Creating citizens

History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History - Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward (The New Press, 2004)

After a few drinks (and sometimes even before), I have been known to wax philosophical about the role of education in shaping our attitudes and beliefs about our country, our history, and the world. I wrote research papers on it in grad school, it was a big part of why I spent my 20s working in civic education, and I continue to find it utterly fascinating.

So no surprise that a book like this would make its way to me. Honestly, I would have liked the monograph version of this book. The one that was rich with analysis about the different ways international textbooks tell our nation's story, and what that says about their own national identity. And how the differences illustrate what our textbooks say about our own. Instead, Lindaman and Ward present lightly annotated excerpts -- oodles of them -- from an array of nations. They let the books tell the story, which is enlightening, but raised way too many questions for me. How well am I remembering the details of American textbooks? They books are mostly from the mid- to late-1990s -- how are American textbooks of that era different from the ones I read a decade earlier? How are they different today? And how much am I particularly interested in Canadian textbooks and Caribbean ones? How much is their national identity shaped by their different relationship with the United Kingdom? And with the United States itself?

(Oh, and also how interesting was the editors' note, which discussed the difficulties in translating adjectives that literally mean UnitedStates-ian and what relationship do other countries have with the adjective American?)

All of which is to say that this book was really cool. I liked it. But now I want much much much more.