Are your History Books just a little different than mine were?

Question

I graduated High School in 1983 . My Dad graduated in 1954 . I have read one of his History books from school and I still have one of mine floating around. It was about 8 years old when i read it so it was from the mid seventies at least . I hear people on here always saying' check your history books but i have a feeling in this overly politically correct time that the books of today are very different than mine and my fathers .
Can anyone with high school aged kids attest to this?
My Dads book was way more conservative and factual than mine was . I can't imagine how many shades of the rainbow they have in the new ones to gloss over and manipulate the facts on certain events .

Answer 1

You wouldn't believe how much different things that happened 300 years ago are now than they were when you were in school (think about that for a second).

The PC police have managed to fill up the book with "minorites" and women and have taken out many important events.

The phrase "check your history books" has become completely useless because our textbooks are just as biased and have just as big an agenda as any fiction story or any other book. And when the most basic truths are presented to kids in the form of falsehoods like today's textbooks do, it can really make for some messed up kids. How are they supposed to be able to tell opinion and propaganda from fact when the "facts" are now propaganda?

Answer 2

"History" is different from "the past." History is always an incomplete version of all the things that happened. Part of this involves how one looks at the past. Over the last few decades, a number of things have happened in the field of history. For one, historians have begun concentrating on social history, rather than political history. Social history is often history from the bottom up--i.e. what happened to the mass of people (with much being written about groups about which not much had been written previously, including the poor, minorities, immigrants, and women). Earlier historians tended to concentrate on political history, which meant they payed attention to those in power--noted politicians, military leaders and rich people. Historians often celebrated their own countries and the people who ran those nations. Often these historians overlooked, omitted, or downplayed the darker side of what happened--e.g. slavery in the U.S., European colonialism, or the dislocations that occurred due to the Industrial Revolution. Historians now take what they would say is a more objective approach to society's institutions--governments, corporations, religion, etc.. Because these institutions are run by human beings, these often involve stories of greed, incompetence, and lies. Because of this, many people find history to be depressing, and they may prefer the earlier tales of heroes--even if these stories do not tell the whole story.

Answer 3

i'm still at high school and compared to your book, i guess mine is really different. there are always other information that comes everyday that must be added so it will really differ. i think those are not shades because there are so many discrepancies in history especially there are hard communications in the past so i guess no one shades it. i hope those who do it will ask for confession if ever their religion has it.

Answer 4

They might have changed since the 50s but they still suck. I think all highschool history text books are pretty awful. They're all gung ho and ridiculously patriotic, and gloss over anything that makes the US look bad. It's the same in other countries too; the Japanese were recently criticized for glossing over parts of WW2 in the latest book rev.