Invisibility?

I don't think Loewen hit the bullseye with this chapter. Honestly, I don't think you can say that antiracism is invisible throughout American text books.

If by this point we as future educators/social scientists don't understand that we cannot rely on grade school/high school text books to fully educate our students, then perhaps we should begin looking at a different profession. We need to use those text books as only our first rung on the ladder of deeper education. It is up to us to be well versed in the content we will be teaching; this will include bringing in outside sources, introducing those figures overlooked or skimmed over in text books, etc. Not only will we not rely on text books to teach, we will be setting an example to our students in how to make history interesting, how to research, and how to look at a topic from mulitiple views.

Antiracism isn't invisible; it's simply skimmed. Think about milk processing. To get less fat concentration in a grade of milk, the fat is simply skimmed off of the top. In this case, antiracism is the fat filled, D grade milk. By the time the greedy text book authors get done with the nutrient rich antiracism, it's presented as skim milk. We get a little bit of Lincoln, a little bit of the civil rights movement (if the class is fortunate enough to have a teacher who gets them through the first 20 chapters of the book before the end of the year), and the rest is history. But you can't say it's invisible.

I don't hold it against the "authors" for condensing American history. The idea that text books are supposed to cover 500 years of history in 1000 pages is ridiculous. But it's a business. I hold it against the business. At the same time, I hold it against the teachers who complain about the lackluster educational tools they exploit yet fail to employ the use of the research methods and knowledge they spent thousands of dollars developing while at the post-secondary level.

If text books were meant to teach then teachers would be referred to as proctors, not educators.