What did McGraw-Hill textbook really say about slavery? - 10/5/2015 added comments

They didn't say what people on Facebook are claiming. A lot of people have really poor reading comprehension skills, including Mrs. Dean-Burren.

Do you really have to have an M.A. in math to infer that people brought here in the "slave trade" would be slaves?

See the end for more comments.

http://abc13.com/education/mom-calls-out-textbook-publisher-for-interpreting-slavery-as-immigration/1014971/

Book publishing giant McGraw-Hill is saying it will rewrite a textbook after a Pearland mother voiced concerns on YouTube about the portrayal of slaves as immigrant "workers" in her son's school book.

In the video, Texas mom Roni Dean-Burren calls out the textbook, "World Geography."

Dean-Burren pointed viewers to a section called "Patterns of Immigration." Reading from the book, she notes the inclusion of slaves as immigrants.

"'Immigrants,' yeah, that word matters," Dean-Burren said, "(Reading from the text) 'The Atlantic slave trade between the 1500s and the 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations. So (slavery) is now considered 'immigration'."

She adds, in an adjacent section on European immigrants, that many came as "indentured servants to work for little or no pay."

Dean-Burren continues, "So they say that about English and European people, but there is no mention of Africans working as slaves or being slaves. It just says we were workers."

Dean-Burren also pointed out in her video that several professional consultants and the Texas Advisory Board are listed in the front of the book, and supposedly signed off on the book's text.

McGraw-Hill responded to Dean-Burren on its Facebook page, saying they would fix the section in the next print run and on their digital version of the book.

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My comments.

Maybe the way we test students, with multiple-choice with one single correct answer is partly to blame for the fact that people don't seem to be able to conceive that people can be in more than one group at a time.

Of course, part of this uproar is because of people like my parents who are constantly looking for something to criticize and be angry about.

This case diminishes the case for rampant racism today, if people get outraged about this. I know there is still racism. But this case reinforces the attitudes of those who claim that there is no racism now.

It is my experience and observation that many arguments are due to the fact that different people use the same word for different meanings. Like my relative who thought "secular" means "religious", when it means "non-religious". Like a secular government is one based on man-made laws, not a religious book.

tags: influence