My daughter struggles somewhat in school, and so many nights we work on math, science, or whatever. This weekend being a long holiday weekend most of her teachers decided that this would be a good time to dump a bunch of homework on them. One of those subjects is social studies.
Next week sometime she has a test over 'Europe', and today we were working on her study guide questions through three chapters of her book. So as we were working on answers I was getting to read her book that was published in 2010. When we got to the section on France, there was a little entry about French soccer superstar Thierry Henry. He's now retired, but much of the section had been about how he was combatting racism in soccer. What if he had turned out to be another terrible person, a murderer or a rapist? How would they have handled that in social studies class?
I also noticed at times how these texts easily sum up all the big issues facing these countries in about two sentences. The history of Germany is summed up in about three sentences, and little is made of German militarism or the causes of that. The industrial revolution brought about overcrowding in cities, disease, and environmental problems, but 'generally the standard of living was increased.' Well, thanks for that. European economics, we are also told, have been greatly enhanced by free trade...but of course, in the last 9 years much of Europe has become more xenophobic and the EU may be in trouble as a result.
I guess it has to be impossible to write a school textbook for a fluid a subject as this without it being updated every year and having a teacher who really keeps his eyes open at the news of the world. I'm glad that the kids also have current events classes, though of course what outlet they get news from will also greatly affect their view of those events, as well as the teachers who might be left- or right-wing nutjobs.
But maybe we also need to update textbooks more than every ten years. But I'm guessing the schools don't have the money for that, though we are told flatly that 'European and North American countries value education greatly.' OK, then.
