Textbook publisher McGraw-Hill has backed down — sort of — after a Houston mom stirred up a firestorm over the wording of her son’s geography textbook that referred to African slaves as “workers” and “immigrants.”
McGraw-Hill said it would change the wording in its online edition and subsequent print editions, but it won’t recall the books already distributed to school districts, where they could remain in use for years to come. And the revised textbooks will refer to the kidnapping of Africans by slave traders as “forced migration.”
The soft-pedaling of slavery’s horrors in textbooks is no accident. In states where conservatives have seized control of education boards and school districts, they have forced changes to curricula and textbooks in order to push their conservative agenda, which doesn’t include acknowledging slavery’s dark stain on American history. Read about it here and here. The standard public school history course has become a flashpoint for conservative activism. Here’s what they’re specifically upset about:
“Krieger and other critics have complained that the course places too much emphasis on topics like slavery and the Japanese internment camps during World War II.”
Read about it here.
