OT: Interesting....

[red5angel]

I have some friends who do volunteer brailing for the blind. Anyway last year one of them noticed a trend but thought maybe it was just him, so this year he has kept a close eye out.

He starts flipping through these science and history text books for school right. One of them is called Basic American history. It was about 400 pages, with maybe a picture on every other page or so, we estimate about 450 pictures total, roughly 380 of people, and of those 380, only 30 of them were white males.

In another history text we only found two pictures of white males, one of them was of Hitler.

In one of the science pictures, not only were most of the pictures of females, and black females (As a point of interest the editor was a black female.) but in the section on Thomas Edison, the only picture included was of some black male, I think an assistant of Edisons.

In total over the course of the night we went through 5 history books and 3 science books, in all , only 1 of the history books and one of the science books looked anything like what I had wehn I was growing up, all of them showed a severe lack of white males.....

[MightyB]

Welcome to the PC world of the white minority.

Your thread is very un-PC. Soon, very soon, the PC police will be knocking on your door!!!

[red5angel]

Well MightyB, I am only half white so maybe they will let me get off lightly after they find out how long I have been oppressing myself. Only in parts o fthe house though, the other parts have been declared a sovereign nation.

[MightyB]

Since you're only half white-- I can only send you half an application to the free masons. The only draw back for you is that you won't be able to drive one of the little cars in the parade. Only full whites can drive, all others must be passengers. You can still wear a funny hat though, but your tassle will be shorter.

[red5angel]

That's fine, as long as I don't begin my tenure with the Masons with the Paddle of White. I hate that thing......and they still havent been able to beat the non white out of me......

[Stranger]

I'm not sure how old you are, but things have changed a lot in recent years. I'm a history teacher in an urban area. When I went through HS, "world history" meant "the history of Europeans and where they went", with no other real mention of the other continents. The modern classroom is increasingly more ethnically diverse and the textbooks reflect this. Do you live in an urban center?, because that might have effected which texts the history dept. purchases. There is a big drive to make knowledge personally relevant and to promote role models from the same background as the students ie. if your school population is primarily Latino you look for textbooks that feature good coverage of Latino contributions to history. Your books' slant seems a little extreme, but it is in line with current trends.

[red5angel]

Stranger, we had a pretty good high school. It was set up with electives and they offered quite a few alternatives to vanilla white american history, including black history, Herstory and Native american history. There was also a class on asian culture and history as well. I thought for all intents and purposes it was well done. I just find it odd that we can't find some sort of equilibrium.

These books were basic history books, high school level. they didn't seem to be directed towards anyone inparticular, just directed away from white males.

The interesting thing was that the subject came up that night because we were playing this board game called Be'thumped by History and noticed that about 80% of the questions we got were on women in history. We didn't sift through the cards to see if that was common throughout but it was consistant while we were playing.
We also noticed that while the game was supposed to be about general history, American history occupied about 60%.

[MightyB]

When I went through HS, "world history" meant "the history of Europeans and where they went", with no other real mention of the other continents.

And the problem was?

[Stranger]

I just find it odd that we can't find some sort of equilibrium.

You and me both. That is the problem when a pendulum stops moving one way; it doesn't go back to the center and stop; it swings to the other extreme.


And the problem was?

There are too many problems to list when you are dealing with a student population that doesn't have European ancestry, the most obvious is apathy towards the European players being discussed. You can't expect students to relate to people that are totally different when they can't even relate to people within their own community. These students are sooooo far behind compared to what was being seen in the classroom not too long ago. Teachers' goals have had to start modest because we are not getting students grounded in the fundamentals of the subject matter and learning strategies. By the time they get to HS (where I am) it can be a big ol' mess.