history come alive. An excerpt from Book 6 ("War, Terrible War") about the Civil War is presented. (SLD)

This comprehensive resource is an invaluable aid for adding a global dimension to students' understanding of American history. It includes a wide range of materials from scholarly articles and reports to original syllabi and ready-to-use lesson plans to guide teachers in enlarging the frame of introductory American history courses to an…

Examines the extent to which social studies textbooks include diverse perspectives on U.S. history through a content analysis of the treatment of slavery in 17 5th-grade texts in Connecticut. Students are receiving a sanitized view of the history of slavery, with only a partial picture of discrimination. (SLD)