Textbooks Today and Tomorrow: A
Conversation about History, Pedagogy,
and Economics
Scott E. Casper
Contributing Editor, Textbooks and Teaching
Debates over what belongs in U.S. history textbooks have long reflected conflicts over
whose stories belong at the center of the national narrative. Especially for K–12 textbooks, those conflicts have mirrored concerns about the cultural and political cultivation
of young citizens. Ideas about inclusion or omission carried “the significant undertone
of what sorts of social, cultural, religious, and political implications this would have on
students.”1
In 2005, when the “Textbooks and Teaching” section of the Journal of American History last focused on the first word in its title, contributors discussed methodological changes
within the historical profession, the economic and academic “ecosystem” that influenced
publishers’ decisions, and the varied ways instructors supplemented textbooks with other
readings. Steve Forman of W. W. Norton & Company wrote then that “notable change
has come in three broad areas: technology, teaching conditions and practice, and student
culture.” The Web sites and multimedia materials packaged with textbooks; colleges’ and
universities’ growing reliance on part-time or adjunct instructors who may be dependent
on “the course-support materials publishers can provide”; and students’ willingness “to
opt out of the purchase of books entirely, whether new or used” contributed to the muchmaligned rising prices of textbooks. None of these trends has abated, even as today’s ecosystem harbors new growth—especially online. The English version of Wikipedia, many
students’ library of first resort, contained fewer than one-half million articles in 2005 but
has grown ninefold in the years since. Online textbooks appear in many varieties, from
peer-reviewed open textbooks to, as David J. Trowbridge observes in this conversation,
less reputable “open-source” works that merely “aggregate content” from Wikipedia and
elsewhere.2
Scott E. Casper is the dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and a professor of history at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Readers may contact Casper at [email protected].
1
Kyle Ward, “The Missing Key to the Texas History Textbook Debate,” History News Network, http://www
.hnn.us/article/127976. Kyle Ward, Not Written in Stone: Learning and Unlearning U.S. History through 200 Years of
Textbooks (New York, 2010); Joseph Moreau, Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts over American History Textbooks from the
Civil War to the Present (Ann Arbor, 2004); Frances FitzGerald, America Revised: History School Books in the Twentieth Century (Boston, 1979).
2
Steve Forman, “Textbook Publishing: An Ecological View,” Journal of American History, 91 (March 2005),
1398–1415, esp. 1402. “History of Wikipedia,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
History_of_Wikipedia.
doi: 10.1093/jahist/jau008
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].
March 2014
The Journal of American History
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The issues in the “Interchange” that follows range far beyond textbooks and into the
politics and economics of higher education, the changes and opportunities fostered by
new publishing and teaching platforms, and the challenges of teaching students of varied,
often-insufficient preparation. Although its particulars reflect our moment, this conversation about textbooks is novel neither for its wide scope nor for the fundamental fact noted
by several of the contributors: well-wrought, interpretive writing remains the bedrock of
the successful textbook—no less than it is a paramount goal for our own scholarship and
our students’ work.
In June 2013 the Journal of American History convened a virtual panel of textbook authors, college teachers, and a publisher to discuss the present and future of U.S. history
college textbooks. That conversation, edited slightly for length and flow, constitutes this
installment of “Textbooks and Teaching.” Three of the contributors, faculty members at
diverse institutions, have written textbooks. The JAH is indebted to all of the participants
for their willingness to take part in this conversation:
Mary Dougherty, a publisher for history at Bedford/St. Martin, coordinates the efforts of the editorial group with those of the sales and marketing groups to ensure that it
is in tune with the needs of the discipline.
Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is the
author of Give Me Liberty! An American History (2004), one of today’s best-selling textbooks, now in its fourth edition.
Amy Kinsel, a professor of history at Shoreline Community College and a member of
the OAH Executive Board, teaches at an open-access public college whose students range
from high school students and recent high school graduates to international students,
worker-retraining students, veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, professionaltechnical students, college transfer students, and college graduates who will seek master’s
degrees in teaching.
Randall M. Miller, a professor of history and American studies at Saint Joseph’s
University, is a coauthor of Unto a Good Land: A History of the American People (2005),
which explicitly seeks to reintegrate Americans’ religious experience into the narrative of
the American past.
David J. Trowbridge, an associate professor of history and the director of African
and African American studies at Marshall University, is the author of the two-volume
A History of the United States (2012), a customizable textbook published by Flat World
Knowledge.
Scott Casper: What do you consider to be the most significant developments—
such as content, authorship, publishing, use by teachers—in U.S. history textbooks
during the past decade?
Eric Foner: My sense is that textbooks have not changed as much as many other kinds
of history books. The biggest change, I think, is the advent of the Internet. Today, textbooks come with Web sites containing all sorts of supplementary material—including
images, documents, and videos—so instructors have far greater leeway in creating their
own formulation for using the textbooks. My book is also offered in a version for iPads,
with embedded links so that, for example, when a document is mentioned in the text the
Textbooks and Teaching
1141
student can immediately click to see the original. Nonetheless, that version represents,
thus far, a tiny percentage of sales; I also think that textbooks have not been affected as
much by the rise of the e-book as have other kinds of historical works. I am not sure if
that lack of effect suggests that textbooks simply exist in some backwater of the current
publishing world or if students still need and prefer to read an actual physical copy of a
textbook.3
Of course, what the Internet giveth it also taketh away. Pirated versions of many textbooks, mine included, are on the Internet for students to download without payment to
the publisher, the author, or anyone. The used-book market, which affects the economics of textbooks, used to be a matter of students selling their books to friends. Now it is
dominated by online corporations that buy up thousands of used books and resell them,
eliminating income for the publisher and the author. And there are textbooks that exist
entirely online, probably selling at a lower price than print textbooks. Overall, however,
my impression is that the textbook itself and the use of the textbook in introductory history survey classes has not changed much in the last decade.
David J. Trowbridge: There has not been much change in the textbook industry in the
past ten years beyond the business model described by Eric Foner. As he suggests, that
model has offered very little innovation beyond the attempt to respond to the increased
efficiency of the used-book market. Some publishers have offered a few value-added services such as Web links. Others are adding interactive features such as databases of primary sources that will give instructors greater flexibility. I believe Bedford/St. Martin is
producing something like that, and so is Flat World Knowledge. There is reason to be
hopeful. Publishers are producing databases of primary sources that instructors can integrate into survey texts. Soomo Publishing is working on a textbook that asks students
questions as they read—a method that will improve reading skills and retention. These
comprehension exercises could be helpful for instructors as well—the textbook acts like
a good teaching assistant, keeping track of who is doing the reading and telling instructors what their students are struggling to understand. In the future, publishers will pair
these kinds of tools with well-written narratives that incorporate primary sources and
additional resources. I am bullish on the future of textbooks, but that future is still under
construction.
Innovation in the textbook industry has focused on the business model. Publishers today churn out new editions at an astonishing pace while making sure their digital books
self-destruct after one semester. Marketing also seems to be a bit more aggressive. One
of the tragedies of our time is that the greatest minds in the financial industry are put to
work inventing derivatives and other ways to manipulate the market. I feel that the same
is true among some textbook publishers who direct resources and energy away from the
creative process in hopes of eliminating used books from the market. Imagine landing a
job at a publishing house only to find that you spend most of your time trying to figure
out how to make the last book you published disappear or become unusable for students.
How did we get in this place? How do we get out of it?
For the most part, the process of change has been limited to price hikes, new editions,
and digital books that self-destruct after one semester. The race among publishers requires
them to spend more and more money on marketing. But does this add value? We need
3
Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History (New York, 2004).
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March 2014
good editors and plenty of money to pay them. But do we need armies of textbook publisher representatives who usually have not read the textbook they are trying to sell? Millions are spent each year on marketing—some under the guise of peer review, surveys, and
focus groups. During this week alone I have received two offers of cash to “test” a book in
my classroom. After all of that classroom testing that must be going on, is it clear whether
the seventh edition of a textbook is really different from a sixth edition?
The differences between editions seem to be related to design instead of content. And
when it comes to content, textbooks seem to have less each year. Many of today’s textbooks have so many shaded boxes and oversize images that focusing on the narrative
becomes difficult. These books may look impressive at first glance, with all of the bold
terms and chapter subtitles. But that design is so visually appealing that reading turns into
browsing after one paragraph. The pages are glossy, the images are beautiful, and there
are tons of special features. We tell ourselves that perhaps our students will read a book if
it looks like a magazine, yet we know that no one actually reads magazines the same way
they read books. In trying to appeal to students with short attention spans, are we simply
compounding the problem?
My own research—based on very scientific observation of my nieces and nephews—
suggests that a majority of students entering college in 2018 may prefer digital books, but
a majority of today’s students still prefer print. For several years, this was even true for
Flat World Knowledge, which prior to 2013 offered its textbooks online at no cost. For
a time, a majority of students were willing to purchase a print version of their textbook
even though the book was available digitally at no cost. By 2012, however, students had
become so much more comfortable with digital tools that they preferred the free online
version‚ so much so that publishers had to adjust their business model and begin charging
a small fee for online access.
I think that questions about political pressures, the use of textbooks among students,
and whether instructors have changed their use of textbooks would be fine questions for
a poll of JAH readers and Organization of American Historians members. I have a sense
that high schools (beyond those located in Texas and Arizona) have been pressured about
content. At the very least, they are pressured into teaching to standardized tests and the
Advanced Placement (ap) examination. I have never attended a gathering to grade ap exams, but I would love to poll those who have. Do students who pass the ap exam really
demonstrate the same standards we would expect in a semester-long survey?
How many instructors assign textbooks? Has that number changed over time? I have
the sense that a growing number of instructors have abandoned the textbook, but I have
nothing to back up this idea. Do they shift from one textbook to another? What about
those who experiment with eliminating the textbook altogether, only to be reminded that
most of their students desperately need a basic overview of U.S. history?
Randall M. Miller: David J. Trowbridge and Eric have framed the question neatly by
suggesting that we consider the business of publishing textbooks. In doing so, we can see
the durability of the old-style textbook and the birthing and mutating of any number of
new textbook forms and formats, some of which do not even pretend to be textbooks at
all. We must consider the business aspects of “the business‚” for they strongly influence
and inform the content and character of available textbooks and in many ways shape
Textbooks and Teaching
1143
how the U.S. history survey will be taught. But textbooks are as much market created as
market driven.
Textbook publishers are not blind or deaf to the wants and needs of those teaching the
U.S. history survey, in whatever iteration it takes in terms of time (from “discovery” to the
present, or along any number of dateline divisions to suit course offerings). Those expensive publishers’ representatives not only hawk the publishers’ wares but, if they are good at
the trade, take soundings on what teachers want and need in terms of content, coverage,
language level, support materials, and online access. Good reps inquire about what works
with a particular book so they can measure it against their own publications. They try to
understand the teacher’s take on history. They report errors and promise corrections. They
simultaneously undertake market research, sales cultivation, and relationship building,
and they promise service—no small dividend when book orders go awry or new support
materials are needed. From such “research” and conversation, revisions come. So do new
books and supporting materials. At the same time, the bigger publishing houses conduct
their own surveys of teachers’ wants and needs by forming advisory committees comprising U.S. history professors to help measure the developing patterns and directions in the
field, by conducting surveys or at least stationing listening representatives at conferences
where the publishers have exhibits, and by following market trends. We get what is published because we ask for it.
Those requested results come in many shapes and sizes, as Eric and David remind us.
Textbooks are full-bodied, slimmed down, carved up, or configured to match interest and
need. One trend that has grown dramatically over the past decade is the proliferation of
“concise” histories, often shorter versions of longer textbooks but also sometimes separate
original creations. This trend follows students’ insistence on more manageable material.
The publishers comply. But if students (or instructors) want more, there is no shortage
of fat volumes. The continued proliferation of textbooks suggests that they remain viable
because they can assume so many forms and formats to meet many diverse and various
desires and needs.
One effect of the new means of providing textbooks to satisfy varying student needs is
to make the textbook seem to be an expendable expense. Renting texts, buying and selling used texts, using pirated editions (without conscience, it seems), and other ways of
“acquiring” a textbook for one-time use have made the textbook seem to be not much
worth keeping. It seems to be a tool, not a treasure. The process of constantly revising
textbooks reveals, at least by inference, the dynamic nature of history, but it also alludes
to the impermanence of value, as in Alfred P. Sloan’s use of “planned obsolescence” in car
manufacturing: the old model is not worth having.4
Related to that concept is the increasing emphasis on “ancillary” materials—Webconnected items with access codes or print items packaged with the textbook—so that
buying the book will provide a host of resources such as maps, interactive materials, documents, images, essays, and articles to be used in conjunction with the textbook narrative.
Publishers that can afford to provide such access items push this aspect of their texts because it is a way to encourage teachers to buy the latest edition and, at least for a season,
beat the used and pirated books that usually steal the market.
4
On the concept of planned obsolescence, see Bernard London, Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence (New York, 1932). On Alfred P. Sloan, see Alfred P. Sloan, My Years with General Motors (New York, 1964).
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The significance of this marketing trend is how such all-purpose arrangements affect
and reflect teachers’ wants and needs. These arrangements encourage a more holistic approach to teaching the survey, grounded in a text with a range of supporting materials;
they reflect teachers’ wants and needs by recognizing the kinds of materials and the methods that teachers say will best build on, or even work against, the textbook. These kinds
of support materials, however delivered, can be readily revised to fit teachers’ interests,
giving the materials an attractive nimbleness and seeming responsiveness to teachers’ concerns.
Ultimately, this process creates a whole-course experience in which the textbook provides the fulcrum, if not more. All of the aids embedded in the textbooks add to this process, though such assistance has been a staple of textbooks for a generation or more. The
point here is that, when considered part of a larger “package,” and always essential to it,
the textbook was not and is not a creature of publishers alone. It reflects the symbiosis of
textbook publishing. As teachers, we should recognize and acknowledge that and thereby
become more informed and assertive agents in creating the textbook and in making it
work.
Regarding content, one development over the past decade has been the broadening
topical and geographic reach of texts. The “West” now gets more space than in earlier
iterations and is treated not just as a place to be conquered but also as a perspective (for
example, seeing history by looking eastward) and as an evolving place and process that
extend from the colonial era to today. All the world is no longer New England. Or the
South. Subjects only broached ten or fifteen years ago now command center stage. Issues
related to human sexuality come to mind but so too do issues related to climate change
and other controversial matters. Large subject areas once treated lightly, except when essaying on the formative periods of American history, now get greater attention. The topic
of religion fits this pattern, but there is still a wariness, or an ignorance, about how to
present the religious values and lives of seemingly out-of-the-mainstream religions and religious practices such as pentecostalism. The “new” social history, and all the other “new”
histories (political, military, religious) have triumphed in U.S. history textbooks over the
past ten years; this is no doubt a reflection of the profession’s hardy embrace of all of those
concentrations and the interests of the generation that makes up the largest cohort in the
profession. At scholarly meetings and in newsletters some professors and teachers complain that the “old” histories, especially military history and diplomatic history, have been
shunted aside, but a survey of the vast array of U.S. history textbooks will reveal examples
where the “new” has not supplanted the “old” altogether. I wonder if there will be another
tectonic shift in emphasis as the emerging generation of historians takes command of the
profession and the committees and other agencies that inform the content and emphases
in American history survey courses. The content and coverage of textbooks surely will follow any such shift.
The ways that political and social pressures impinge on the content, coverage, and
character of textbooks is, as David suggests, a topic that requires a survey. If we include
ap and college preparatory courses in the mix, the question of such pressures looms larger than if confined to college and university textbooks. Even within the realm of higher
education the pressures vary by place and circumstance, and even within each school (for
example, who chooses the textbook or whether there is a common book for all sections).
Textbooks and Teaching
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Finally, as David opines, it would be useful to know who assigns textbooks. The socalled, or self-described, best liberal arts colleges often have course models into which a
conventional textbook will not fit. The “democratization” of teaching, even at some large
schools, has created a kind of anarchy in ordering books for courses, or even in deciding
whether to have any books at all. What discussions have we had as a profession about the
utility of textbooks? The business assumption is that textbooks still have value because
publishers keep publishing so many of them. But what of the pedagogy within the profession? Do we know what works beyond anecdotal accounts and our own particular experience? Do we want to know? Ironically, publishers likely know more about these questions
than we do. Perhaps we ought to listen to them as much as they try to listen to us.
Amy Kinsel: The biggest change I have observed in the last decade is not so much in
textbooks themselves but in my students’ willingness and ability to read and learn from
any textbook. About ten years ago I could with confidence assign a standard U.S. history
text from one of the major publishers and be reasonably certain that most of my survey
students at the community college level would purchase a copy of the text and faithfully
attempt to read and understand the assigned material. I can no longer assume that the
majority of my students will do this. First, students have heard the message from the
media, from politicians, from their parents, and from their peers that textbooks cost “too
much” and are a waste of money. Whether textbooks truly cost “too much” or are a “poor
value” for the money is another topic, but many of my students believe that is so. They
look at the price of the books on the bookstore Web site before signing up for courses.
They complain to faculty and administrators that textbooks are too expensive. They
question whether textbooks are necessary at all, and ask faculty whether we are getting
paid by the publishers to foist expensive books on unsuspecting students.
Even when they are not cynically convinced that textbooks are a complete scam—after
all, isn’t all information available for free on the Internet these days?—community college students are often pressed for money at the beginning of each quarter, and many of
them put off buying books because they have to pay their tuition or risk being dropped
from their classes. I do what I can to order the least expensive edition of my selected text,
to put copies of books on reserve in the library, and to make sure students know that the
college multicultural center can provide short-term loans to cover the costs of textbooks,
but these efforts are often not enough, and in every class there are a few students who
cannot or will not spend money on books—at least until they realize how poorly they are
doing without a book and decide that maybe having one would be a good idea. As you
can imagine, a student who does not have a textbook until the third or fourth week of a
ten-week quarter has created a very big challenge to passing the course.
Some students erroneously believe they can survive in a survey course without purchasing or reading a textbook at all. This is wrongheaded thinking for my classes because I do
little lecturing in my entry-level courses. I expect students to read their textbooks to gain
an understanding of the basic narrative of U.S. history so that we can use class time to
work on things such as primary document analysis and basic writing skills. My goal is to
get students to do some historical interpretation, to ask historical questions that they find
interesting, and to write historical arguments that matter to them. To accomplish this
with poorly prepared community college students, who initially believe that their task for
the quarter will be to memorize facts and dates, I need to spend class time explaining the
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March 2014
concept of historical interpretation. I do occasionally get a student who has read some history, but mostly I get students who have never thought about history, have never written
a history paper, and have no idea what a thesis statement is.
I am especially worried about what seems to be a growing majority of students who
have little or no ability to read a textbook. They bring their textbooks to class but regard
them as educational artifacts rather than useful learning tools. I have had to build into the
first week of my U.S. survey courses direct instruction in how to read history textbooks.
If I do not point out the various standard sections, headings, boxes, marginal comments,
study questions, glossaries, appendixes (“Hey, there’s a copy of the Constitution in the
back!”), students do not know how to approach reading the pages that are open before
them. I have to instruct them to read the captions under the illustrations and maps, or
they would just flip by them as though they were reading a picture book. I also build in
lessons about how to read primary sources—those funny, weirdly spelled items that appear in boxes every few pages or so.
Randall M. Miller has observed that for his students a textbook is “a tool, not a treasure.” Would that my students viewed their textbooks as tools! Most of them have not
even reached that stage of engagement. I confess that stored in my attic is every single
college textbook that I ever purchased. To me, they were indeed treasures. I have no illusions that today’s students will hold onto their textbooks for decades. I would be pleased
if they at least saw their textbooks as learning tools for ten weeks, whatever they may do
with them at the end of the quarter.
Despite my somewhat stark portrait of community college reality, I have not given up
on helping my students learn what they can from textbooks. What I will try next, when
I teach an online introductory-level U.S. survey course during the summer, is ordering
only a less expensive digital textbook and not providing students with the option of purchasing a more expensive paper edition in the bookstore. I am hoping that students will
see the price point of about $35 for the digital text, appreciate the ease of accessing the
online book, be willing to spend the money up front, and try to read the material when
I assign it.
Since the course is online there will be no lectures to lull them into thinking that learning is a passive process of my pouring information into their brains day by day. The interactive part of the course will consist only of our online group engagement in document
analysis and historical interpretation. This is actually something I like about online learning: to “attend” class, students must post something about the document I asked them to
read or the historical question I asked them to analyze. They cannot sit in the back of the
room reading text messages and be counted as present.
Whether what they are reading is the most complete, most multicultural, best-written,
best-illustrated text with the keenest maps and coolest ancillaries no longer matters to me.
My hope is that students try to read at least some of the chapters I assign and that they try
to learn from them. They can then talk with each other and with me about history and
begin to think historically.
Foner: Amy Kinsel provides an extremely thoughtful account of what teaching history
is like in many institutions today. In conjunction with my textbook, I have learned a
great deal in recent years about the world of community colleges, where a rapidly growing number of students receive a college education, including in history. The challenges
Textbooks and Teaching
1147
facing these students are very different from those at many or most four-year colleges
and universities. I myself taught at the City College of New York back in the 1970s,
during the days of open admission, and the students then were not unlike those Amy
describes—with one important difference. The Internet did not exist, and the students
accepted the idea that reading—including reading a textbook—was part of a college education. Many of these students were poorly prepared for college, but they were willing to
read. My experience with those students, combined with Amy’s comment, reinforces my
conviction that textbooks are important, perhaps indispensable tools for teaching U.S.
history. For a student with little or no background in U.S. history there is no substitute
for a well-written, coherent narrative that makes sense of the nation’s past. If the book
has a theme or themes that engage the students’ interest (as I try to do in the textbook I
created with the theme of freedom and its changing meanings over the course of time)
so much the better. It does not matter whether the student encounters the textbook in an
expensive, four-color, multi-illustration edition; a streamlined less expensive version; or
online. But I agree with Amy’s implicit point: despite all the maps, images, and ancillary
materials, the writing makes a textbook good or bad.5
It is odd that many of our colleges and universities give scholars no credit for writing
a textbook. I can recall several occasions when young historians up for tenure have been
penalized for neglecting more monographic writing to spend time on a textbook. If good
textbook writing generated more respect among our colleagues, perhaps there would be
more and better textbooks.
Kinsel: Thanks, Eric, for reminding me that good writing is key. My students, by and
large, have little experience reading and less experience writing. I appreciate the consistent voice and narrative thread of your book. You take a position about America’s past,
make an argument about the meaning of historical experiences, and present evidence to
support that argument. A book such as yours is a good tool for me and consequently is a
good tool for my students.
I have reflected often on the likelihood that my U.S. history survey courses may be
the only college-level history courses that most of my students will ever take. What do
I want them to come away with from their one and only history course? Not just a few
facts about U.S. history that they can look up on the Internet. I want them to know that
history is a constructed narrative that they can challenge. I want them to be able to become more critical readers of texts, primary sources, secondary materials, and anything on
the Web, knowing that there is an author, a purpose, and an intended audience for any
source. I want them to try to evaluate everything they are reading before they swallow it
whole. And I want them to be able to communicate in writing. This is the hardest skill to
learn, since increasingly my students have read little, good or bad, in any previous context. It is therefore important that the textbook I require be well written so that the students read at least one model of good analytical writing during their college experience.
My wish that students be exposed to a well-written textbook in my class prompts me to
address the current mania for “free” open-source materials. Bad writing abounds in opensource materials, which tend to read more like chronologies of U.S. history than analyses
(except when they have particular cultural, political, or religious interpretations to push).
5
Foner, Give Me Liberty!
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March 2014
The dearth of good open sources in history does not deter open-source supporters.
Some state and federal legislators seem to want to kill the textbook industry and force faculty at public institutions to assign only open-source materials. These are the same legislators who are cutting state and federal funding for higher education while raising tuition
and decreasing financial aid so that students who are barely able to afford college truly do
not have money to buy textbooks. The legislators’ solution to the cry from students that
textbooks are too expensive is to assert that textbooks are not necessary.6
The anti-intellectualism of many state and national legislators, even those supposed
friends of public higher learning, is a perennial feature of political rhetoric about higher
education. It can go hand in hand with a legislative love affair with science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics disciplines and a search for a quick fix for educational
achievement gaps, such as pushing underprepared students into online courses and expecting them to learn by reading mediocre (but free!) online materials. If some state and
federal legislators have their way, the nation will end up with engineers and computer
programmers who have never read a history book, and no one will major in humanities
or social sciences.
Mary Dougherty: Quite a lot has changed over the last ten or even fifteen years. Certainly, technology is the most significant change, having a tremendous impact on what
we publishers create, how instructors teach, how students read, and how all of us access
information. Not only are the materials now offered electronically—as in the kind of
e-books Eric mentions—but whole courses are now partially or entirely online. Even traditional courses have some online dimension. In part, online courses and online teaching
demand a thorough rethinking of methods of instruction, and I think this could be a
very good thing. I know there is a lot of frustration about the pressure to move teaching
primarily to an online format. It seems clear that online teaching is here to stay; the economic reasons for this popularity have been laid out by the cultural critic Nathan Heller.7
I do think that e-book use will rise as publishers’ creation of them (especially those
with internal assessments) improves. As the hardware for using e-books becomes more
affordable and more common, e-books stand to become more prevalent and more accessible. As publishers, we have a lot to learn about how to create the ideal online learning
tool. With the omnipresence of the Internet, a textbook is not as necessary as it once was
to provide a basic narrative overview, so it is worth asking what the role of the textbook
is in the new context.
It is important to underscore that technology has changed the materials that publishers
offer and has seriously increased the costs they incur. Publishers are expected to offer a full
set of ancillaries, mostly online. These include computerized test banks, in a number of
different formats and suitable for use in Blackboard, Moodle, D2L, and Canvas, among
6
Martha Ann Overland, “State of Washington to Offer Online Materials as Texts: Money-Saving Effort at
Two-Year Colleges Faces Vexing Problems,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 9, 2011, http://chronicle.com/
article/State-of-Washington-to-Offer/125887/; Lawrence Biemiller, “2 Senators Offer Bill Promoting OpenAccess Textbooks,” ibid., Nov. 14, 2013, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/2-senators-will-offer-billpromoting-open-access-textbooks/48359; John Sandman, “Ridiculously Expensive Text Books: Legislation Introduced to Drop Cost,” Mainstreet.com, http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/education-planning/
ridiculously-expensive-text-books-legislation-introduced-d.
7
Nathan Heller, “Laptop U: Has the Future of College Moved Online?‚” New Yorker, May 20, 2013, http://
www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/20/130520fa_fact_heller.
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other learning magement systems. Instructors expect lecture materials, PowerPoint presentations, maps, and art (for which additional permissions must be cleared). Students
request self-testing tools and adaptive quizzing. Publishers also offer many versions of the
same narrative. We provide full-length, full-feature books—which remain very popular
in some community colleges where instructors use the boxed features for classroom discussion or activity. We also publish very affordable two-color versions of our narratives,
“concise” versions, loose-leaf versions, and electronic options. We are asked to produce
e-books for every imaginable situation—Web-based and downloadable onto different devices. And in thinking about Randall’s wonderful description of the dynamic between
faculty and publishers, we are being asked for more features all the time—especially extremely expensive and indisputably cool animated maps. In part, these materials are absolutely necessary for the nearly 70 percent of teachers who are adjuncts. Those who teach
approximately six to nine sections of U.S. history survey each year will need all the help
they can get to prepare lessons, lectures, and assessments.
How has the content or presentation within textbooks changed? In addition to what
others have said, let me add that the books have become briefer. It is abundantly clear that
instructors do not assign as much reading at they did years ago. I do not have specific data
to support this observation, but I have had scores of conversations with instructors who
say that they cannot assign the amount of reading they did twenty years ago. For many,
this means they are assigning less than half the reading they once did. The worst-case scenario is when instructors assume that they cannot expect any work to happen outside of
class.
I also think that the social history–focused books and the political history–focused
books have become more alike; this is not because publishers are faking peer review but
rather because the textbook is a functional tool, and in many classrooms it has to serve
a single function. The textbook is there to give students information that they miss in
class, that is not covered in class, or that they just do not understand. It is a backup to
the instructor’s lectures. Many instructors feel that their lectures are the main narrative
of their survey course and any textbook is just there to provide further information. I am
not sure if this idea is new or if it simply shows the prevalence of the lecture model in
history courses. Because the textbooks serve the same function they must all include information on presidents, politics, military developments, and the most significant social
developments.
Do teachers and students use textbooks in different ways and less often than they did
a decade ago? Yes and no. Nationwide, there is a spectrum of uses for textbooks. On one
end are those who use the book very actively—opening it and making use of it during
class time. One of Bedford/St. Martin’s most popular U.S. history textbooks is used faithfully and quite actively for its boxed features (both primary sources and essay-based activities). At the other end of the spectrum are those who use no textbook at all. This group
makes up about 30 percent of U.S. history instructors, and they focus on primary sources
and a skills- and inquiry-based pedagogy instead of a narrative text. I count these instructors, many of them inspired by Sam Wineburg and Lendol Calder, as a very progressive
force for the survey course. A significant group, in the middle of the spectrum and making up about half of the total market, assign a textbook passively, as background reading, and they assign a few other things—mostly primary sources online and one or two
monographs or book-length first-person accounts. Frederick Douglass and Ann Moody
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March 2014
remain some of the most commonly assigned first-person narratives, and they hold that
position because their stories offer students an unmatched immersion in a life in the past.
Instructors who choose a monograph or even popular history written by a journalist do
so because they feel that that text models good historical writing.8
By now, most college textbook publishers have tried to address the “reading problem”:
students cannot or do not read the textbook. I think these are two different problems—
one about basic skills and college preparation and the other about interest or will. There
are students who attempt to read the textbook and find it utterly overwhelming. They get
lost in what appears to be a sea of detail, and even though they are trying to understand,
they do not have the skills or the context to make sense of a historical narrative. For this
group, we and other publishers have devised books with a very heavy pedagogical architecture or a built-in reading guide. The other group with the “reading problem” is made
up of those who do not even open the textbook.
Economic challenges have decreased textbook sales and eroded our profitability. We
have to spend more to create rich ancillary packages, and instructors feel entirely comfortable using these support materials without having their students buy our books. For
us publishers the economic threats are the high number of faculty members who do not
require some purchase of our materials. I should note that we ensure that the many versions of our books span a wide range of prices, all in the effort to make materials affordable. The net price of a Bedford/St. Martin history e-book is approximately $25. Our big
combined-volume books are often distributed to schools that handle textbook rentals—
an arrangement in which bookstores reap the profits to the exclusion of publishers and
authors. These multivolume titles usually have a net price that is between $109 and $120,
with bookstore markup that can exceed 30 percent. In a nutshell, publisher costs have
increased while we have actually—despite what you read—expanded the range of what
we offer, and we have watched our sales still go down. It is a very challenging time for us.
I know Amy and her colleagues are under a lot of political pressure from legislators,
many of whom really do not support education. While there is also a lot of media attention on the Texas textbook adoption process, such political pressures are not a huge factor
in textbook publishing. We do not tell our authors how or what to write, and we defend
their right to talk about politically or culturally controversial issues.
To return to the context in which survey books are used and survey courses are taught,
I wonder if we ought to be asking some broad questions here. What is the role of the U.S.
history survey course in the general education curriculum? How is the history profession
making the case for itself at perhaps its moment of greatest public exposure—through
the U.S. history survey course, which enrolls 1.3 million students annually? How is that
course a place to showcase the strong sophisticated skills of the discipline? How does that
course make the public case for the discipline?
According to Jeff Borden, the vice president of instruction and academic strategy at
Pearson Learning Solutions, today 70 percent of high school graduates take college courses. That is a far larger portion of the population than in previous generations, when 20–
30 percent of high school graduates obtained more education, and it is a far bigger gross
8
On the textbook work of Sam Wineburg and Lendol Calder, see David Juarez, “How? Doing History and
Signature Pedagogies,” Designing History’s Future, http://historysfuture.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/how-doinghistory-and-signature-pedagogies/. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(Boston, 1845); Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (New York, 1968).
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number. The questions that would logically follow may surround whether the books and
the classes they serve have changed enough to meet the needs of this vast, unevenly prepared, job-seeking population; how the teaching of the U.S. history survey has changed;
and whether it has changed enough to meet today’s needs.
Additionally, as a recent Harvard University study has made clear, the humanities are
not faring well. This report received a good deal of attention in the media. Are these conversations relevant to our discussion of the survey course? What is the future of the survey
course? Our data says that enrollments in the U.S. history survey are still above one million students nationally, that number is down from its recessionary peak of 1.5–1.6 million. Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee still require the U.S. history survey in college, but in
many places that course is becoming less central to undergraduate education. In Utah, the
U.S. history survey is predominantly a one-semester course. In California the U.S. history survey and the world history survey typically span one quarter (ten weeks). In many
places, students may take world history instead of the U.S. survey, or they may fulfill their
distribution requirements in some other way.9
One factor that continues to change is the focus on assessment. Accrediting agencies
and administrators want data to show student progress, and they cannot be blamed for
that desire. The most influential political factors in education right now may be at the
K–12 level. The Common Core State Standards Initiative, an effort to make math and
reading standards more rigorous, may or may not succeed, but the pressures being felt
at the K–12 level may find their way into colleges. The College Board is in the process
of rolling out a new version of the ap U.S. history examination. It is very rigorous and
has a strong focus on historical skills and historical thinking. By combining the need for
analysis and the need for contextualization of sources, I think the College Board is linking skills and coverage.10
A new student population and technological advances are major changes, but I also
wonder if the purpose of the U.S. history survey has changed or needs to change. Is it
a gateway to the discipline? Is it about teaching basic reading and writing? Is it about
teaching historical thinking? What if it is about inquiry? What if the best courses did not
oppose coverage and skills but rather—as is the aspiration of the entirely redesigned ap
course—blended the two?
Kinsel: I will pick up on the question Mary Dougherty asked about the purpose of the
U.S. history survey course. Given the number of high school and high school completion students that I teach (including international high school completion students who
are primarily teenagers from Asia whose parents have sent them to a U.S. community
college to improve their English, get a U.S. high school degree and an associate’s degree,
and then transfer to a U.S. university to pursue a business degree), I do not see the survey
course as a gateway to the discipline.
9
Harvard University Arts and Humanities Working Group, “The Teaching of the Arts and Humanities at
Harvard College: Mapping the Future,” May 2013, http://artsandhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/files/humanities/files/
mapping_the_future_31_may_2013.pdf.
10
On the Common Core State Standards Initiative, see Common Core State Standards Initiative: Preparing
America’s Students for College and Career, http://www.corestandards.org/. On the Advanced Placement (ap) examination in U.S. history, see Advances in ap, http://advancesinap.collegeboard.org/english-history-and-social-science/
us-history.
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March 2014
My goals for my survey courses are to help my students learn what the historical discipline is, ask a few historical questions, think critically about some primary and secondary
sources, write an arguable thesis statement, produce some form of analytical writing that
is not plagiarized, and become better “consumers” (for want of a better term) of information in general and of historical information in particular. If any of these students begins
to like history as a discipline, that is great, but my expectation is that almost none of these
students will ever take another history course and that if they are going to understand
anything about the U.S. historical narrative or about how to think historically, this is a
one-shot deal.
I am not quite sure I understand the reference to the depth and breadth of information
available on the Web as a reason not to assign a textbook in a U.S. history course. On the
contrary, students have little capacity to assess the relevance, timeliness, credibility, or bias
of the information available to them online. They are awash in information that they have
little ability to analyze and thus cannot use constructively. More and more, I believe that
the information literacy skills I try to teach my students are among the most important
learning outcomes of my survey courses.
Mary is correct that new community college students generally have no idea how to
read a textbook. This is one of the many things I need to teach them, along with how to
distinguish primary and secondary sources, how to locate and evaluate online materials,
and how to write a persuasive historical essay. Standing in front of a classroom of students
who do not know how to do any of those tasks and lecturing to them about the American historical narrative would be the easy way out for me, and it is something I generally
avoid. The students would get little out of such lectures except reinforcement that learning history means memorizing what happened rather than developing the information
literacy, analytical, and writing skills that are the true work (and joy) of the discipline.
Casper: I would like to pick up on a topic that Eric and Amy touched on: the role of
narrative and its construction in textbooks. Several of you have written textbooks
with a strong narrative thread. Amy wrote that she wants students “to know that
history is a constructed narrative that they can challenge.” What are the advantages—for authors, publishers, instructors, and students—of a strong narrative thread
in a textbook? Are there any disadvantages? Is there a tension between narrative
coherence and “coverage”? Further, what are the challenges to integrating a strong
narrative thread into a multiauthored textbook—or into an open-source textbook?
Foner: Historians have been debating the role of narrative for centuries. There is no one
true way of writing history. I happen to be a believer in the value of the narrative form,
especially, perhaps, in a textbook. It enables writers and teachers to help students understand the essence of historical inquiry—the study of change over time, and the causes,
nature, and consequences of such change.
The narrative has many pitfalls: most notably in a textbook, I think, is the temptation
to structure it around the most famous and obvious events—presidencies and wars—and
to make it seem teleological, as if history is a one-way street leading to greater progress. I
describe my book as a “contested narrative”: at any point in U.S. history different people
and groups had different visions of the future; many possibilities exist in any historical
Textbooks and Teaching
1153
moment; the eventual course of events is not necessarily inevitable; and the future is always unknown. This construct enables us to avoid homogenizing U.S. history and to introduce the experience of the various elements that make up the American people without succumbing simply to “one thing after another.”
Narrative also enables teachers to do what Amy has described—get the students to
interrogate that narrative. What choices has the textbook writer made about what to include and exclude and why? Did personal, political, or other views seem to affect such
choices? How would the narrative be different if other choices had been made? The notion of a narrative as constructed—an idea that is second nature to us as historians—is
quite alien to most students who have little background in the study of history.
The title of my book is Give Me Liberty: An American History. I sometimes tell students
that the most important word here is an. This is not the American history. It is an interpretation. Once they understand this, they often become much more engaged in analyzing not only the history but also the narrative.
Kinsel: I like what Eric said about choices. First, the author(s) of a historical narrative
make(s) choices about how to interpret history and about which examples to include in
the narrative to support interpretation. Second, I try to help students understand that
historical actors made choices. I dislike counterfactual history, but I do ask my students
to think about the choices people made in the past and the consequences of those choices.
Different choices would have resulted in a different historical narrative. My point is
never to encourage students to engage in “what if ” history. Rather, I ask them to think
about how things happened as they did. Many students come to a U.S. history survey
course, particularly at the community college level, thinking that history is a series of
events strung together in a chronology. I try to impress upon students that people in the
past made decisions that resulted in outcomes that had both immediate and long-term
consequences. Explaining real people’s real decisions and understanding what they meant
at the time and what they have meant since is my main historical interest.
A textbook that does not have a narrative thread—even a narrative thread that I disagree with and may ask students to challenge—does not allow me, as a teacher, to dig
into historical meaning. The questions I want students to ask and answer are not what
and when, but how and why. The first two are a given—the building blocks rather than
the structure of history. It is only by asking the last two questions that historians build or
construct historical meaning.
By assigning research papers I ask students to try their hands at constructing historical
meaning. Many of them find writing an analytical essay very challenging. They seem not
to have sufficient experience reading at a high school level, let alone a college level. They
have even less experience with research and practically none with creating citations. They
have little experience with writing a thesis statement or making an argument. If they have
never read serious nonfiction scholarship—and I have to surmise based on their work that
most of them have not—then the textbook I assign must be serious nonfiction reading.
(Also, I tend to swoon over a textbook that includes footnotes.)
As a serious nonfiction piece of work, a textbook must be well written. (I banish the
use of passive voice from student papers and, thus, I could not assign a textbook that is
sprinkled with passive verb constructions.) A good textbook also must have a narrative
thread or theme, and (even better) actual thesis statements at the beginnings of chapters
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March 2014
or chapter sections. I like Eric’s idea of a “contested narrative,” and I throw in lots of my
own questions for students to ask about how the author(s) of their assigned texts construct meaning. Sometimes I ask the students to become writers: I might ask them to rewrite a textbook passage on the Meriwether Lewis and William Clark expedition from the
viewpoint of the Indians living in what would become Oregon territory rather than from
the traditional perspective of the men who were members of the expedition.
The wealth of textbook choices for the U.S. survey course offers many opportunities to
find suitable books. However, I find that as a faculty member at a two-year college I am
under a lot of pressure from students to assign the least expensive textbook or even to assign no textbook. This is the dilemma I face. I understand the value of a good textbook to
my students’ ability to understand the lessons I want them to learn in my classes—what
we community college instructors must include in our master course outlines as learning
outcomes—even though the students see textbooks as expensive and intimidating. (Those
of you who teach at four-year institutions may not be familiar with the extensive curricular paperwork that two-year colleges generate to ensure that our courses are accepted for
transfer by baccalaureate-granting institutions.)
As a faculty member at a two-year college, I am responsible for assessing whether my
students meet the learning outcomes in my master course outline—the document on
which the University of Washington (among others) has based its agreement that my
course transfers as a 100-level history survey course to their institution. Yet educational
“reformers” and politicians seldom pay attention to the learning outcomes (another community college buzz phrase) of college transfer courses. They hear cries from parents and
students about textbook costs, they wish to “streamline” the public higher educational
system, they identify certain “roadblocks” to student completion, and they have identified
forcing students to purchase and read textbooks as one such barrier.11
The antitextbook sentiment I find among students does not exist in a vacuum. It is
one element of the higher education “reform” agenda that seeks to push students through
public higher education systems “farther and faster”—and cheaper. Whether students
learn anything—particularly whether they learn anything in the humanities and social
sciences—sometimes seems to be a secondary consideration for educational policy makers.
I have reflected on why this might be the case, and I have come up with two possible
explanations. First, some reformers are highly educated (I am thinking specifically of the
educational policy makers at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), and they have little
experience working with the significantly underprepared students who attend community colleges. My students are not stupid, and they are not incapable of doing college work
11
Community college transfer policies differ from state to state, but many depend upon each college establishing a master syllabus or master course outline for each transfer course so that baccalaureate institutions are informed
of the content and general coverage of the courses they accept for transfer credit. The Washington State Board for
Community and Technical Colleges maintains several committees and a host of resources that deal directly with
transfer policies. See “Transfer Resources,” Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, http://
www.sbctc.ctc.edu/college/_e-transfer-resources.aspx. Colleges within the state post master course outline information for students. See “Master Course Outlines,” Grays Harbor College, http://www.ghc.edu/mco/; and “Master
Course Outline,” Walla Walla Community College, http://www.wwcc.edu/CMS/index.php?id=3660. Other state
community college systems have developed similar methods of establishing basic course content consistency among
standard transfer courses available in their systems. See “Course Outline Documents,” Coastline Community College, http://www.coastline.edu/academics/course-outlines/; “Course Content Summaries,” Northern Virginia Community College, http://www.nvcc.edu/academic/coursecont.htm; and “Curriculum and Assessment: Master Syllabi,”
Washtenaw Community College, http://www4.wccnet.edu/departments/curriculum/progdata.php?levelone=syllabi.
Textbooks and Teaching
1155
or of engaging in critical analysis. No one has ever asked them to do that kind of work or
shown them how to do it. By contrast, in a classroom full of well-prepared students at a
selective university, perhaps a textbook-free survey course would be possible. Maybe these
students would have sufficient background in nonfiction reading and writing to comprehend the point of studying history without actually reading a textbook. This is the classroom of students I imagine the high-end policy reformers are picturing when they propose teaching college students via textbookless massive, open, online courses (moocs).12
Second, politicians in state legislatures tend to have little understanding of or sympathy for intellectual pursuits. They are interested in producing trained workers for the state
economy. In my experience, they are focused on the marketable skills that “degree and
certificate completers” (in state higher education speak) possess. I perceive many statelevel politicians and their staff, along with many state-level higher education bureaucrats,
as given over to the idea that the goal of state-supported higher education is not to produce educated citizens but to produce completers who can get jobs. If the goal is counting
the number of completers that the system produces each year, questions about narrative
voice become moot.
It is not clear precisely where educational reformers are heading; regardless it will not
be a place where the narrative voice is a major concern. My fear is that the current crop
of educational policy makers thinks that studying history (and other humanities and social sciences disciplines) consists of students becoming familiar with objective information (facts and dates) to be regurgitated on demand. Already, policy makers who count
completions will count students who can perform the required regurgitation as educated,
or at least educated enough.
I honestly think that the current uproar over textbooks is symptomatic of the larger
question of the direction of higher education. To me, ultimately, it is a matter of academic
freedom. If I do not have the freedom to select the course materials that I believe have the
best chance of helping my students achieve the learning outcomes I seek for them, why
would I continue to teach history?
Trowbridge: Amy brings up an extremely timely and compelling series of questions
about the future of teaching and textbooks. There are many would-be reformers, most of
whom surely have the best of intentions. I hope these educators will forgive my skepticism, as there are others who have little teaching experience and yet approach as friends.
Some faculty members fear that moocs and automated courses will eliminate faculty
positions. Our concern transcends self-interest. We know that there can be no education
without educators, just as there can be no art without artists—and we refuse to live in a
world without art or education.
12
Recent online discussions of Massive Open Online Courses (moocs) display skepticism of the widespread
efficacy of the massive online educational model. See, for example, Steve Kolowich, “As mooc Debate Simmers
at San José State, American U. Calls a Halt,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9, 2013, http://chronicle.com/
article/As-MOOC-Debate-Simmers-at-San/139147/; Keith Devlin, “mooc Mania Meets the Sober Reality of
Education,” Faculty Row, Aug. 19, 2013, http://facultyrow.com/profiles/blogs/mooc-mania; Ry Rivard, “Beyond
mooc Hype,” Inside Higher Education, July 9, 2013, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/09/higher-edleaders-urge-slow-down-mooc-train#.UdwCUtTLw80.email; and Rebecca Schuman, “The King of moocs Abdicates the Throne: Sebastian Thrun and Udacity’s ‘Pivot’ toward Corporate Training,” Slate, Nov. 19, 2013, http://
www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/11/sebastian_thrun_and_udacity_distance_learning_is_unsuccessful_
for_most_students.html.
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March 2014
Can we be replaced by moocs? If our job is to convey content, I believe that we are vulnerable to the efficiencies produced by those courses. They are available at all hours, and
students can skip directly to a particular lecture and repeat topics as many times as they
desire. But the same is true for books. The printing press failed to eliminate the church,
and I believe that moocs will spare the academy.
Why do we still have jobs if books and moocs (to say nothing of video cassettes and
laser discs) can convey content more efficiently? As historians, we devote our lives to content. But education is not about content; education is about change. Meaningful change
has never been easy, and it is seldom efficient.
As educators, we get goose bumps when we see the change in students from freshmen
to seniors. Have any of us expressed that pride in terms of a student’s improved understanding of, for example, the early 1920s Teapot Dome scandal? Delivery systems such
as moocs and textbooks are wonderful tools because content is essential to the process of
education. But content is education in the same sense that clay is art and notes are music.
Content is the medium we work with. Would anyone propose closing an artist’s studio
simply because we can buy paint online? No matter what the rest of the world assumes a
college is, we must always remember that education is service. And if we do it right, education makes messes that no mooc could ever clean up.
Amy also discusses learning outcomes, which are often expressed with bullet points on
syllabi and other things students do not read. Many of us share the lack of enthusiasm for
learning outcomes, perhaps because they have been imposed from above. Others point
out that course evaluation has somehow been transformed from actual class observation
to a cursory review of lists of outcomes. As Patricia Nelson Limerick has pointed out, historians are rarely known for the quality of our lists.13
Yet learning objectives can be very helpful if approached with an open mind and with
the academic freedom to define what we hope to accomplish. If learning objectives are
standardized and imposed, standardized testing may follow. If this should happen, it
would become increasingly difficult to write a textbook without feeling the shadow of
multiple-choice exams. Students and authors would share this burden of malassessment,
pushing us back toward history as an exercise in memorization instead of an exploration
of perspective, change, and evidence—the trademarks of our discipline, as Eric points
out.
If education is not merely the transfer of data and if educators are agents of change instead of a delivery system for content, how can we as authors create textbooks that better
serve educators? Should a textbook merely transfer data, or is there a way to reduce the
disconnect between teaching and textbooks?
Miller: As you all have stated so powerfully, narrative is essential to what we do and
what we must demand of our textbooks, which, after all, are not just sources of information but also, I hope, models of the historical process and history as craft. If we want
students to understand and appreciate how “history” is made and what it means to write
history, we need to provide good examples among the foundational works in a course.
We might offer some bad writing as a way to make the case for good writing—but only
13
Patricia Nelson Limerick, “Shared Needs among Diverse History Programs,” keynote address delivered at the
Tuning History Project meeting of the American Historical Association, June 9–10, 2012, Arlington, Virginia,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbgtScY44LQ&feature=youtu.be.
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as a counterpoint, never as the substance of a course. Students in survey courses want and
need guidance, which they get, and even seek out, in the kinds of writing we as teachers
suggest and show as worthwhile. (In my world students still think teachers have something to teach them, at least until they get to know us!) The advantages of a strong narrative and an interpretive line in a textbook far outweigh anything gained from a book
that provides basic information with the promise of a cheaper price as the cost-benefit for
giving less in content and consequence by offering virtually nothing in story and meaning. Narrative draws readers in—as with the successful practice of opening chapters with
anecdotal stories of “common” people that make the past more personal and approachable—and it can hold them.
When I have assigned so-called concise histories to accommodate cries for lower-cost
books or to align with textbooks assigned by colleagues, I have been disappointed by the
ways students have used the books. They see them as they truly are—“one damn fact after
another”—and as expensive information packages on subjects they can almost as readily
learn about via Wikipedia or some other online resource. “Why give us this?” they ask
(even when students ask for such books in our assessments), primarily because of cost.
I no longer have an answer because I believe that we should find ways to assign and use
textbooks that are driven by narrative and that demonstrate historical argument responsibly. Coverage must have compelling content. In my admittedly limited anecdotal world
of assessment, such books score so much higher than the variety that provide “just the
facts.” Every textbook needs a reason for being—beyond making money for publishers
and perhaps for authors. The need to tell a story and to convey an argument are values
that many students can appreciate. A textbook that has a narrative worth relating and
argument(s) worth considering shows respect to them, as readers. And, as one colleague
wisely noted, such an arrangement allows students to become historians in the making by
taking on the past rather than just consuming facts.
Providing a unified narrative and a line of argument that thread through a book can be
(and has been) a problem for multiauthored textbooks. There is the problem of voice—do
you impose a common one or let each author retain a voice as part of the authenticity of
the work and perhaps also show various ways of narrating? Do all authors have to buy into
the principal line(s) of argument, or does the multiauthor approach offer an opportunity
to suggest, and show in practice, different perspectives on the same sources? Do multiauthored textbooks sacrifice the “authority” of the single narrator or enhance the idea
that there is not, and perhaps ought not be, any single narrator for the American “story”?
How much authority do we want or need to concede to the author(s) of the textbook?
This, too, is a fruitful question to ask our students as part of the use and evaluation of
the textbook—the history—before them. Ironically, it is possible to introduce significant
unsettlement in a survey course by using, and assessing, a strong narrative textbook that
seemingly settles the American story by giving it a unified and unifying thematic character and voice. Eric’s honest confession of promising a “contested history” does this well.
Oh that we all confessed to that. We cannot unsettle thinking so much with textbooks
that lack narrative and thematic purpose. Few care about them anyway, for they ask so
little of the reader. And so on. In any case, good, purposeful writing must rule lest we renege on our responsibility to provide examples of writing history, and written history, as
we would have students practice.
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Much also depends on how we use the books. We need not only to point to the
author(s)’ line(s) of argument and narrative style(s) but also to challenge the authors for
the assumptions underscoring their books, the kinds of evidence sustaining them, and the
conclusions coming from them. This is easier done in textbooks that have narrative and
argument(s), not just a recitation of basic information. We can fairly ask if and why the
stories are compelling and pertinent to the issues supposedly raised in and by them. In
that regard, one exercise I have done, alas with mixed results, is to ask students to discover,
describe, and make a case for a subject that is not treated or is mistreated in the textbook,
and to write up what ought be there. This can lead to some revealing discoveries about
what students see and want in their textbooks—especially relating to the inclusion and
exclusion of particular peoples and experiences because students understand that choices
about inclusion are also choices about exclusion. It also can inspire us to wonder who was
reviewing a book before publication, as in the case of a popular “concise history” that, my
students noticed this past semester, left out Prohibition altogether. (My good Catholic
college students insisted we should “drink to that” even as they mocked the authors for
the missing story.) The purpose of a class is to engage the textbook and test it, which gives
it value and makes it a living thing. No mooc or other packaged course can offer that.
Dougherty: There is no single answer to the question of what kind of narrative makes
for a useful, successful textbook. There can be great, useful, pathbreaking single-author
books—and Eric’s is certainly one of those. These can be distinct from others on the
market because of the unity of voice—indeed, the presence of a voice. There have also
been very useful, insightful textbooks written by teams. Teams vary as much as individuals in their talents, their intuitions, their pedagogical sense, and their commitment to the
project. So, as a publisher, I look for multiple characteristics. Does narrative coherence
limit coverage? Often, but not always. Frequently, as Randall points out, the market—
whether students who want to see themselves in a book or scholars who want their area
treated—demands expanded coverage.
We follow a problem-solution formulation for every textbook we create. We want
to understand instructors’ (and students’) problems: the things that prevent them from
achieving their teaching goals or the things that hinder their focus, as Amy summed it
up, on teaching history as a constructed narrative of the past. As publishers, our job is to
create solutions.
Useful and successful textbooks usually intervene into the market and the classroom.
They fill a need. The first social history textbooks were pathbreaking not because of their
narrative but because they solved a problem. Instructors wanted to introduce the wellspring of new scholarship, thinking, and inquiry into their classes, and the older books
did not help. The innovative textbooks introduced students to the burgeoning social history. It just so happened that the work they synthesized was much of the information
students wanted learn. These books were so influential because of their approach. So, too,
books that offer a continental perspective on U.S. history, or that offer much greater coverage of the West and the Southwest, address a gap in the textbook literature and have
been adopted because they solve the problem of books that were focused on the East.
In our research into what students like and what they want to learn from, we hear great
praise about “stories.” The students, especially those who used The American Promise, love
the stories of people that they found in the text. They did not extol these as historical nar-
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rative or as interpretation, but they did connect with and learn from the voices. Narrative
has more than one meaning.14
Two other observations from the world of textbooks: first, as Eric and Randall point
out, there are, by now, options at nearly every price point. Our research tells us that instructors want their students to spend between $50 and $100 for books or materials.
Nearly every college textbook publisher offers many choices within this admittedly wide
range. E-books, of course, are a very affordable option but I am curious about this panel’s
conclusions about why that format is not used more. Is the availability or the expense of
devices a roadblock? Is price an issue because some instructors or students still want a
“big” book or full-color book? If all textbooks were free, what would be the ideal publication?
Second, I wanted to say a bit about how textbooks are actually used: I estimate that
at least half of the people teaching U.S. history survey courses use a textbook as a background reference. (Up to 30 percent of instructors use no book at all, and the balance use
the book actively—relying on the boxes for discussion, pointing out parts of the book
in class, and working with the primary sources in class.) The people who use the book
as a reference do not teach from it actively or do not require their students to bring it to
class. Many do not test from their textbook; some do not even read it. It sits in the background as a reference tool so that students can look up things they did not understand in
lecture, providing instructors with some measure of freedom in lecture creation (trusting
that the book provides basic coverage). There was a time when some instructors used the
book consciously as a counterpoint to their lectures. If they lectured on social history they
wanted a political book, and vice versa. I think that time may have passed, however, because those approaches have converged in textbooks and in classrooms. Some instructors
try to leave the textbook behind, and their students still ask for a text as an intellectual
security blanket. I have sat in on more than one class where students use the book only
through the index, only looking up things rather than engaging the narrative. Some instructors say that they assign one monograph per term and rely on that as an example of
great historical writing.
My point here is that the narrative of a textbook is only one aspect of its role, and often
it is not the most pressing issue. The textbook functions as raw material, coverage, interpretation, or as some combination of all. A colleague of mine was once told that the textbook serves as “malpractice insurance.” What makes an instructor go through the hassle
of changing books? At the decision-making point, the factors driving change lie outside
the book: price, ancillaries, digital supplements, testing, Learning Management System
(lms) compatibility, the publisher or the textbook representative. What drives change
now has to do with assessment, online resources, how the ancillary and assessment content fit with the campus lms. None of this is to say that narrative is not important, but it
is only one aspect of all that is happening in traditional classrooms, in distance learning
courses, and in “flipped” classes.15
Lastly, I thought David offered a terrific question: “If education is not merely the
transfer of data and if educators are agents of change instead of a delivery system for
content, how can we as authors create textbooks that better serve educators? Should a
James L. Roark et al., The American Promise: A History of the United States (Boston, 1998).
On “flipped” classrooms, see Tina Rosenberg, “In Flipped Classrooms: A Method for Mastery,” New York Times,
Oct. 23, 2013, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/in-flipped-classrooms-a-method-for-mastery/?_r=0.
14
15
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March 2014
textbook merely transfer data, or is there a way to reduce the disconnect between teaching and textbooks?” In the case of history and survey courses, this is a key question. For
this discipline, part of the challenge seems to be to address the basic skills issues that Amy
mentions and then to help students navigate the incredibly sophisticated moves that culminate in historical narrative. History is such a sophisticated discipline. It demands understanding context, discerning change over time, determining what makes for significant
or noteworthy change, adducing evidence, mounting an argument, engaging the arguments of others, and pulling all of this off in narrative form! It is a series of steps that demand a grasp of content and a set of skills—from the basics of reading and writing to the
creation of argument and narrative. My hope is that digital materials will aid instructors
in breaking down these steps and help students move progressively.
Miller: Please allow me to briefly return to a question that is imbedded in a principal
reason for this “Interchange” and in several of our responses: Why use a textbook at all?
In addition to the seeming advantage of providing coverage, a basic font of information
from which to draw, and a demonstration of historical interpretation (among several
good reasons), we might consider assigning textbooks because they can promise liberation. A well-written interpretive narrative textbook can, and usually does, provide “coverage” and content that allows teachers to use the book as a touchstone for discussion
and the presentation of alternative arguments and as a way to explore particular issues
and questions in some depth without the obligation to cover everything in class. Textbooks can be, and have been, particularly useful in so-called problems-centered survey
courses. Again, there is no need to rely on the textbook for all coverage and content, and
there is much to gain by offering counternarratives and critiques of the material in the
textbook(s). But the need for coverage, which is often dictated by course guidelines established by the department, the college, or even the state accrediting agency, can choke off
creativity if it means using class time to do it. Thus, the textbook fills a need. In that regard, too, the dictates of the course must be respected. In my case, for example, almost all
the students taking the U.S. history survey do so because they need the course to fulfill a
history requirement for state certification as elementary education majors. They are in the
course because of compulsion rather than interest—a circumstance common to all of us.
The state requires that such students “know” a wide range of subjects, with a special emphasis on Pennsylvania history as necessary in such a course if there is no separate course
on Pennsylvania history available. By having a textbook, I meet the requirements while I
also free myself to move in directions that are important to the processes of discovering
and reading and to knowing the content of “American history.”
One related question that has come up in discussions with colleagues at institutions
where a textbook is not required concerns the efficacy, even the “morality,” of assigning
a textbook. They ask to what extent forcing a textbook on students imposes a tyranny of
particular information and a particular interpretation. Again, how and why one employs
a textbook matters in addressing that concern, though I have thought that the question
assumes, wrongly, that a nontextbook course is by nature more democratic and open than
one with a textbook. Perhaps the question merits some consideration from us.
Trowbridge: I have noticed that more and more students are responding to the price of
textbooks by trying to make it through at least some of their courses without them. These
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students perform triage each semester, judging which of their textbooks are most likely
to determine their academic survival and which ones they might be able to live without.
If a book is deemed essential and affordable, the student purchases the book. If a book
is deemed essential but overpriced, students look for used copies or other alternatives.
When it comes to used books and borrowing, we each perform a similar act of triage. If a
book we need is outside of our price range, we use interlibrary loan or ask our libraries to
acquire the book. How many of us could remain current in our field without colleagues,
libraries, and a healthy used-book market?
By doing the easy thing and acquiescing to the endless cycle of new editions, we allow
publishers to treat our students very differently than we expect to be treated as authors
and consumers of academic books. Would we not be embarrassed if the books we wrote
for academic and general audiences followed the same practices as those of leading textbook publishers? Can you imagine how the academy would respond to an academic press
or an author who embedded their books with Digital Rights Management technologies
so that all digital copies self-destructed after a few months? What if they bundled their
printed books together or kept releasing a new edition every sixteen months? For most
of our students in survey classes, the books we assign will be the first books they buy as
adult consumers. I hope we can do more to make sure that these are not the last books
they buy.16
Casper: I would like to pick up the notion of students pushing back against textbooks—challenging their narratives, inclusions, or exclusions. Amy and Randall
both mention this in different ways: Amy asks her students to rewrite textbook
passages; Randall’s students noticed the omission of Prohibition from a “concise
history” textbook. Do the authors and publishers among you take account of students’ responses—direct or second-hand, perhaps conveyed by instructors—in
writing or revising your books? How have you revised in response to a sense that
some topics or areas may be of particular interest to students? From the instructors’
perspective, what are some areas against which students most commonly push? Do
you see textbooks responding to those concerns? If not, what are your strategies for
addressing them?
Trowbridge: In our field, original content and peer review are not corners that can be
cut. Unfortunately, there are open-source textbooks that simply aggregate content from
Wikipedia and other open sources. While this approach may be appropriate in some
fields, it has no place in history. For reasons already discussed by my colleagues, it would
be a grave mistake to believe that a history textbook could simply be cobbled together
from open-source material, even if those materials were of the highest quality.
I should make a distinction here between “open” and “open-source” textbooks. My
book, for example, follows the traditional method of textbook authorship. The editor,
who previously produced history textbooks for Pearson, followed the same standards of
peer review. The difference is related to distribution, which is dedicated to affordability
16
On Digital Rights Management technologies, see Mark Stamp, “Digital Rights Management: The Technology
behind the Hype,” Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 4 (no. 3, 2003), http://www.csulb.edu/journals/jecr/
issues/20033/paper3.pdf.
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March 2014
for students and academic freedom for instructors. We use an open license for distribution, making the book “open,” but not “open-source.” Many historians have assumed that
the book is available only online, but this is merely the most affordable (at $19.95) of the
various options that students enjoy with open textbooks. Students can opt for a traditional paperback or digital formats for a range of reader devices. They can even print the
book at home. Paperback copies and digital books can be purchased through bookstores
or direct from the publisher. Digital textbooks never expire; students have lifetime access
to the books they buy.17
Instructors have the option of customizing an open textbook with topics and readings
without adding to the cost of the book. If an instructor chooses to take advantage of this
option, all changes are applied to digital and print versions. Instructors will receive custom isbns and the changes they make will apply only to their individual versions of the
book. These changes can be incorporated into future editions of the book, but no instructor is ever forced to adopt a new edition, and no edition ever goes out of print.
Open textbooks can vastly improve the way we teach history by allowing instructors
to challenge the narrative and add additional perspectives and content. As Amy pointed
out, historians are at their best when they make students think about the choices that surround the construction of narrative. History is contested territory, and textbooks are the
first line of controversy. With limited space to write, the author of a survey textbook must
make hundreds of choices about which events and perspectives to include. I was fortunate
to have experienced editors and dozens of reviewers assist with these choices. In the end,
however, I made each decision on behalf of thousands of students I will never meet. Did
I assume too much prior knowledge about a certain topic? Did every section reflect an
adequate diversity of perspectives? Might the book be improved by more attention to a
topic of local or regional importance? There should be pushback against my narrative—a
sure sign that the students are alright, or at least awake.
While instructors have always been able to add material to lectures and challenge the
conclusions of textbook authors in discussions, the open model allows greater freedom. If
they wish, instructors can make changes to the text and even add images to a customized
version of the book. All changes are highlighted and reflected instantly in digital and print
copies. As a result, students come to class knowing that they will be held accountable for
the text. Despite the obvious cost savings, the most valuable contribution of an open textbook may be that instructors can make changes each semester based on what worked and
what fell short during previous terms. They can discuss these choices with their students,
debate possible changes to the text, and even involve students in creating a more complete
version of the book. This might involve adding more content on a certain era or theme,
adding primary sources, or weaving examples of local history into the text. What better
way to show that history is about interpretation?
I would like to share an example of what an open textbook could become. Chris Leadingham of the Appalachian Studies Association understands the value of local history to
the students he works with. Despite its size and importance, Appalachia, like other regions of the country, is conspicuous in its absence from the standard narrative. The consequences are devastating: this generation of students has no concept of the coal wars that
defined the history of their communities. They read about the 1894 Pullman strike, the
17
David J. Trowbridge, A History of the United States (New York, 2012).
Textbooks and Teaching
1163
1886 Haymarket riot, and the 1892 Homestead Steel strike and believe that labor history is something that happened around Chicago about a century ago. A similar problem
occurs when the story of civil rights is located somewhere between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, instead of in communities throughout the nation. Students who read
Leadingham’s open textbook learn about the Pullman strike and the marches in Selma,
but they also find stories of sit-ins in their hometowns. They also read about the 1931
Harlan County, Kentucky, coal strike, women’s suffrage in Appalachia, the Highlander
Folk School in east Tennessee, and the 1921 battle of Blair Mountain during the West
Virginia mine wars.
I have used this approach when I lecture in different communities and can attest to its
value in reaching students where they live. I rarely have students line up at my office and
ask questions about the tariff. But when I lecture about local antebellum protests against
taxation, I simply cannot know enough. As Eric reminds us, a textbook is merely one historical record, and perspective often depends on where one stands. The titles of our three
textbooks are instructive—each author in this “Interchange” places A or An before the
word History. The open model allows each instructor to further challenge the choices we
make and provide additional perspectives. In doing so, we can share history in powerful
ways and remove the disconnect between teaching and textbooks.
Amy brought up academic freedom, and this may be one of the many advantages of
the open model. Many colleges use a common textbook so that they can negotiate a better
price, but this practice is not ideal from a faculty standpoint. Perhaps the solution would
be to permit individual faculty members to make changes to the book, creating an open
textbook that could offer exceptional value and academic freedom.
I compared education and art in my post about moocs. I think the connection between that argument and the reason I am so excited about open textbooks is that teaching is art. Art cannot be replicated because art is performance. In some ways, teaching is
like jazz composition. We all have a basic melody to follow, and after that it is all about
adjustment and improvisation. We make changes each semester based on what did or did
not work.
The open model allows instructors to make those same adjustments to their textbooks.
Great teachers often shift from one textbook to another, as Amy has done, yet usually
with little improvement. Some even experiment with eliminating the textbook altogether
only to be reminded that most of their students desperately need a basic overview. I believe that every student can benefit from a well-written textbook. I learn or relearn something every time I read an introductory text.
Yet my lack of enthusiasm for textbooks became contagious among students. This
was especially true when my lectures included phrases such as “You won’t find this in
your textbook” when the author failed to include a particular event or perspective that
I thought was important. Today, I can include those examples and say “Be sure to read
more about this in your textbook.” Educators who take the time to add examples and
align the book to their class will convey this same excitement. Students will respond by
reading the textbook, at first simply because they know they will be held accountable for
content in a book that their instructor helped create. Over time, instructors may follow
Amy’s model of challenging students to rewrite the text, this time with the caveat that
what they write might influence the next edition of the book. At the very least students
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March 2014
will certainly gain a deep appreciation for history as a matter of perspective and interpretation by the experience.
Foner: Do textbook authors take into account student responses? Perhaps foolishly, I
include my e-mail address in the opening pages of my textbook and invite students to
send me questions, complaints, and responses. And they do. Some of these messages are
essentially requests for me to do their work for them. (“I have to write an essay on your
interpretation of the causes of the American Revolution—Can you please tell me what it
is?”) Some point out embarrassing factual mistakes (in the first edition I gave the wrong
year for the sinking of the hms Titanic). Many ask about omissions: why some person or
subject of interest to the student is not included in the book. I take every message seriously and respond to all of them. I explain why a textbook cannot include “everything,”
but I have added quite a few things to subsequent editions at the suggestion of students.
Sometimes, I cannot satisfy the request; for example, I have had messages asking for
greater emphasis on military history, including the course of individual battles. I do not
think that adding a few new sentences here and there would truly satisfy these students,
nor would it fit with the overall interpretive narrative of the book. On the other hand,
in the book’s second edition I considerably expanded the treatment of Native American
history, in part because I learned from students and instructors that they wished to have
more about that subject. When I receive a complaint about my treatment of a subject, I
respond courteously, explaining why I chose a particular perspective. I value these comments from students because they help me understand what does and does not work in
the textbook. Of course, feedback from instructors is also invaluable.
It goes without saying that education ultimately depends on the teacher in the classroom. And I admire teachers who encourage various kinds of “pushback” among their
students; such activity is essential to helping them understand what it is to think historically.
Miller: As a coauthor of a multiauthor textbook, I have not received as many direct
messages from students or teachers using my textbook as it seems Eric has because of
his most generous and useful practice of giving out his e-mail address and inviting input
from users. That is an idea that ought to be required hereafter, especially if we are going
to do more than pretend we want students and teachers to engage our works and look for
ways to improve them. That is part of the learning process we profess.
In my own more limited experience, drawn from assessments of the various U.S. history textbooks that I have used and from responses to my own multiauthor textbook, the
most consistent and persistent pushback to content has been the extent and character of
the coverage of particular groups and experiences. Most striking to me has been the insistence on more attention to immigrant lives and the immigrant experience, especially that
of the later immigrants from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Commenters
generally observe that there is a tendency to lump the groups together and to assign a
common experience to all, in a few pages, rather than provide the kind(s) of close and detailed examinations of their cultural, religious, social, and intellectual worlds that other,
sometimes less numerous and, in their day, less visible groups receive. The complaint has
been echoed in recent years by students wanting similar critical attention paid to Asian
peoples.
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Interestingly, such critiques never call for less coverage of those already in the books;
rather, students want more history, not less. Even so, they also request more “respect” for
the particularity and variety of immigrants by giving them similar due as is given to people of fewer numbers then at particular historical moments or places such as the industrializing cities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus, for example, Poles
should not stand for all Slavs or, worse, all eastern and central European immigrants, and
their lives deserve as much attention—and respect—as those of African Americans in
those same places at those same times. That is the echo in student correspondence. They
want a “people’s history,” and a balanced one. Several have asked why the intramural
problems of Episcopalians or Presbyterians get more ink than those of Catholics.
Some student responders also complain about the over-generalization surrounding religious groups and even the marginalization or dismissal of some religious beliefs, practices, and experiences as somehow unworthy of serious scholarly consideration. Indeed,
one of the spurs for writing Unto a Good Land, which began as a D. C. Heath and Company project, was the need to bring into focus people left on the sidelines or only noticed
in sidebars of our histories. All this has made me more aware of the students’ desire for a
sense of ownership in the histories we write and ask them to read. That ownership must
not be a filiopietistic rendering of “our people”—whoever those people might be. My
students recoil from such false presentations, which they regard as patronizing. They will
consider the myth-making process and any people’s need to create its own mythical identity, but they seem reluctant to have “the good old days” and the “my-grandparents-wereso-loving-and-struggled-so-hard” ideal count as their history. All this poses the perennial
and unanswerable problem of choice—who is in, who is not, and whose experience might
provide credible and valid representations of others’ experiences.18
To be sure, we often get the kinds of responses we invite. Some come from different
emphases, as Eric notes. Someone wanting blow-by-blow battle accounts will be disappointed with most modern survey textbooks. There is only so much space, and there are
supplemental readings and other materials. Someone wanting textbooks to push an ideological position likely also will be disappointed with the current run of college-level history survey textbooks. So-called conservatives complain in public forums that the professors have all gone over to the “dark side” of liberalism or worse and that the readings they
assign to students are insidious indoctrination rather than “real history.” On the other
side of the aisle, some so-called liberals insist that the American history textbooks foist a
conservative, too celebrative history on the people. Thus, Howard Zinn’s brilliant history
from and of the other side prospers, but there is enough variety in textbooks to counter
such assertions, and professors need not assign textbooks at all.19
That said, we as textbook writers and teachers might push back on some of that challenge by not shying from thinking about why particular demands for particular emphases
get so much attention in the public arena. For example, the call by some to raise the Confederate flag anew and demand a Lost Cause reading of the Civil War deserves a response,
not by dismissing it but by making it a subject of analysis. So, too, for the concerns about
any group being under- or misrepresented in textbooks.
18
19
David Edwin Harrell Jr. et al., Unto a Good Land: A History of the American People (Grand Rapids, 2005).
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York, 1980).
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The Journal of American History
March 2014
Kinsel: Let me echo Randall’s observation that students do seem to want to see themselves in the textbook narratives they read—whether seeing themselves means increased
coverage of specific ethnic groups, religious history, or other group perspectives. My
students in a suburban district of Seattle come from a wide variety of ethnic, racial,
and religious backgrounds, and they do express more interest in narratives about people
similar to themselves.
I also agree with David that students are delighted to find that big national events had
regional and local repercussions. When I talk about Jim Crow segregation in class, I can
see students’ eyes glazing over because they think this was an issue or a problem only in
southern states. When I show them real estate deeds with racial covenants governing the
very suburban housing developments that they grew up in, they are much more engaged
in racial segregation as a historical question. I am able to show students these deeds and
many other local historical documents and artifacts thanks to the Seattle Civil Rights &
Labor History Project supervised by James N. Gregory at the University of Washington.20
I agree that making the historical narrative we present to students “relevant” to their
sense of self is helpful for creating engagement, but I worry that the impulse to rewrite
the historical narrative for each group of students might be, in some fundamental sense,
misguided. How are students going to be able to “relate” to the wide swaths of American
historical narrative in which it is necessarily impossible for them to “see” themselves?
In this context I think about teaching the Pequot War (1637) or King Philip’s War
(1675–1676). I usually include primary readings from one of these conflicts in my survey of early U.S. history because the perspectives that New England colonists developed
about American Indians and the violent conflicts that occurred are, I think, an important
part of the American narrative. I usually ask students to write a critical analysis of a set of
primary documents related to one of these conflicts. In reflecting on these assignments
I have two student learning goals: (1) New England Puritans and Algonquian Indians
were very different from modern Americans: they lived in a very different world and their
world views differed greatly from ours; and (2) the perceptions, myths, and images of Indians that entered American culture and discourse as a result of these early wars had very
significant consequences for U.S. history and for subsequent relations between AngloAmericans and American Indians.
If I cannot engage my students enough for them to try to imagine the world view of
a Pequot villager trapped at Fort Misistuck in 1637 or the perspective of a Puritan settler
attacked at Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1675, then it will be a big challenge for these students to move beyond an understanding of early American history that simply condemns
the Puritans for being bad people who murdered Indians. I hope students attempt to understand how and why interactions between Indians and Puritans devolved into war and
how and why this violence reverberated through American history. I want them to analyze for understanding, not analyze for judgment.
Dougherty: We do a tremendous amount of reviewing and surveying, and we are always changing and modifying how we ask questions and the kinds of questions we ask.
We have done some research with students. Sometimes, only the very best are willing to
interact with us, and while this is fun and interesting, it offers us a very partial perspec20
University of Washington, Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/
about.htm
Textbooks and Teaching
1167
tive. We did create a video about student reactions to one Bedford/St. Martin title: The
American Promise. There, students talked about how the book’s images were engaging
and inviting, how its language did not intimidate them, and about how much they valued the inclusion of first-person accounts of everyday people.21
I do think that students and instructors give us tremendous feedback through their
choices as consumers. As others have mentioned repeatedly, textbooks are already available at a wide range of price points. Interesting to me is that the cheapest texts are not
necessarily the most popular.
Casper: We have discussed textbooks in numerous contexts, including the diverse
settings in which students encounter them. Do you have any concluding comments
about ideas or perspectives we have not discussed, or do you have any thoughts on
the future of textbooks?
Foner: I have found writing and then revising a textbook a much more interesting challenge than I imagined. It forces me to keep up with developments in innumerable periods
and subfields of American history. It has put me in touch with excellent teachers at high
schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities with whom I would never otherwise have had contact. It has forced me to think about what I deem essential for students
to know about American history. It has made me much more attuned to the ways visual
images can supplement and reinforce written prose. While the process has been very time
consuming, overall I am very glad that I embarked on the venture.
Kinsel: Teaching the U.S. history survey at a community college is much more interesting and rewarding than I imagined it would be. I have to think about how to teach daily,
which in practice means I get to think about how best to convey the richness, complexity,
and possibilities of historical study to students. My students are very diverse—most of
them poorly prepared for college and many of them completely uninterested in history.
I do not succeed with all of them, but I make a difference with enough of them that I
think it matters. If they come away from my course understanding more about the nature
of history and how historians and the public create the historical narrative of the United
States, I am happy.
I like to assign a textbook that is strong on social, multicultural, and constitutional history. I like to assign a book that has a clear narrative thread but that explicitly acknowledges that the narrative of history changes over time; a book in which the author shows
students that sources and evidence matter, that interpretations can vary, that historical
questions are as important as their answers, and that history is more than “one damned
thing after another.”
Miller: For me, this “Interchange” has been most instructive, not only in helping us
discover and discuss the various ways we have approached writing and using textbooks in
U.S. history survey courses but also in considering the rationale for having textbooks at
all. It has made me think harder about matters of cost and content, and it has made me
appreciate more the consequence of having, or not having, a textbook in a course. It has
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Roark et al., American Promise.
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reminded me that writing and using a textbook involves both creating an account and
providing an accounting—that is, assigning value to particular themes, issues, patterns,
people, and events. It has reinforced my own preference for assigning a textbook because
a well-written, interpretative narrative promises a “history”—however contested, contradictory, and sometimes even confusing—that invites students to see how the strands of
different subjects might come together. It has shown how the process of historical inquiry
might lead to a product, a history. In the ways we use such books, we learn, as teachers,
about the dynamics and directions of U.S. history writing. This is especially true when
we compare the many textbooks, new or in new editions, and ask what matters now
and why it ought to matter. Conveying that same sense of requestioning priorities and
reexamining content to our classes might make us all, students and teachers, understand
that a textbook is not, and must not be, the settled sum of American “history” but rather
a foundation for finding it.
Trowbridge: As authors, we seek balance between content and narrative. We strive
to offer clarity without oversimplification and provide models for making arguments
backed by evidence. At best, we hope to reintroduce students to the sense of curiosity
they had as children while also fostering their intellectual maturity. All this, and we must
be concise.
As Eric reminds us, the process of writing a textbook is unlike any other task. We are
informed by subfields and disciplines beyond our own specialties. We rediscover historic
events and people that challenge and inform our own work. We confront the grand narrative and consider our own research from new perspectives. And sometimes we wake up at
in the middle of the night wondering why some events find their way into the grand narrative while others do not. We push against the margins of that narrative even as we create
its next incarnation, hopeful that the next generation will recognize the places where our
interpretation needs further revision.
Dougherty: I have to confess that this conversation—while it makes me admire the
work all of you do in your classes—is removed from the issues that I face every day.
Contrary to the public perception that college publishers are rolling in money, I want to
add that the economy has not been kind to college publishing and that the recession will
continue to have an impact on careers and livelihoods. I deal with conversations about
change every day. We are reinventing what we make and how we make it. We are trying
to reimagine content for digital teaching and digital delivery. We are not doing this to
supplant instructors but to adapt to new kinds of courses and within the context of new
economic realities, by which I mean both the economics of textbooks but also the atmosphere of scarcity that is enveloping higher education. As classrooms morph into online
spaces, we aim to be partners in a moment of huge transformation.
Kinsel: I have wondered whether assigning an e-book might help avoid some of the
most common problems with the least-prepared college students: they sometimes do not
understand the importance of assigned reading in many disciplines; they are shocked
by the price of textbooks; and they try to get by without purchasing or reading texts at
all. Using online materials might address one of the irritations of teaching in ten-week
quarters (eight-week sessions in summer): students do not buy their books until after the
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quarter begins and thus do not have their books for at least a week into the quarter. The
delay in students receiving books they order from the college bookstore or elsewhere for
home delivery can mean that some students do not have their books until 10 percent or
more of the quarter is gone. An e-textbook (when available) might provide students with
more timely access to assigned reading.
The decline in reading among young Americans and a concomitant decline in literacy—the ability to read and write critically—make textbooks an easy target. Faculty are
made to feel guilty for requiring students to read books rather than fragmentary online
materials. The decline of reading is a national crisis. Assigning textbooks to students is not
going to reverse this, but bowing to the textbook naysayers by not assigning textbooks to
students also does not help them become critical readers and thinkers.
Employers want employees who can think critically. Those of us who teach and write
in humanities disciplines need to do a better job of explaining the intrinsic and practical value of our work. Explaining the complex nature and essential function of the tools
we use to teach history—the textbook in its many guises, historical monographs, peerreviewed journal articles, and primary sources—is a good starting point.