The Trouble with Textbooks

Distorting History and Religion

Gary A. Tobin, Dennis R. Ybarra

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2008
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739130957
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Social Science

School textbooks in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds are filled with anti-Western and anti-Israel propaganda. Most readers will be shocked to discover that history and geography textbooks widely used in America's elementary and secondary classrooms contain some of the very same inaccuracies about Jews, Judaism, and Israel. Did you know that "there is no record of any important Jewish contribution to the sciences?" (World Civilizations, Thomson Wadsworth). Or that "Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus?" (The World, Scott Foresman/Pearson). Supplemental materials and other classroom influences are even worse.

The Trouble with Textbooks exposes the poor scholarship and untruths in textbooks about Jews and Israel. The problems uncovered in this ground-breaking analysis are instructive, and illustrate the need for reform in the way textbooks are developed, written, marketed, and distributed. Substitute another area-how we teach American history, Western civilization, or comparative religion-and we have another, equally intriguing case study. The Trouble with Textbooks shows what can go terribly wrong in discussing religion, geography, culture, or history-and in this case-all of them.

The Trouble with Textbooks tells a cautionary tale for all readers, whatever their background, of how textbooks that Americans depend on to infuse young people with the values for good citizenship and to help acculturate students into the multicultural salad that is American life, instead disparage some groups and teach historical distortions. With millions of young people using these textbooks each year, the denigration of some should be a concern for all.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• CHAPTER ONE - TEXTBOOKS ARE IN TROUBLE
• CHAPTER TWO - WHEN THE TEXTBOOK IS NOT ENOUGH: SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS, TEACHER TRAININGS, AND MORE
• CHAPTER THREE - LEARNING ABOUT JEWISH ORIGINS: STEREOTYPES OF JEWS
• CHAPTER FOUR - JEWS, JUDAISM, AND CHRISTIANITY
• CHAPTER FIVE - DOUBLE STANDARDS IN TEACHING ABOUT JUDAISM COMPARED TO ISLAM
• CHAPTER SIX - THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF ISRAEL
• CHAPTER SEVEN - THE FOUNDING OF ISRAEL: RIGHTS TO THE LAND, WAR AND REFUGEES
• CHAPTER EIGHT - TERRORISM AND INTERNAL CONFLICT
• CHAPTER NINE - CONCLUSION
• CHAPTER TEN - METHODOLOGY
• APPENDIX A - TEXTBOOKS REVIEWED BY PUBLISHER PARENT COMPANY
• APPENDIX B - IMPRINTS OF MAJOR TEXTBOOK PUBLISHING CORPORATIONS
• APPENDIX C - TEXTBOOK USAGE SURVEY: EXTENT OF USAGE BY PUBLISHER PARENT COMPANY
• APPENDIX D - OUTLINE OF THE ARAB NARRATIVE
• NOTES
• INDEX
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS