Imagine learning so little about the Holocaust in school that you think all of World War II “was no big deal.” Lately, there have been American textbooks that have either left out crucial parts of history or rephrased them so the events do not sound as horrible as they actually were. These textbooks are expensive, so once they are bought by schools, they are circulated in classrooms for many years, embedding inaccuracies in the education of students for the long term.
One instance is a North Carolina fourth-grade textbook called “North Carolina: A Proud State in Our Nation.” It blatantly compares the Trail of Tears to the hardships of farmers not being able to grow crops easily as if the loss of thousands of lives compared to crop failure. Telling fourth graders that 3,500 of 15,000 Cherokees died during the trip because greedy people wanted their land is not a good idea, but to compare those deaths to the farmers’ struggle of growing crops in a grotesquely similar way will distort the events in the children’s minds.
History’s faults and mistakes develop a child’s moral compass. Children of today will be this country’s leaders tomorrow. How will they have the compassion and the wisdom to lead a country if they don’t fully understand a devastating event caused by the United States’ president at the time, a leader who is supposed to make wise decisions for all of the people in the nation?
Another instance of altering historical facts is seen in a Texas McGraw-Hill ninth-grade World Geography textbook. In this textbook, slaves obtained through the slave trade were referred to as “workers” and “immigrants.” Due to numerous complaints, however, the publishing company recognized the faults and made a public statement that they will revise the online version of the book to say that the slaves were a “forced migration.” Many want the book out of schools altogether, knowing that the online version will be used less than the physical copies. Others feel that the term “forced migration” still does not convey the magnitude of suffering that the slave trade created.
We cannot change the historical events we are ashamed of, but we can learn from them. The only way this can be done is by ensuring that the events are untainted by attempts to “clean up” history. As a nation, we can learn from our mistakes whether they are economic, political or prejudicial. To learn from our history, we have to preserve the truth and protect no one from it.
This election year will be a part of history. Imagine are experience now being altered for the youth in the future. They should get the raw truth of the past and so should the youth today.
