Has The Amount Of Information On African Americans Increased In Secondary School American History Books?
...System, especially in the area of history which scholars say that the curriculum leans toward an euro-centric model of teaching with information about European Countries and the Anglo-Saxon move to the United States. I wanted to look at American History and analyze it to see how much information is in books about African Americans and the details of the African American Culture in the United States.
In previous studies it was found that most major changes in the curriculum to add African Americans in the late 1960's. Since this period the appearance of more information on African Americans has surfaced in History Books, but some scholars say that it is not enough. In California, the state curriculum commission rejected 16 of 26 new history and social-studies textbooks, on the basis that the books fail to focus enough attention on minorities. (Tifft, 95) Cameron McCarthy states that "Ultimately, there is a desperate need for schools, school districts, and university teacher education programs to develop strategies for interpreting the urban context by closely collaborating with minority parents and communities. These strategies should lead to specific curriculum and instructional initiatives that give priority to the educational needs of disadvantaged youth (297)." This type of multicultural education movement gets much support from liberal than conservatives. Multiculturalist argue that mainstream American education forges a homogeneous American culture, ignoring the important contributions of people of non-Western cultural heritages. Nobles expresses that Afro centric curriculum should be a tool for affirming African and African American culture (5).
This research intends to link the amount of African American Content in history books that the State of Arkansas uses in 8th and 9th grade classrooms. The design will have a...
View Full Essay