History Textbooks Mislead Students View of Central America and U.S.

I chose to read "Six Ways U.S. History Textbooks Mislead Students About the History Between Central America and the United States"

Throughout history, the United States has used Central America for many purposes.  However, when it comes to recounting that history, it is either misrepresented or not talked about at all.  There are six ways that the author found, while analyzing a multitude of school textbooks, that U.S. schools mislead students about Central America's role in our history.

The author noted that history books will decenter Central America from their own history.  Books will ask students to image themselves in the position of the dominant role, when in fact they relate better to minorities in the book.  The way the context is written, it draws a line between the United States ("us") and Central America ("them").  Central America's involvement, no matter how large, is often minimalized and pushed to the side while America is at the forefront.  Many of the history books omit talking about countries within Central America.  If they are mentioned it is limited to just a paragraph.  Textbooks leave out the involvement of the U.S. in the strain between Honduras and Nicaragua.  

Central American history is generally found in the footnotes of textbooks.  Central American conflicts did not "grab attention" and therefore were not written about.  Or they are represented in a map (shown above) that students are not likely to read.

"When a textbook uses a few sentences to represent decades-long conflicts — conflicts that the United States helped inflict  — the long-lasting trauma and resistance of Central American people is erased."    

Furthermore, textbooks are often biased and often represent Central America as "deficient and inferior".  Even the images in the textbooks lack representation of the people.  The United States is centered in textbooks as "maintaining stability" in Central America, when in fact this is "erasing Central American countries’ autonomy and desire for freedom from interference."  This gives the false impression that "U.S. policies and interventions were noble missions of self-defense."  This also covers up the true feelings that these countries had towards America.  The view of Central America is entirely surpassed.  

"Not only do textbooks center the views of U.S. imperial powers, they also minimize the extent to which the United States imposed its power and violence on Central American countries."  

The amount of forceful intervention that the United States gave to Central America created long-term resentment and hard feelings.  The United States strategically intervened and made known the power that they had over Central America.  Yet, we choose to hide this with the organization of our history textbooks.  The author argues that "Without truthful history education, students cannot develop the critical thinking skills necessary to contextualize our present migration crises, the “underdevelopment” of Central America, or to advocate for just and reparative policy."

Check this out!

Why History Textbooks are a Problem

This student talks about how textbooks reinforce bias and racism by the way that they are constructed.  

How Objective is your history textbook? 

A Korean student talks about how textbooks in her country minimize historical events.  She also mentions how it creates/supports biases and ideologies in Korea.