3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Is this your kid's textbook? Be very afraid!, September 9, 2006
This review is from: One Nation, Many People: Volume 2: The United States Since 1876, Softcover (Paperback)
The textbook is very instructive! It will instruct parents who have doubted that anything is wrong with their schools! It's utterly unconscionable how an school could claim that this fiasco is suitable as an American history textbook.
"One Nation Many People" would be better described as a history of protected minorities and left-wing movements in the United States. We tried a little exercise here: I asked my wife to close her eyes, open the book at random and drop her finger on any text. In all 5 out of 5 tries -- all 5! -- the text was on some aspect of the "Holy Trinity" of race, class and gender! I also took the thing with to work, and asked some others to play this "game". The results: one person had "hits" on 3 out of 3 attempts, someone else had 4 out of 4. Aaaarrrrggghhh!
What a nightmare. Just as a taste of this textbook, let's look at how it covers World War II. First of all, the chapter is lamely named, "The Nation Fights Another War."
Here is the text's ENTIRE CONTENT concerning Italy in WWII:
"In 1936, Germany signed a treaty with Italy. Italy also
had a fascist government. Together Germany and Italy
called themselves the Axis powers."
Here is the text's ENTIRE CONTENT concerning the war in the Pacific in between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima:
"The Japanese also advanced. They invaded the Philippines
and conquered parts of Southeast Asia. They also took over
many islands in the Pacific Ocean. ... Nothing could stop
the Japanese during 1942. However, in the spring the U.S.
Navy defeated them twice in the Pacific. In early 1943,
the United States began driving the Japanese back."
Here are people, places and events that are NOT MENTIONED AT ALL in the text on World War II:
Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, Marshall, Patton,
Churchill, Chamberlain, Stalin, Mussolini,
Eichmann, Mengele, Himmler, Speer, Goebbels, Goering, Rommel,
Hirohito, Tojo, Brown Shirts, Kristallnacht, Manhattan Project,
Enigma, Dunkirk, Battle of Britain, Wake Island,
Doolittle Raid, Corregidor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Warsaw Ghetto
uprising, Vichy, Anzio, Salerno, Luzon, Battle of the Bulge,
Bataan Death March, Rape of Nanking, Mindanao, Iwo Jima,
Midway, Guam, Okinawa
However, this textbook DOES have space to devote a half-page to one Dorie Miller, a black who was a hero at Pearl Harbor. There is a full page on women's efforts on the home front, plus a page and a half on blacks and Latinos during WWII.
There are THREE AND A HALF pages devoted to the Japanese internment.
The rest of the text reads the same way, with endless PC stuff squeezing out other material. Many presidents are never mentioned at all. There isn't room for all ten of the Bill of Rights. "African American Culture Thrives in the Jazz Age" is given a full chapter. But Thomas Edison is given only half a sentence ("the inventor of the light bulb"), and the Wright Brothers are never mentioned at all. The 1969 moon landing gets only a couple of sentences, and nothing at all is said about the space program that led up to it.
But that's not even the worst of it. First, there's the alarming problem of the text itself. It's almost impossible to keep focused on this text, given that it's written in a belligerently simple-minded style, with terse declarative sentences and no challenging words. This stuff is as deadly dull as a Dick and Jane primer!
Finally, the book is also simple minded in its almost nonstop flat statements of purported facts about many issues that are in fact highly debatable. It hardly needs stating, but the consistent and overwhelming bias is leftward. The book offers not a hint of suggestion of any criticism of Roosevelt's New Deal or Johnson's Great Society, for example. Tax cuts under Reagan are slammed, tax cuts under Kennedy are never mentioned. The Bay of Pigs fiasco just simply "happened" while Kennedy was in office. Gorbachev is given sole credit for the demise of the Soviet Union. An astonishing two-thirds of a page is spent defending Hillarycare. The final chapter, "American People Face the 21st Century" starts off with a section on what we must conclude the authors think is the most important thing to say about our country: "United States Has More Diversity Than Any Other Nation".
Not only should you avoid this book at all costs, but if your local school has chosen it as a text, you should seriously question whether that school is the right choice for your children.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
