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INTRODUCTION
This symposium considers the ways that young people taught about poverty or economic inequality. Given the important intersection of poverty and race in US society, in this article we focus on the degree to which history and US government textbooks discuss not only economic inequality but also social and political inequality among various ethnoracial groups in the United States. Footnote 1 In Winner-Take-All Politics, Paul Pierson and Jacob Hacker (2010) argue that income inequality in the United States was politically engineered—the product of lobbying by organized corporate interests that led to politicians creating a set of economic policies that directly benefitted the most wealthy Americans. Similarly, Martin Gilens (Reference Gilens2012) finds that US policy makers respond almost exclusively to the interests of the affluent. Economic inequality, then, is intimately related with our politics, rather than a product of Adam Smith’s economic “invisible hand.”
We therefore thought it important to consider how history and social studies texts used to teach US youth frame policy and politics. To what extent do discussions of policy decisions reference the particular actors involved and interests at stake? Do textbooks make clear that, had other policies been chosen, the outcomes in terms of economic and ethnoracial disparities could have been quite different? Are students provided with a perception that these are important decisions being made by ordinary people? Or are we still teaching a “great men” version of history, where the only real agents are famous leaders rather than engaged citizens? All these questions are important if we believe that students should be taught that policy outcomes are not inevitable but instead the product of historical context and a set of historically contingent political choices.
Our theoretical framework relies heavily on the work of Michael Apple. Like him, we see the construction of legitimate knowledge as inherently about power and contestation. Within this frame, texts become “embodiments of a larger process of cultural politics,” the “one artifact that plays … a major role in defining whose culture is taught” (Apple Reference Apple1992, 4). These processes of contestation are not linear, are highly complex, and do not result in simple “winners” or “losers.” We see the texts themselves as products of these political processes whose form and framing are therefore important reflections of how power is expressed and reproduced through educational institutions (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu and Richardson1986). Within these texts, we focus on who is described as having agency and under what circumstances, or whether historical occurrences are simply presented as a product of a passive, “invisible hand” succession of historical events. We are not claiming that our close reading of these three texts provides a generalizable set of claims about the content of all history and US government textbooks currently in use in the United States. Instead, we see this analysis as illustrative of a set of conceptual concerns about how power, agency, and inequality are framed, discussed, and potentially understood by students within US history and government classrooms.
PREVIOUS SCHOLARSHIP
There is a long and rich history within the education field of studying textbooks (for an overview see Marino Reference Marino2011). We do not claim to provide an exhaustive review here; the literature in this area is vast and long. Studying textbooks is important because most students receive a large portion of their information on a given subject from a text (Chambliss et al. Reference Chambliss, Richardson, Turney-Purta and Wilkenfeld2007). We are not, however, claiming that students only learn from textbooks. In fact, we know that “we cannot assume that what is ‘in’ the text is actually taught. Nor can we assume that what is taught is actually learned” by students (Apple Reference Apple1992, 10). As Michael Apple (1992, 10) points out, teachers have long adapted course materials in their teaching and students are “active constructors of the meanings of the education they encounter.”
However, if we believe that a core function of our educational system is to prepare our youth for democratic citizenship, then the framing they are being provided in their texts about how public policy is made could be important from a conceptual standpoint (Gibson and Levine Reference Gibson and Levine2003). This is especially true for those students who come from communities with low levels of political engagement. For those students, the political socialization we know occurs within the home and within neighborhoods in more engaged communities may not be available to them, making schools a key site for learning how and why to engage politically (Niemi and Jennings 1991; Niemi and Junn Reference Niemi and Junn1998; Kahne and Sporte Reference Kahne and Sporte2008; García Bedolla Reference García Bedolla2012). Little of the literature we found considered the question of whether history or US government textbooks show the role active citizens have played in changing politics and policy (some exceptions are Alridge 2006; Éthier, Lefrançois and Demers Reference Éthier, Lefrançois and Demers2013; Neumann Reference Neumann2014).
However, if we believe that a core function of our educational system is to prepare our youth for democratic citizenship, then the framing they are being provided in their texts about how public policy is made could be important from a conceptual standpoint (Gibson and Levine Reference Gibson and Levine2003). This is especially true for those students who come from communities with low levels of political engagement.
Numerous scholars have studied history textbooks in the United States and around the world (Apple Reference Apple1992; Tyson-Berstein 1988; Bromley Reference Bromley2009; Henry Reference Henry2011; Litt Reference Litt1963; Marino Reference Marino2011; Paxton Reference Paxton1999; Wade Reference Wade1993). Some focused on the degree to which those texts encourage critical thinking and a deeper understanding and consideration of historical events (Aybek and Aslan Reference Aybek and Aslan2016; Paxton Reference Paxton1999). Others have focused on the degree of militarism present in history textbooks, particularly how wars are presented and understood (Lachmann and Mitchell Reference Lachman and Mitchell2014). A significant focus has been on the degree of inclusion in these texts, specifically of the voices of ordinary people (Armstrong Reference Armstrong2003) and people of color, including Latinos (Rodríguez and Ruiz Reference Rodríguez and Ruiz2000), and African Americans (Brown and Brown Reference Brown and Brown2010; Brown and Brown Reference Brown and Brown2015). Many are critical of these texts, arguing that they create the illusion of one “authoritative” voice and interpretation of history (Aldridge 2006; Tyson-Berstein Reference Tyson-Berstein1988), use impenetrable language (Marino Reference Marino2011), and provide very limited definitions of citizenship (Litt Reference Litt1963; Bromley Reference Bromley2009).
In his discussion of “philosophical idealism and the methodology of ‘voice’ in the history of education,” Armstrong (2003, 201) contends that the historical text can “engage with the past in ways that legitimize and reify certain perspectives and voices as well as in ways that probe and critique the authority of those voices.” His concern is that historical texts rarely move beyond the voices of policy makers; our question is whether even those voices are expressed in passive form and therefore minimize the impact policy makers have had on policy decisions in the United States. Rodríguez and Ruiz (Reference Rodríguez and Ruiz2000) focus on the amount of information about Latino-relevant historical experiences found in common US history texts, finding that, although the amount has improved, coverage remains sketchy. Brown and Brown (Reference Brown and Brown2010) find that discussions of racial violence against African Americans are often distorted, representing these experiences as the actions of “bad actors” rather than, in fact, state-sanctioned violence. Not surprisingly, Brown and Brown (Reference Brown and Brown2015) review US history textbooks and find the racial discourses presented in those texts comprise “enduring racisms” present in the history curriculum. We will see below that simple inclusion of information about different groups within society is not enough; the overall framing of power and structural constraint provided in the discussion is critical for these varied “voices” to be understood within their appropriate historical contexts.
OUR ANALYSIS
We thought it important to consider the extent to which current framings of US political institutions and policy making provide students with an understanding of the causes of inequality in US society and of the mechanisms available to address it (Menefee-Libey Reference Menefee-Libey2015). Past work suggests this is not an unrealistic expectation. Chambliss et al. (Reference Chambliss, Richardson, Turney-Purta and Wilkenfeld2007) found that adjusting the nature of the information provided about social studies affected students’ learning and their willingness to engage civically. Studies have also shown that the “textbookese” present in most textbooks, the presence of an omniscient, authoritative author, tends to obscure historical actors’ agency and make the reader a passive recipient of unquestioned knowledge (Tyson-Berstein Reference Tyson-Berstein1988; Paxton Reference Paxton1999, 326).
Interestingly, we found little previous work (and none on US schools) that considered how historical actors’ agency (or passive presentations) might affect students’ reading of history and their potential role within it (for an exception see Éthier, Lefrançois and Demers Reference Éthier, Lefrançois and Demers2013). Federalism and the structure of American political institutions is complicated. The distribution of policy making authority across national, state, and local governments remains highly contested, often making it difficult for everyday Americans to fully understand what “government” is and how best to access it in order to address the problems that they care about. If history and US government textbooks tend to talk about history and/or policy making as simply “happening,” with no clear sense of historical actors as agents making decisions based on their ideologies and interests, then it may be difficult for students to see themselves as agentic actors within that same system. Instead, history is something that “happens,” or that is driven by a few powerful (mostly white and male) “leaders,” what Alridge (2006) calls “master narratives.”
METHODOLOGY
To select our textbooks, we started with the state of California given that the largest US states often drive the content of textbooks available in the marketplace nationwide (Currey Reference Currey1988). We therefore thought that the content of California’s most popular texts could reasonably be assumed to be similar to that of other states. In his analysis of how history textbooks discuss the 1960s, Gosse (1995, 658) found textbooks “tend to be remarkably similar in what is and what is not included; how an incident, person, or occasion is described; and in the sequence used to establish relationships among events.”
California stopped statewide social science textbook adoption in 2009. To be used in a classroom, a textbook must be chosen from an extensive list of state and/or district approved standards-based instructional materials that meet education code section 60119 standards. This means that there are a potentially unlimited number of texts being used in California schools given that textbooks outside of the official list can be permitted through a petition process. To get at the question of usage, we compiled a list of textbooks being used for grades 8, 11, and 12 in California’s 24 largest school districts. Footnote 2 From this list, we found the top three most commonly used books for each grade level across these districts. Footnote 3 We then randomly selected three of these nine books for analysis: Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy, 12th ed., The Americans (2006 edition), and The American Pageant, 13th edition.
We focused our analysis on the language used around important moments of policy change within US history, including the nation’s founding, the New Deal, the Civil Rights era, and the Great Society, among other periods.
We focused our analysis on the language used around important moments of policy change within US history, including the nation’s founding, the New Deal, the Civil Rights era, and the Great Society, among other periods. We reviewed the texts for passive voice, the framing of political actors, and the mechanisms they lay out to explain inequality along economic, ethnoracial, and gendered lines.
We find that these texts largely employ a pluralist vision of politics, seeing history as a product of competing interests with little to no discussion of the relative power held by each of those interests and largely ignoring the role and interests of the state in the policy-making process (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol Reference Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol1985). Relatedly, the movement to include diverse voices and individuals’ own words in the texts in order to “bring history to life” results in the presence of a much wider variety of perspectives in these books. However, these text boxes and quotations often do not explain how these ordinary people were able to translate their concerns into public policies that addressed their communities’ problems. This deep individual-level focus does serve to highlight important actors across a wide spectrum of society, but does not teach students about the real structural constraints those actors faced when trying to effect change in US society.
A Pluralist World
It is important to note that US history and government textbooks currently include a much more diverse range of voices because of the ongoing activism and engagement within communities of color to demand that representations of US history reflect the diversity of our society since its founding. Nothing that follows should be read as a repudiation of that effort. Instead, what we argue is that the inclusion of “diverse perspectives” within an individualist and pluralist frame makes it impossible to make visible the structural constraints faced by members of these communities. In their analysis of national curricular standards for history, Foster, Morris and Davis (1996, 369) applaud the fact that the textbooks they review “invite, even require students to explore and interpret history in a manner that considers historical events from multiple perspectives.” The problem, in our estimation, is that those perspectives are not equal from the standpoint of power. Some groups were much better able to have their perspective translate into actual policy. Without a sense of the relative power of these groups within institutional structures, students may be led to believe that all perspectives were equally viable and that the best one simply “won.”
This inattention to issues of relative power is one of the core critiques of pluralist theory (Newton Reference Newton1969). For Robert Dahl (1973, 1), a key characteristic of democracy is the “continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals.” He goes on to provide a list of necessary, if not sufficient, ingredients for a true democracy, which include citizens’ unimpaired ability to: (1) formulate their preferences; (2) signify their preferences to the government or fellow citizens through individual or collective action; and (3) to have their preferences weighed equally in the conduct of government, with no discrimination due to the content or source of the preference (Dahl 1973, 2). He focuses his analysis on two main dimensions of democratization that he sees as key: liberalization (or public contestation) and inclusiveness (open participation). Pluralism therefore assumes that government institutions are open to all and that each person’s voice will be heard within them.
This is the vision of US governmental institutions that is reflected in the texts that we reviewed. We found very little discussion of the constraints experienced by actors and, when they were mentioned (as with Martin Luther King below), they are rarely named and never include the state itself as an actor constraining or limiting more equitable policy making. Without a sense of the real material interests at stake and the contestation inherent in the policy-making process, it is difficult to see how students will be able to understand inequality as a product of social policy, as Pierson and Hacker (Reference Pierson and Hacker2010) argue, rather than as a “natural” product of neutral, nebulous economic forces.
The Invisible Hand
Similarly, the textbooks we reviewed also were riddled with passive voice, ill-defined actors, and a general lack of the context necessary to understand the historical moments being described. Some examples:
Most authority rested with the state legislatures because the new nation’s leaders feared that a strong central government would become as tyrannical as British rule. (Government in America, p. 40, emphasis added)
Here we see the “strong central government becoming” without any human actors involved in that process.
On July 19, 1848, 100 men and women signed the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. Patterned after the Declaration of Independence, it proclaimed, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” Thus began the movement that would culminate, 72 years later, in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the vote (Government in America, p. 160).
This framing of the fight for women’s suffrage glosses over decades of struggle, protest, and actions on the part of women to gain voting rights. It also does not mention that the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment did not give all women the vote; most black women would have to wait until after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to exercise the franchise. This framing suggests women’s suffrage could be expected to just “happen” once the Seneca Falls Declaration was signed, and that all women, regardless of race and class, were similarly situated in terms of their voting rights once the Nineteenth Amendment did pass.
This framing suggests women’s suffrage could be expected to just “happen” once the Seneca Falls Declaration was signed, and that all women, regardless of race and class, were similarly situated in terms of their voting rights once the Nineteenth Amendment did pass.
On September 9, 1957, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights law since Reconstruction. Shepherded by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, the law gave the attorney general greater power over school desegregation. It also gave the federal government jurisdiction—or authority—over violations of African-American voting rights. (The Americans, Ch. 21; p. 704)
This is a remarkable understatement about the state of civil rights efforts in 1957 and the massive white resistance to school desegregation that characterized this historical moment. There is no discussion of the violence growing across the South, the issues at stake for the federal government to take on this role, or the deep ambivalence within the Democratic Party (and Lyndon Johnson himself) about civil rights in general.
Both the Job Corps and VISTA sprang into being in 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act. This law was the main offensive of Johnson’s “war on poverty” and a cornerstone of the Great Society. (The Americans, Ch. 20; p. 686, emphasis added)
“Sprang into being” is not the best way to describe how programs and polices get made. Perhaps some discussion of the why, when, where, and how of these programs would be more useful, or at least a description of the purpose and logic behind these new programs at this point in historical time.
A new preacher in town, Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a boycott of the city buses. He was jailed, his house was bombed, and his wife and infant daughter were almost killed, but neither he nor the African American community wavered. Although they were harassed by the police and went without motor transportation by walking or even riding mules, they persisted in boycotting the buses (Government in America, p. 155, emphasis added).
Here we have Martin Luther King granted agency—he organized and he and the African American community did not waver. But those that jailed him and threatened his life and that of his family are not named—Dr. King “was jailed,” his family’s house “was bombed.” We know who accomplished these acts and we know that state government and police forces carried out much of the violence against civil rights protesters. Although there is some mention of police harassment, that is a fairly lukewarm statement given the reality of the violence against civil rights protestors perpetrated by police officers during this period. Those engaging in these acts of violent resistance to civil rights are not named, nor are they present in this version of US history.
The Great Society also brought profound changes to the nation’s immigration laws. The Immigration Act of 1924 and the National Origins Act of 1924 had established immigration quotas that discriminated strongly against people from outside Western Europe. The Act set a quota of about 150,000 people annually. It discriminated against southern and eastern Europeans and barred Asians completely. The Immigration Act of 1965 opened the door for many non-European immigrants to settle in the United States by ending quotas based on nationality. (The Americans, Ch. 20; p. 691, emphasis added)
“The Great Society” did not “bring” changes—policy makers did. This was one of the most critical policy programs of the twentieth century. It is important to provide more context than is provided here, particularly regarding why these policy changes became possible, given we had restricted immigration along ethnoracial lines for 40 years up until this point.
In the case of Roe v. Wade in 1973, the Supreme Court had prohibited states from making laws that interfered with a woman’s right to an abortion during the early months of pregnancy…In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Court… seriously compromised Roe’s protection of abortion rights…the Court signaled that it was inviting the states to legislate in an area in which Roe had previously forbidden them to legislate. The Court renewed that invitation in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, when it ruled that states could restrict access to abortion as long as they did not place an “undue burden” on the woman. (The American Pageant, Ch. 41; p. 989)
Here we have the Supreme Court ostensibly contradicting itself in terms of what it is telling “states” they can and cannot do in reference to abortion. The text makes no mention of the changing make-up of the court (driven by presidential selections of Supreme Court justices) or the context of legal decision making. This is likely to be confusing to any student, given there seems to be only one “Court” that nevertheless changes its mind across these cases for no clear reason.
Californians staged a “tax revolt” in 1978 (known by its official ballot title of Proposition 13) that slashed property taxes and forced painful cuts in government services. (The American Pageant, Ch. 41; p. 979-980, emphasis added)
Not all Californians “staged” this tax revolt. It was led by particular sectors of the state and deeply contested. It also came directly on the heels of the Serrano rulings which equalized public education funding in the state. Many analysts see the two movements as not unrelated (Fischel Reference Fischel1989; Kozol Reference Kozol1991; for an alternative view see Martin Reference Martin2006). This divestment in public funding has had significant long-term effects on educational equity and the availability of public funding for a variety of social ills to address inequality in California. This is a very simplistic explanation of what actually happened in California and the consequences.
The first rehabilitation laws were passed in the late 1920s, mostly to help veterans of World War I. Accessibility laws had to wait another 50 years. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 added people with disabilities to the list of Americans protected from discrimination … The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) strengthened these protections, requiring employers and administrators of public facilities to make “reasonable accommodations” and prohibiting employment discrimination against people with disabilities. (Government in America, p. 176, emphasis added).
Accessibility laws to help people with disabilities did not “have to wait.” They were not addressed by state and national governments for a variety of reasons. They only happened in 1973 because of the organizing and lobbying efforts that occurred in support of disability rights. Similarly, the ADA is listed as an actor “strengthening” these protections rather than the individuals and groups who lobbied for the law or the policy makers that made it a reality.
In Chapter 16 of Government in America, the authors explore directly the question of income inequality. Interestingly, there is no review of the many government programs that led to unequal levels of wealth across ethnoracial groups, things like whites’ greater ability to benefit from collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act than blacks, whites’ greater access credit to buy homes under the Federal Housing Administration, et cetera (Lipsitz Reference Lipsitz1995). Instead, the text talks about the policies available to address inequality as it exists today. But that framing suggests that the current distribution of wealth is “natural” and that any policies designed towards redistribution would be taking resources from individuals who had earned that wealth “fairly.” Nothing could be further from the truth (Conley Reference Conley2009). Here only the future hand of government is visible; past privileges that arose from racially discriminatory policy choices are rendered invisible.
These are just a few examples of the ways in which the language used in these history and US government textbooks elides the significant, often contested, contexts within which political choices and policies are made. This language also often ignores the role of the state in determining certain policy outcomes and the role of policy makers themselves in deciding how to distribute state resources. These decisions have significant implications for how unequal American society continues to be. But if the decisions are presented as simply the invisible hand of history, it is difficult to see how students are supposed to imagine something different, or imagine themselves playing an active role in shaping those policies and outcomes.
But if the decisions are presented as simply the invisible hand of history, it is difficult to see how students are supposed to imagine something different, or imagine themselves playing an active role in shaping those policies and outcomes.
CONCLUSION
Politics is the method through which we decide, collectively, how to distribute resources and ensure the common good. Throughout US history, those resources have been unequally distributed along ethnoracial, gender, and class lines. White men have, by and large, had an oversized influence on our politics and have disproportionately benefited from the policies and resources that have been distributed by our government (Lipsitz Reference Lipsitz1995). Even in the present day, the wealthiest 1% of Americans (who are disproportionately white) have an oversized influence on our policy-making process (Gilens Reference Gilens2012).
Yet, we found that these books that are used to teach our young people about our government said little about these historical legacies and failed to give agency to those who championed these unequal policies or the many who successfully resisted them. Presenting history as something that “just happens” without the engagement and agency of individuals makes it difficult for young people to see how the institutions of government and public policy are open to influence by people like them. Similarly, it ignores the significant contestation that surrounded every meaningful change in the direction of US public policies. Without a clear sense that our present state of inequality is the product of deliberate choices on the part of US policy makers, our young people will not know that our current situation is not “given” and that it is within their power to change who the winners and losers are within US economics and society.
