Word: fitzgerald
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...1840s the first wave of immigrants appeared from Ireland and Germany. According to FitzGerald, however, their presence was not seriously reflected in U.S. school textbooks until 1900, after the enormous influx of people from Eastern and Southern Europe had started...
Some changes represent an inclusion of facts previously suppressed. Some are simply the result of shifting historical interpretations, still highly contested or questionable. Inevitably a changing country will reshape its vision of its own past, for good or ill. Frances FitzGerald has kind words for some of the new texts - and techniques. Among them: so-called "inquiry" texts which, instead of presenting a strict chronology, offer primary sources organized around specific continuing historical issues: The People Make a Nation by Martin W. Sandier, Edwin C. Roswenc and Edward C. Martin delves extensively into such topics as "The Centralization of Power...
...price for recent revisions, she feels, has been high. Because of the need not to offend anyone, history texts are not written any more. They are "developed," writes FitzGerald, by editorial teams, sometimes involving a dozen people "and many compromises" to encourage acceptance by as many school systems as possible. A typical textbook project, the author reports, had nine consultants, including one for "learning skills" and one for "values." Such editions are continually revised to keep up with fashions. In 1975 many text houses were so distressed by women's group lobbying that they ordered editors to avoid such...
...FitzGerald disapproves of Muzzey's historical viewpoint but likes his writing...
...should know," she writes, "that there are no absolutes in human affairs." Today's textbooks do, fairly accurately, reflect that knowledge and mirror the confused national mood. The collapse of American confidence reflected in the histories since the 1960s is the product of the pluralism of values that FitzGerald somewhat ironically espouses...