Make history classes more inclusive

To the Editor,

Reading Samina Iqbal’s comment, in the July 21 edition, on the need for more required education about the history of our laws, brought me back to the fall of 1967. Attending the Community College of Philadelphia, I took a course in what was then called Afro-American history, with a textbook by John Hope Franklin called “From Slavery to Freedom.” At that time, many of us thought this course might become obsolete and unnecessary, because we expected general American history classes to begin to include the excluded.

Instead, we have various siloed history courses, from African-American studies and Asian studies to women’s studies.

How do we feel about this? Should there be an effort to make general American history classes more inclusive, so that the people who take them can learn that there is more to the history of America than the doings of white heterosexual male Protestants? If we did that, we could still offer the more focused courses, for those of us who want to delve more deeply into various areas, but students who take only the required courses could still gain a basic knowledge of who participated in weaving the tapestry of this country.

Two articles that explore these ideas are Taylor Giarrizzo’s “History Losing its Value: Representation of Minorities Within High School History Texts” (Education Masters, 2012), and Cynthia Greenlee’s “How History Textbooks Reflect America’s Refusal to Reckon with slavery” (Vox, 2019). I recommend them.

Bob Small
Swarthmore