On April 27, AHI President Robert Paquette moderated the National Association of Scholars webinar “Skewed History: Textbook Coverage of Early America and the New Deal.”

 

The webinar introduced Ted Rebarber, chief executive officer of American Achievement Testing (AAT), which has embarked on a major project to provide teachers with fair-minded scholarly instructional materials in American history. They will be used to supplement William McClay’s outstanding textbook Land of Hope (2019). Several AHI-affiliated persons, including Paquette, have participated in this project.

David Randall, Director of Research at the National Association of Scholars introduced four scholars who were tasked with examining the coverage of distinct periods by textbooks in wide use today. The reporters were Bruce Frohnen, Professor of Law at Pettit College of Law, Ohio Northern University; Kevin Gutzman, Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University; Jason Ross, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the Helms School of Government at Liberty University; and Amity Shlaes and William Pettinger of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.

Four commenters followed the reports: Jamie Gass, Director of the Center for School Reform at the Pioneer Institute; Katharine Gorka, Director of the Feulner Institute’s Center for Civil Society and the American Dialogue, Heritage Foundation and Stanley Kurtz, Senior Fellow of the Ethics & Public Policy Center.

At a time when many of this country’s elite colleges and universities do not require American history for history majors, the participants in the webinar underscored the stakes for the future of the country in depoliticizing the curriculum and addressing deficiencies in civic education.