What would you do if you discovered that your district's textbooks were miseducating your students and failing to teach social responsibility? The Milwaukee Public Schools recently faced this question head-on when the district's social studies textbook adoption committee selected a traditional, standardized textbook series—and a group of educators and community members actively opposed the decision.
One District's Struggle
Fifth grade teacher Bob Peterson reviewed the 2008 5th grade social studies textbooks that were up for adoption in his district. Peterson, who is cofounder of the organization Rethinking Schools, works in La Escuela Fratney, a K–5 two-way bilingual school in the Milwaukee Public School District.
When the textbook adoption committee announced its selection of a textbook company, Peterson and others analyzed the entire series. They distributed their findings to local and national social justice organizations through the electronic mailing list of the Educators' Network for Social Justice and the publicationRethinking Schools. They also made the findings available to the community through the local newspaper and school district board meetings.
The Findings—and the Response
The review noted that the 5th grade textbook did not mention racism or anti-Semitism, barely mentioned discrimination, and didn't point out that any of the U.S. presidents had been slave owners. Further, the social movements that addressed injustices—such as the labor movement, the women's movement, the peace movement, and the environmental movement—were largely invisible in the text. Rather, the textbook credited individuals with these achievements (see Peterson, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c).
The response to the critique was encouraging; people contacted Peterson and their school board members, and the school district administration became involved. Board approval of the textbook recommendation was postponed several times as concerned parties reviewed the textbooks and took a closer look at the district's approach to teaching social studies.
In June, a number of groups who opposed the textbook adoption decided to gather at the local office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for further discussion. This group—the Social Studies Task Force—has continued to meet monthly, with as many as 45 people in attendance. Cochaired by Wendell Harris from the NAACP and Bob Peterson, the task force included a broad coalition of groups: the NAACP; the Milwaukee American Jewish Committee; the YWCA; the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; the Milwaukee Ethnic Council; the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association; the American Civil Liberties Union; a student chapter of the Voces de la Frontera; the Wisconsin Labor History Society; the Educators' Network for Social Justice; the Peace Learning Center; Rethinking Schools; faculty from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Marquette University, and the National Louis University; and representatives from more than two dozen schools.
In August, the school district set up a meeting between the task force and the textbook publisher to address these issues. The publisher's reaction to participants' concerns was unsettling. When asked why the company hadn't included racism in the textbooks, one representative said that the teachers they surveyed did not want to teach about racism, so the publisher didn't put it in. Another company representative stated that inner-city kids already knew about racism from their life experience, and therefore, they didn't need it in their textbooks.
Teacher members of the task force knew that when this same issue had come up previously in Philadelphia schools, the publisher provided a supplemental module to more adequately address African American history. They prevailed on the publisher to create a module to address the 5th grade textbook's weaknesses for the Milwaukee schools as well. The publisher agreed, although the supplemental material would ultimately prove to be inadequate and too costly.
Reaching a Compromise
That fall, everyone reached a compromise for district adoption of the publisher's grade 6–8 social studies textbooks. Although these texts dealt more explicitly with racism than this publishers' texts in lower grade levels, they failed to address colonialism and other issues. In light of this, the district agreed to provide supplementary professional development on "antiracist, multicultural understandings and teaching strategies."
To move the textbook adoption forward with grades K–3, the district agreed to conduct a study regarding the resources needed to teach about the family, neighborhood, and community. A brief survey of K–3 teachers revealed a mix of opinions about the usefulness of the proposed textbooks at this level.
Discussion participants noted substantive problems, such as shallow, inaccurate, and biased treatment of content; inadequate representation of diversity; lack of inclusion of the local community and state as topics of study; and failure to provide engaging instructional methodologies that encouraged students to take part in constructing knowledge as opposed to passively receiving decontextualized bits of information. They also pointed out several valued features of the textbooks: their incorporation of other subjects; use of children's literature; and inclusion of videos, technology, and assessment tools. As a result, the discussions among the Social Studies Task Force, the superintendent, and the administration began to encompass not only questionable textbook content, but also instructional methodologies.
The district faced some difficult decisions. The textbook characteristics conflicted with district expectations for learning as detailed in Milwaukee Public Schools' Characteristics of a High Performing Urban Classroom, which lists eight characteristics: active engagement of student learners; cultural responsiveness; high expectations based on learning targets; strategic instructional choices; routine use of a variety of assessments; partnerships with families and the community; collaboration with colleagues; and impassioned, engaged adult learners in the school.
Text content and instructional strategies did not reflect the "active engagement of student learners" or "cultural responsiveness." The textbooks were also problematic with regard to the general textbook evaluation criteria the district used, which included the promotion of critical thinking, accuracy, absence of sexism, freedom from bias, and so on.
The district and the Social Studies Task Force ultimately decided on three courses of action concerning textbooks for grades K–5: (1) Instead of adopting K–3 textbooks, the district would secure high-quality resources and promote best practices in instruction; (2) the district would adopt the state historical society's 4th grade textbook and, provide a supplement to address race and labor issues; and (3) the district would adopt the publisher's 5th grade textbook if the publisher supplied a district-approved supplement to address its weaknesses.
When the publisher suddenly increased the price of the 5th grade textbooks by 60 percent and charged for the supplemental module as well, the district decided not to adopt any additional textbooks from the company at that time but to proceed with the two other recommendations—seeking its own K–3 resources, which the district is currently in the process of doing, and approving the 4th grade text with supplemental materials.
The Milwaukee K–8 social studies textbook adoption was not a small decision for the district of 80,000; the budget for the social studies textbooks was $4 million. But more important, attention from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a local television news station had alerted the community to the issues and helped to start a critical conversation about race and multicultural education among community members, teachers and administrators, and various organizations.
Another Choice
Educators often support the use of standardized textbooks because they believe they have no other choice. The publishers, after all, have a monopoly on textbooks, and educators make adoption decisions on the basis of a limited selection of materials. So even when teachers and administrators are aware of a textbook's limitations, they may select a series they consider the best among several bad choices.
Sometimes educators do not have the content knowledge or pedagogical expertise necessary to evaluate social studies textbooks, or they may not have time to do a careful review. Moreover, publishers sometimes highlight education consultants in their textbooks, giving the impression of expert approval, when they clearly ignored the consultants' advice.
Challenging textbooks goes against tradition. The instructional approaches modeled in textbooks socialize teachers—just as they socialize students—into narrow modes of learning and acceptable views of society and social change. The deliberation of the Milwaukee Public Schools textbook adoption committee demonstrated this dilemma. The teachers on the committee, who had originally reviewed a number of books, were hesitant to select a textbook that promoted new, engaging strategies that nevertheless appealed to many teachers and were consistent with such district goals as experiential learning, writing for understanding, and group problem solving.
Curriculum transformation is difficult. The dominant pattern of instruction persists because it is easier to plan for direct instruction, transmission of information, content coverage, and a traditional social vision than to incorporate new visions of learning and society that address social problems and provide a substantive critique of racism, gender inequities, and unfair cultural dominance in society. The political nature of the standard curriculum is hidden from view; it's too familiar and comfortable to be considered dangerous or ineffective.
But perhaps the biggest obstacle to change is the textbook publishers themselves, whose decisions about what to produce are typically based not on educational quality, but on what sells.
The Change We Need
Social studies teachers and their students need textbooks that are grounded in both the changing realities of our world and the responsibilities of its citizens. We cannot develop social responsibility without accurate and adequate content, diverse and global perspectives, relevance to students' lives, and the opportunity to study and act on crucial issues through caring and effective citizenship. Our moral responsibility "to respect and support the dignity of the individual, the health of the community, and the common good of all" (Task Force of the National Council for the Social Studies, 1994, p. 6) underlies these aspects of the curriculum.
The change we need is coming. Milwaukee, where school superintendent William Andrekopoulos modeled shared leadership that encouraged multiple perspectives, is a good example. In a school board meeting, board member Jennifer Morales pointed out that communities need to tell textbook publishers to "get real":We need to be able to talk about this nation's struggle with racial discrimination, sexism, and other forms of oppression, and our kids need to be shown examples of people who have participated in struggles to right those injustices.
According to Bill Bigelow, curriculum editor for Rethinking Schools, teachers need to make themselves heard:Teachers in collaboration with community organizations can look at what's in the text, can challenge the text, can demand alternatives from the school district, and be part of creating alternatives. Teachers need to find each other, [and] districts need to support that kind of creativity and collaboration and collegiality.
Teachers often just assume that they have to teach the textbook. Bigelow reminds us that this is simply "a failure of imagination" and points out the dangers of an overreliance on textbooks. In addition to the fact that students rarely find them engaging or relevant to their lives, textbooks typically fail to adequately explain events and social phenomena, and they don't look deeply into issues or encourage students to ask why. They also tell students whose voices matter—and whose don't.
Social studies should be about making the world a better place. By creating more meaningful alternatives to textbooks, educators can hone students' sense of efficacy and impress on them that they matter, that their choices and actions can make a difference in the world.
