Posted on 01/16/2016 5:52:44 AM PST by jp3
Hello all, I am a junior high SS/Religion teacher in one of the Cincinnati Catholic Schools. We are using an updated textbook from Prentice Hall (Pearson). To be blunt, I hate this textbook! It's all over the place on our American historical roots as well as very biased against American ingenuity and foresight. My principal and parish priest are very open to using resources that have not 'revised' the world's history. Can anyone suggest a textbook company that is not revising history? The textbook we use now is called "America, History of our Nation."
Mein Komf
Michigan state senator Pat Colbeck may be able to help you. He’s working on fixing education with a particular focus on “social studies”.
http://www.senatorpatrickcolbeck.com/proposed-social-studies-standards/
If you’re on twitter
My best guess is you would have to go back 50 years or maybe check home schooling resources, of course none of those would be allowed in the public school system, you might get away with using them as a supplement if you do so quietly you know this would be a case of asking forgiveness is easier than asking permission, if that still works in a zero tolerance government education world.
The first thing that I would do is ditch the Socialist term “Social Studies.” US History deserves a class of its’ own.
I second that nomination.
It’s a great book.
“Atlas Shrugged”
(only half joking)
Rush’s history books for kids.
“Great Books of the Western World”.
Pinging LS, because he knows American History :)
Rush Limbaugh’s books on American history. I forget exactly what the titles are.
I’m almost thinking that there isnt anything made post-1988 that is useful.
FWIW, when I was still doing my adventures in Urban Substituting, ALL of the good teachers had bookshelves with the best older texts. I don't know if you're allowed to do it anymore, but you might be able to find some old sets in the public school's storage room or getting to old book sellers through Amazon.
The other good source is publishers that cater to the home school market. A lot of what home schoolers purchase is good, basic, true material. Another nice thing to have....get a set or two of somewhat obsolete encyclopedias. Your students might enjoy information printed before politically correct garbage took over, and it's a good way to teach them to use a variety of sources to research a topic.
I learned this from a teacher not older, but wiser, than myself. She had a full wall of old sources, and the students LOVED exploring them to learn something different from what the computer screen told them!
Look on the Core Knowledge website. They have teacher to teacher resources. As a home school mom, I used their sequence, and a website called Original Sources. It used to be free, but now it’s subscription.
Nothing from Pearson! I teach SS and literature in Steubenville, OH. It’s difficult to find a text that aligns perfectly with Ohio’s model SS curriculum. Holt has a good, not great, text. Don’t fall for their online text and student access! It sounds too good to be true because it is! Where the text fails you can sub in material that you find yourself. The Internet is your best friend here, lol!
While not a textbook, I would recommend considering a supplement:
http://www.amazon.com/Eyewitness-America-American-History-Happen/dp/067976724X
Eyewitness to America: 500 Years of American History in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happen Paperback July 28, 1998
by David Colbert (Editor)
Letters and diary entries written by de Las Casas, Columbus, Cartier, John Smith, William Bradford, Cotton Mather, John Adams, Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, John Paul Jones (a lot of fun for kids to read!), Madison, Lewis and Clark, Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, John Wesley Powell, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and many others.
There is no shaping of the message, since this is American history as seen by the people who lived through it. There is no selection at all for politics and very little selection even for “diversity”. The minority and female entries are for the most part fully justified by the event described and not just tossed in to meet an implied quota.
“Why did that green goose Anderson go into Fort Sumter? Then everything began to go wrong. Now they have intercepted a letter from him . . .”
“He demanded what time I left Boston. I told him, and added that their troops had catched aground in passing the river, and that there would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the country all the way up.”
“General Grant began the conversation by saying, ‘I met you once before, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico.’”
“The Admiral sailed west-southwest, at the rate of ten miles an hour and occasionally twelve . . . He added that it was useless to murmur because he had come in search of the Indies, and was going to continue until he found them with God’s help.”
This is worth checking out because it WILL NOT BE BORING: http://cathyduffyreviews.com/history-geography/literature-approach-modern-american-and-world-history.htm
Scroll down to the 8th Grade version of this work: http://cathyduffyreviews.com/history-geography/seton-american-history.htm It’s Catholic too!
A classic: http://cathyduffyreviews.com/history-geography/christ-americas.htm
Maybe: http://cathyduffyreviews.com/history-geography/focus-on-us-history.htm
You might want to go through this list: http://cathyduffyreviews.com/history-geography/history-geography-index.htm
Thanks to all, I appreciate your suggestions.
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