In the June/July, 1999 issue of Carolina Journal, then-Managing Editor Andrew Cline wrote an article about North Carolina’s method of selecting textbooks. The article explained how the N. C. Textbook Commission, which is responsible for determining which textbooks may be used by school districts all over the state, had allowed textbooks containing factual errors to be approved.
Although proposed new textbooks were reviewed by parents, teachers, and school administrators, reviewers were not required to have expertise in the subjects dealt with in the textbooks.
Cline’s article recommended that people with appropriate expertise help in the evaluation of textbooks so as to weed out outright mistakes, not merely biased viewpoints or slanted coverage of a subject.
Do serious errors continue to slip past the N.C. Textbook Commission’s textbook evaluation process? A recent CJ analysis found that some of these textbooks contained mistakes that had previously been flagged by outside experts. Historians confirmed that the assertions were, indeed, errors.
Decisions concerning textbooks are made by the State Board of Education in October based on recommendations by the Textbook Commission, a 23-member body consisting of teachers, administrators, and parents of all grade levels appointed by the governor. The commission, in turn, is advised by Regional Textbook Evaluation Committees, whose members work on recommendations every summer.
A North Carolina-approved textbook entitled Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 2000), was denounced vehemently for its numerous errors by biologist David L. Jameson in a 1999 review. The review was written for The Textbook Letter, a publication of the Textbook League, a private organization based in California, which evaluates textbooks. Among the many errors catalogued by Jameson: The textbook says that “[r]eptiles reproduce by laying eggs on land,” which Jameson calls a “false absolute” in light of those reptiles that “produce live offspring and don’t lay eggs at all.” The textbook asserts that all amphibians spend the early stage of their development in water, although, as Jameson says, with some types of amphibians, “[t]he adults lay their eggs (or carry their eggs about) in terrestrial habitats.” The textbook also misreports the way in which biologist Charles Darwin got a key insight for his theory of natural selection from the work of economist Thomas Malthus.
North Carolina has approved a chemistry textbook called Chemistry: Concepts and Applications (Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 2000). In The Textbook Letter, chemistry Professor Ronald P. Drucker pointed out a key mistake in this book. The authors of the textbook state the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as holding “that it’s impossible to measure accurately both the position and energy of an electron at the same time,” putting “energy” instead of the correct “momentum.” Drucker’s review appeared in 1998, and discussed the 1997 edition. The misstatement of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, however, persists in the North Carolina-approved 2000 edition of Chemistry: Concepts and Applications.
CJ examined a couple of North Carolina-approved history textbooks and found what appeared to be errors in their coverage of American history. Two academic historians confirmed that CJ had, indeed, found errors. One of the historians CJ consulted was William Barney, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Barney’s focus of study is 19th-century American history, with an emphasis on the Civil War. CJ also consulted Professor Michael Chesson, who teaches history at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and is the former chairman of the History Department. Chesson also specializes in 19th-century American history. Chesson has written reviews of history textbooks for h-net and for the Textbook League, and he helped work on a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Fordham Institute that assessed state history standards (North Carolina got an “F”).
Errors Barney and Chesson agree exist in North Carolina-approved American history textbooks include:
• In the high-school text The American Pageant: A History of the Republic (2002), a graphic gives the status of the different states and territories in the United States, with respect to slavery, after the Compromise of 1850. The table indicates that the territories of New Mexico and Utah were “open to slavery by [the] Compromise of 1850.” However, in the case of New Mexico there was the bracketed notation “[Free 1850],” and in the case of the future territory of Kansas there was the bracketed notation “[Free 1859].” A bracketed date, according to the textbook, means “date of abolition [of slavery] by Territorial Constitution.”
The bracketed dates are misleading. The New Mexico territory, a large area taking up much of the modern Southwest, did not abolish slavery in the 1850s. In 1850, the territory applied to Congress to be admitted to the Union as a free state, but this request was denied. Although very few slaves were actually held in New Mexico, the territorial legislature in 1856 and 1859 passed laws recognizing slavery. The 1859 law was a full-fledged slave code.
In the case of Kansas, the voters of that territory approved an antislavery constitution in 1859, but the constitution did not become effective until early 1861, when Congress granted statehood to the territory. Until that time, the federal authorities in Kansas insisted that slavery was legal, with one territorial judge, on the eve of statehood, striking down an antislavery law passed by the territorial legislature.
• Another North Carolina-approved textbook — American History, published by Globe Fearon in 2003 — also has errors. In discussing the Virginia and New Jersey plans, the former of which formed the basis for the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the text says (p. 200) that “both [plans] also called for two new branches of government. The executive branch would enforce laws. The judicial branch would interpret laws and set up courts.” In fact, neither the Virginia Plan nor the New Jersey plan, nor indeed the final version of the Constitution, allowed the judicial branch to “set up” federal courts. The federal courts were either to be established by the Constitution itself or to be created by Congress.
• Another assertion in Globe Fearon’s American History is that, under the U.S. Constitution, “Congress could not interfere with the importation of African slaves for 20 years,” that is, until 1808 (p. 201). It is true that the Constitution allowed “any of the states now existing” to import slaves for 20 years without congressional interference (except for a $10-per-head import duty). However, even during the 20-year interval, Congress could still forbid slave imports in states that did not choose to “admit” slaves. Congress did, indeed, exercise this authority in 1803.
Congress enacted a law in that year saying that anyone who imported black slaves into a state that had forbidden such importation would have to pay huge fines and have his ship confiscated. Since only South Carolina allowed slave imports in 1803, this statute provided stiff federal penalties for anyone who imported slaves into any other state. In 1804, Congress prohibited the importation of foreign slaves into the recently acquired Louisiana Territory. So Congress did, indeed, have the power to “interfere with the importation of African slaves” before 1808, even though congressional power was under some limits until that year.
• One other error in American History is on Page 386, and has to do with the Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress in 1850: “Before the Fugitive Slave Law [of 1850] went into effect, an escaped person might escape to freedom along the Underground Railroad to free states. Now, there would be no escaping to safety anywhere in the United States.” In fact, federal law since 1793 had provided for returning fugitive slaves to their masters, even if the slave escaped to a free state. What was distinctive about the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was that it was, in Chesson’s words, “a much stronger measure, with real teeth for enforcement ,” in contrast to the weaker 1793 version.
Attempts to speak with staff at the Textbook Adoption Services section of the state Department of Public Instruction were not successful by press time.
Maximilian Longley is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.