This digital humanities project analyzes eight history and social studies textbooks at the middle and high school levels in the state of Virginia. Most of these textbooks have been approved by the Virginia Department of Education to be used as resources for public schools all around the state. This section introduces each textbook as an opportunity to familiarize the audience with the types of material being considered for this project. The numbered codes correspond to how these textbooks are cataloged at the Learning Resource Center at the College of William and Mary’s School of Education. The textbooks will be referred to by their barcode entry throughout this project to differentiate between each textbook, especially considering that many textbooks have similar-sounding and looking titles. Click each of the textbooks below to learn more about them!
Are these textbooks representative of the experience inside the classroom?
A few disclaimers should be made about this project. Firstly, while the textbooks analyzed here often represent the most recent publications, many classrooms throughout Virginia continue to learn from outdated textbooks. It is extremely difficult to restock classrooms with the most recent versions of textbooks, so while these textbooks are taken mostly from the list of Virginia state-approved textbooks, these might not pertain to the lived experiences of teachers and their students in the classroom today. Regardless, this thought exercise of critiquing tertiary information is still valuable and holds many insights about the role of those who synthesize United States history. These same analytical frameworks can be applied to textbooks regardless of their year of publication, and many older textbooks most likely have even less information pertaining to the Cold War in Latin America. This project's critical lens and interpretation can be extrapolated to any history textbook.
An ideal project of this nature would have compared and contrasted evolving editions of the same textbook to argue whether or not textbooks are more seriously weighing the United States’ actions in Latin America during the Cold War. It also would have consulted Virginia middle and high school educators during every step of the process to ensure that this project is useful as a pedagogical tool. However, the restrictions posed by the COVID-19 global pandemic, ever-present in the conception and production of this digital humanities project, prohibited access to any textbooks outside of what the College of William and Mary’s School of Education owned. It also prevented me from walking into schools and introducing myself to teachers to share my project idea and receive feedback. Teachers have been extremely strained during this time, and to ask them to perform extra labor while creating online and socially-distanced lesson plans to bring their students up to speed on what they should be learning would not be fair.
