In the comments on another site we ran up onto the idea that school history textbooks have become dominated by learning about role models from the past. It allows the publishers to work in all manner of approved diversity, and you can check box how many you have got of each at the end. That has pushed the assessment of who was important to an era, or who is representative farther down the chain. Also, if you are putting characters out on the page for children to read about, you'd probably shy away from choosing any that were bad role models. Combining those two requirements, you don't want to start including any evil Hispanic females, because we are trying to give our best looks to the disadvantaged.
Yet often the main thing the minority or disadvantaged person is known for is advocating for their group. It was often the whole point that their group wasn't getting the chance to design steamships, so that had to come first before the other accomplishments started to happen. But that pushes inventions, trade, founding companies, or building things back down the list.
You will notice we aren't even at learning about events and processes in this discussion. So far this social studies book is much more dominated by people selected along very narrow criteria than they were decades ago.
I wonder if this focus on people instead of events and processes favors girls, and is also preferred by female teachers. Hard to measure.
2 comments:
This is the flip of a tendency back in the mid-20th century, when history was mostly about trends and movements, causing C. S. Lewis to imagine that, in after generation, they would wonder, "Were there no PEOPLE back then?" Of course, he was probably talking about college-level history.
I don't read history to look for good role models, I read about history because I want to learn from it. There are a whole bunch of people who shaped history in important ways whom no one on either side of the political spectrum would *ever* consider to be good role models, but it's important to learn about them anyway to see how the shaped the world. I think this obsession with "role models" is going to backfire spectacularly (if it hasn't already), and we won't have a leg to stand on when it does.
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