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Textbooks, Texas, and Discontent: The Fight against Inadequate Educational Resources

By Alejandra Garza and Maria Esther Hammack

Controversies surrounding textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas. For years, textbook selection in Texas has grabbed headlines and generated great discontent and debate. Textbooks adopted by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) are unusually important because they are also adopted for use in classrooms across the country. Whatever Texas adopts, students across the United States get. In 2014, a coalition of unpaid Texas citizens who called themselves “Truth In Texas Textbooks,” presented the SBOE with a report containing 469 pages of factual errors, “imbalanced presentation of materials, omission of information, and opinions disguised as facts,” found in three world history and geography textbooks that were being considered for adoption that November. And who can forget the 2015 textbook fiasco, when the Texas Board of Education refused to allow professors to review and fact-check textbooks that were to be implemented in Texas curricula that year. Historians and other academics protested because non-experts were writing and reviewing history textbooks.

Photograph of a 2015 Texas textbook caption that grossly mischaracterized the nature of slavery — A 2015 Texas textbook caption grossly mischaracterized the nature of slavery (Coby Burren via the San Antonio Current).

But that was not the only contentious issue surrounding textbooks in Texas last year. Mrs. Roni Dean-Burren split open a Pandora’s box of controversies when she posted a picture on Facebook of her teenage son’s textbook which explicitly portrayed slaves as immigrant workers. The Texas State Board of Education had adopted the textbook, published by McGraw Hill, a few years ago and sold about 140,000 in Texas and other states. McGraw Hill was quick to respond and quench the controversy. They immediately acknowledged that they had made “a mistake” and rapidly agreed to do their “utmost to fix it.”

This year’s controversy has had a different outcome. Unlike McGraw Hill, Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle, the authors of the Mexican American Heritage textbook and its publisher, Momentum Instruction, LLC, have yet to apologize for a widely criticized textbook. Beyond an unwillingness to acknowledge the large number of problems in their textbook, they have failed to respond to questions and comments from historians and experts challenging their work. The Mexican American Heritage textbook has more than 800 factual errors, errors of omission, and misleading representations of Mexican American history and culture.

Book cover of The Mexican American Heritage textbook by Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle — The Mexican American Heritage textbook (via authors).

In addition to factual errors, the book is riddled with what several historians have deemed “ethnic hostility” — clearly racist remarks, blatantly condescending portrayals of Mexican Americans and their historical roles, and a large number of specific instances where the authors’ opinions straightforwardly belittle Mexican-American history, heritage, and people of Mexican descent and their accomplishments and contributions. The authors and the publisher have refused to work with experts to fix the errors and have yet to demonstrate any intent to withdraw the book from consideration for adoption by the State Board of Education in hearings scheduled for November 15 and 18, 2016. The final decision pertaining to the adoption or rejection of the textbook is set to be made on November 18, 2016.

A textbook with an extensive number of errors, with clearly racist and condescending content does not belong in any classroom. Textbooks are meant to educate and empower our future generations through an emphasis on factual history and on understanding the heritage and identity of all the peoples of the country, but the Mexican American Heritage textbook is set to do just the opposite. Its content erases Mexican American history and culture and it presents historical information in manner that misinforms, rather than educates.

Black and white image of Moses Austin — Moses Austin, 1761-1821 (via Wikimedia Commons).

For instance, a passage in the book claims that “in 1822, Moses Austin obtained the first charter to start an American colony in Texas.” As most historians know, what Austin received was not a charter, but an offer for a land grant where up to 300 colonists could move and settle in Texas, then Mexican territory, with the stipulation that they swear allegiance to Mexico and become Mexican citizens. Also, expert historians made sure to note that Moses Austin died in 1821, so by 1822, the date provided in the textbook, Austin was in fact no longer alive and could not have obtained what the authors claimed was the first charter to colonize Texas.

Last month The Guardian reported that the passages in the textbook portray Mexican Americans as “anti-education and anti-English” and depict “true Mexican identity” as being inherently in rebellion against the establishment. They write that “High School and college youth may refuse to attend class, speak English or learn certain subjects because they perceive injustice in the school system,” and claiming Mexican American prosperity is hindered by their own identity. In addition to reports in the media, the Ad Hoc Committee, consisting of a group of scholars who took the initiative to read and review the textbook last spring, have highlighted some of the most disturbing errors. In chapter 3, for example, the authors wrote that “most Mexicans weren’t literate, they could not own land, and had been given the message that they should be subdued rather than lifted up. How would they invent a system from nothing that depended on participating in political and economic life?”[1] They portray Mexican Americans as having an all-encompassing cultural attitude of laziness that makes them put off important things for “mañana,” because, according to the textbook, they “have not been reared to put in a full day’s work so vigorously.”

Contrary to those portrayals, Mexican Americans and Mexican American scholars, historians and other professionals have begun the rigorous undertaking of meticulously reviewing the textbook by tabulating historical inaccuracies, listing factual errors, and conducting extensive and in depth analysis of the historical content of the textbook. The Mexican American scholars and the community were quick to organize in Austin and across Texas, and have managed to coordinate with other scholars, and historians across the country to write a strong case against the Mexican American Heritage textbook, so that it is not adopted by the Texas State Board of Education in the November hearings. The Ad Hoc Committee presented its report this past summer to the Texas State Board of Education’s Representative, Ruben Cortez, Jr., to explain why the proposed textbook was inadequate, how it failed to meet basic standards and guiding principles in the history profession. They provided an extensive list of suggested revisions to the publisher, suggestions that today, at one week until the hearing, have gone vastly unheeded.

Close-up photograph of the six flags over Texas emblems under state capitol dome — The Texas State Capitol (via Wikimedia Commons).

Here at UT Austin, the University of Texas Textbook Review Committee has six members working under the guidance of Dr. Emilio Zamora, of the UT Austin History Department, to produce a complete annotated list of factual errors, omissions, and misrepresentations, and also a list of suggested revisions. The committee’s goal is to serve historians and experts such as Dr. Zamora to prepare a written response based on their findings and historical evidence, to present to the Texas State Board of Education on November 15, and for that response to help prevent the Mexican American Heritage textbook from being adopted.

Despite the documented factual errors and wide criticism of the textbook, the hearing is not going to be an easy one. Conservative politicians have been supporting adoption of the textbook. For example, David Bradley, the Republican state representative for Southeast Texas on the Texas Board of Education, said that he had originally voted against the call for textbooks because he considers Mexican-American studies to be discriminatory against Americans of other ethnic backgrounds. He now plans to vote to adopt the book, because he is “going to give them what they asked for.” Bradley added “they wanted a course, and they wanted special treatment, and we had publisher step up.” He is intent on casting his vote for the adoption of this textbook.

The Main Building at the University of Texas - Austin (via Wikimedia Commons). — The Main Building at the University of Texas – Austin (via Wikimedia Commons).

Criticism of the textbook has come from historians across the nation, professional organizations, and activists’ platforms, including American Historical Association. In September, the AHA wrote a letter of concern to the Texas State Board of Education regarding the textbook because, they wrote, “the textbook does not adequately reflect the scholarship of historians who have worked in the field of Mexican American history, or measure up to the broad standards of history as a discipline.” The American Historical Association urged the Texas Board of Education “reject the use of this textbook as an option for institutions within the purview of the board’s adoption policies.”

We hope that more allies come to our support, and that many scholars, historians, educators, and students show up at the William B. Travis Building at the State Capitol for the hearings on November 15. It is imperative that textbooks such as The Mexican American Heritage do not get adopted. A textbook on Mexican Americans or Mexican American history or any other history that is filled with errors and racist allegations should not be used to educate our children, not now, not ever.

[1]District 2 Ad Hoc Committee Report on Proposed Social Studies Special Topic Textbook: Mexican American Heritage, presented to Ruben Cortez, Jr., State Board of Education Representative, September 6, 2016.

Board of Education agendas and information for the November 15th-18th meetings can be found here.
A map indicating the building location can be found here.
You can find out who your SBOE representative is here, and can contact members of the SBOE here.

You may also like:
Chris Babits offers Another Perspective on the Texas Textbook Controversy.
Christopher Rose recounts his experience testifying before the SBOE in this blog post.
NEP contributors relate what happens When a Government Tells Historians How to Write and How to Teach.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Another Perspective on the Texas Textbook Controversy

by Christopher Babits

Recently, the Texas State Board of Education faced a firestorm of protest, from conservatives and liberals alike, over the statewide adoption of textbooks for teaching history. On November 21, 2014, the Board approved the use of 89 social studies textbooks. This vote was the culmination of a long and contentious debate about what to include in — and exclude from — textbooks. Some conservative groups thought the books’ content was “anti-American,” contending that publishers shortchanged America’s accomplishments. Specifically, they wanted more emphasis on the beneficial economic impact of the free market and the role of Christianity among the Founding Fathers. Others thought that the textbooks already contained a deeply conservative (and flawed) interpretation of the past. These critics warned that they distorted, exaggerated, and ignored some tough truths about the American past. In her testimony before the education board, Dr. Jacqueline Jones, the Chair of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin, said, “We do our students a disservice when we scrub history clean of unpleasant truths and when we present an inaccurate view of the past that promotes a simple-minded, ideologically driven point of view.”

A cartoon depicting three young school children one covering his mouth with a book, a girl covering her eyes with a book, and another boy covering his ears with two books

Public debate over the content of history textbooks goes back nearly 130 years, at least since the founding of the American Historical Association (AHA). In several reports in the 1890s, historians laid out a prescribed curricula for elementary and high school students. These initial reports received little criticism compared to what would come. Throughout the twentieth century, professors of history, teachers, parents, teacher educators, and other concerned citizens engaged in several high profile debates about the nature and purpose of history education in the nation’s public schools. One controversy from the 1930s about a popular textbook series created by Harold Rugg, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, provides historical context for what Texas just experienced in its debate over textbooks.

Black and white photograph of Professor Harold Rugg next to an image of his controversial book, Changing Civilizations in the Modern World

There are some similarities to the present-day — a struggling economy and calls for a more patriotic version of American history in our schools.The Great Depression and the Second World War witnessed dynamic curricular reform for history and social studies. After the stock market crashed in 1929, many Americans embraced what came to be called the social reconstructionist curriculum. Observing the consequences of capitalism run amok, Americans became more comfortable with curricula that not only critiqued economic inequality but also encouraged students to ask critical questions about the American past. Harold Rugg wrote his popular textbook series during the Depression.

Beginning in the late-1920s, Rugg began writing and publishing social studies textbooks centered on the question of “the American problem.” The textbook series was titled Man and His Changing Society, with individual titles like An Introduction to American Civilization, Changing Civilizations in the Modern World, and An Introduction to the Problems of American Culture. The textbooks focused on the economic and demographic growth of modern cultures and the development of decision-making skills. Rugg wanted junior high school texts to provide a comprehensive introduction to the modern world so that students could face the chief concerns that they would face as adults. Rugg’s textbooks opened with a dramatic historic episode, focused on key concepts, told dramatic stories, and included stimulating photos and cartoons. In addition, the textbooks raised serious questions about the nation’s social and economic institutions. This included critiques of unequal distribution of wealth and civil rights for African Americans..

The Great Depression’s horrible poverty helped Rugg’s social reconstructionist ideas gain prominence. Social reconstructionist curricula focused on the economic challenges facing the United States and the ways that schools could improve society. In 1933’s The Great Technology, Rugg called for “social engineering in the form of technological experts who would design and operate the economy in the public interest.” For Rugg, the challenge was to “design and operate a system of production and distribution which will produce the maximum amount of goods needed by the people and will distribute them in such a way that each person will be given at least the highest minimum standard of living possible.” George Counts, one of Rugg’s colleagues at Teachers College, expressed a similar view of education in 1932’s Dare the School Build a New Social Order? Counts pushed for a system of public education where teachers and students would critically examine America’s social institutions and chart solutions to the challenges that lay ahead.

As Rugg’s popular textbooks gained widespread use, a small group of influential conservatives challenged his social reconstructionist agenda. The bulk of criticism came from business journalists, retired military, and professional historians. Most of the criticism took place in New York and New Jersey. The fervor over Rugg’s textbook series led some school boards to censor the books or declare that they contained nothing subversive. As a result, Rugg’s accusers, many of whom Rugg debated face-to-face in public forums, were relatively unsuccessful at removing the textbooks from classrooms during the 1930s.

The 1940s were a different story, though. The Second World War brought a dramatic change not only in the minds of the public but also in what people wanted from history education. Instead of reading about how to improve American society, many people wanted their children to hear about what was right in American institutions. The United States was fighting a vicious two-front war against the Japanese Empire in the Pacific and Nazi Germany and its allies in Europe and North Africa. In the battle for hearts and minds against fascism, schools told students that it was honorable to give one’s life for American democracy. Social reconstructionist education was overtaken by patriotic education.

Black and white photograph of Allan Nevins in his library — Allan Nevins in his library.

In order for a patriotic education to take root, Americans needed to know more U.S. History than what schools were teaching. In 1942, Allan Nevins, a professor of American history at Columbia University, wrote an article titled “American History for Americans” for the New York Times Magazine. Nevins believed that “young people are all too ignorant of American history.” He speculated that “the majority of American children never receive the equivalent of a full year’s careful work in our national history.” Nevins blamed schools and colleges. “Our education requirements in American history and government have been and are deplorably haphazard, chaotic, and ineffective,” he wrote. In 1943, the New York Times conducted a survey of 7,000 college freshmen at 36 colleges that seemed to confirm Nevins’ opinion. The findings found a striking “ignorance of even the most elementary aspects of United States history.”

After the Second World War, social reconstructionist educators faced more powerful opponents: anti-communist crusaders. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) rounded up U.S. citizens suspected of communist ties. Professional educators feared for their jobs if they taught anything remotely critical in their American History courses. The risk of being labeled a communist was a serious threat. A few additional changes effectively killed the social reconstructionist movement. Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. This change reinforced the emerging understanding that the United States was not only a Christian nation but that it inhabited God’s chosen people. It was thus necessary to teach children that their Christianity was an asset against the godless communists in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere in the world. Then the U.S. economy rebounded after WWII. Consumer goods were more readily available. The average white citizen benefited from much better living conditions. Capitalism, it seemed, was proving that it offered many advantages over communism.

The early Cold War provided a climate for history education that has influenced the recent Texas history textbook controversy. U.S. citizens are still debating the role of Christianity in the nation’s history and whether elementary and high school students should learn the unpleasant truths that have been a part of America’s history. These different visions for history education will continue to divide politicians, professors of history, teachers, parents, teacher educators, students, and other concerned citizens in the years to come.

Texas is Adopting New History Textbooks: Maybe They Should Be Historically Accurate

This week the State Board of Education holds a second round of hearings on the adoption of History textbooks for the entire state of Texas.

Here is Christopher Rose’s report on his testimony in the first round.

By Christopher Rose

The first time I tried to work with the State Board of Education, I inadvertently did something naïve and possibly a little foolish.

It was 2010, and the social studies standards—the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS (pronounced “tex”)—were up for revision in the state of Texas. Having worked with K-12 teachers of world history, world geography, and contemporary world cultures (the three required world studies classes in Texas) for a decade at that point, I really wanted to get in on the review committee for one of these courses. I had been involved in laying out the framework for a 6^th grade contemporary world cultures curriculum, and I knew those standards like the back of my hand, and I had what I thought were pretty solid suggestions about the way the course could be improved.

Texas' New Social Studies Textbooks. Courtesy of Texas Tribune — Texas’ New Social Studies Textbooks. Courtesy of Texas Tribune

Review panels are appointed by members of the SBOE, so I sat down and drafted an e-mail outlining my credentials, my commitment to global studies and cross-cultural understanding, and some of the issues in the 6^th grade course that I was hoping to address, and eagerly sent it off to the SBOE member who represented the district I lived in. I didn’t know until some time later that, around the same time, this member defended herself against public scrutiny for forwarding an e-mail from her SBOE e-mail account that declared that Barack Obama was going to place the US under martial law within the first year of his first term as presidency, and was on record in various places as opposing the study of the world outside of the US at all.

Needless to say, I wasn’t appointed to one of the review panels.

I submitted written comments, received a standard response, “Your submission has been received and logged,” and never heard another word.

Having missed that opportunity, I was determined not to miss another when the textbook adoption process came around earlier this summer. I had, in the intervening four years, assumed a dual identity as both an employee in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, designing and implementing community programming and professional development for educators, and as a doctoral student in the Department of History, sometimes taking classes with faculty members I’d worked alongside earlier the same day.

I had reviewed the textbooks at their last adoption in 2002, mostly to familiarize myself with the material so that I knew where the gaps were, and what material was covered. I began making inquiries around the network I’ve assembled over the past fifteen years about to how to access the textbooks submitted for adoption when an e-mail went out from the History Department. A local non-profit organization was looking for doctoral students to review textbooks for a written review they planned to publish prior to the SBOE meeting in September, which would be the first of two public hearings on the textbook adoption.

I sent in a letter of interest and this time, I was appointed to a panel looking at books submitted for the 10^th grade World History course. The organization had a list of areas they wanted to review for fear of political bias, but I read the books cover to cover, taking notes anywhere I felt there was a problem.

Over the course of the review, one of the three sets of materials I read stood out—for all the wrong reasons. An e-book with no corresponding print edition, the errors I kept finding went beyond politically-charged bias into a much more black and white realm: the material was, in many cases, just wrong. I found a statement that the Romans made no major achievements in science and mathematics. A similar statement was made about the Aztec, Inca, and Maya—which was compounded with an assignment asking students to write an essay explaining why these civilizations didn’t develop further. A quick Google search revealed that, in every instance, these three Mesoamerican civilizations had, in fact, achieved everything that the text explicitly stated they had not.

The section on Islam—my own scholarly background—contained so much misinformation that my notes on the text were longer than the text itself. I feared the same for the section on Hinduism, although my knowledge of it is weaker and I am still convinced I missed some errors. Judaism, meanwhile, was covered as “Christianity without Christ,” although even this was up for debate as I found in the text of a sample essay a statement that “Jews and Muslims consider Jesus a teacher, but not the Son of God as Christians believe.” Muslims consider Jesus a Prophet. Jesus, however, has no standing within Judaism, and this text was saying that he was revered as a teacher!

The more I read, the more concerned I became. After the report was submitted, the general consensus among the reviewers was that this product was, across the board, poorly written, poorly edited, and riddled with factual errors. Since I’d spent nearly 80 hours with this text alone, who better to let the SBOE know exactly where the problems were? I decided that I would testify to the SBOE at the upcoming public hearing on the textbooks. Expecting a large crowd, I set an alarm on my computer, completed the paperwork to register, saved it as a draft and, when the clock hit 8:00 on the first day of registration, I pressed “send.”

Which is how I found myself sitting in the SBOE meeting room in the William B. Travis building, watching the board members assemble. The list with the order of testifiers came in barely ten minutes before the hearing was scheduled to start, and, to my surprise, I discovered that I was first on the list!

As we waited for the meeting to be called to order, a representative from the non-profit that had overseen the textbook review stopped by to tell me that two publishers had responded to the written report, which had been published the previous week. One had responded quite positively, asking for comments, and promising to look at areas identified as problematic and see what changes could be made. The other—the publisher of the materials that I was preparing to testify against shortly—had responded extremely negatively. While I never saw that message, it seemed clear that they didn’t like the report, and had gone further to criticize both the organization that sponsored it and the individuals who had written it.

State board of education meeting, Monday 20 Oct 2014. Courtesy of Texas Tribune

I looked at the 35 copies of my written testimony that I was about to hand over to go on the permanent record. My oral testimony, included as the cover sheet with a three-page appendix, was footnoted. Everything I was about to say appears in the text, I thought. They can call me names if they want, but they can’t deny that these things appear in print.

I had chosen to focus on areas of concern to the SBOE in my two minutes of testimony. The SBOE has, in the past, demonstrated a lack of interest in what they see as “politically correct” depictions of Islam, so I chose to focus on areas they were concerned about: the Romans; a passage that refers to Catholicism as a religion; the statement about Jesus being revered by Jews. For my dramatic opener I led with a direct quote from the text stating that most people living in sub-Saharan Africa were members of “the Negro race.” My rationale was that if I could get the board’s attention and get them to view the book unfavorably and pull it from the list of approved materials, then the material I was concerned about would be withdrawn as well.

As the first up, I got the board at their freshest. There were several gasps as I spoke, and several questions clarifying statements I had made. The two testifiers behind me spoke more thematically rather than about individual books, but at one point one of the board’s more outspoken conservative members expressed in astonishment, “We’ve been here half an hour and three of you have mentioned this book. Clearly we need to look at this one closely.” I may have done a fist pump in the back of the room where no one could see me.

While I hedged my bets and played it safe because I had ample non-controversial material to work with in my testimony, Jacqueline Jones, the Chair of UT’s History Department didn’t have that luxury. Her opening statement, which concluded with, “We do our students a disservice when we scrub history clean of unpleasant truths and when we present an inaccurate view of the past that promotes a simple-minded, ideologically driven point of view,” was quoted repeatedly in coverage of the hearing; I was pleased to hear it on the radio as I drove home that evening. I e-mailed to let her know that it was on the air, and she wrote back telling me that she had heard me on an earlier broadcast.

However, her criticism of a particular textbook’s decision to present an uncritical portrayal of the “American free enterprise system,” a term that replaced “capitalism” in the 2010 TEKS revision, landed on unsympathetic ears from two of the board members who had championed that cause. After a short speech from the floor from board member Ken Mercer, who seemed to be speaking mainly for the purpose of reminding everyone in the room that using the term had been his idea, board member Thomas Ratliff offered the rebuttal, “Well, the textbooks aren’t going to be perfect.”

Walking back to campus with Dr. Jones after her testimony, she wondered aloud, “If that’s the case, then what were we doing there?” A good question, indeed. If the SBOE, with all of its power, can’t hold textbook publishers to a higher standard, then who will?

A few days later, I received a message directly from the publisher that can best be described as “politely hostile.” Among other things, I was told that I didn’t understand what a textbook was, and that I was “interrogating the text from the wrong perspective.” I am still not certain what that means. Despite this, in the written response to my comments, a number of the errors I cited were acknowledged and have been changed in the textbook.

What I have learned from this experience is that it is important for scholars like those in the Department of History to get their voice out there. As Dr. Jones pointed out in her testimony, what’s being taught in Texas schools has a direct bearing on what happens in university classrooms. We have to be active as public scholars and historians—and for me that’s the most important lesson I’ve learned.

Politicizing the Past: Depictions of Indo-Aryans in Indian Textbooks from 1998-2007

By Abhijith Ravinutala

Download “Politicizing the Past”

This Spring, UT-Austin student Abhijith Ravinutala received the John Ferguson Prize for Excellence in the Study of History. In his thesis paper, “Politicizing the Past: Depictions of Indo-Aryans in Indian Textbooks from 1998-2007,” Abhijith links the history lessons in Indian school textbooks to broader political conflicts taking place over the nation’s religious and historical identity. He particularly concentrates on their depictions of the ancient Indo-Aryan people, arguing that these historical narratives reflect very modern political disputes. You can read Abhijith’s thesis abstract below.

Abstract:

Schools across the world strive to instill national pride in students by presenting a shared history of the nation’s development – a common past. Yet, in the case of India, there is no consensus on the common past, leaving students without a clear understanding of Indian history. From 1998-2007, Indian schools employed three different sets of history textbooks, each with radically different ideas on ancient Indian history concerning Indo-Aryans (peoples considered to be the founders of the Hindu faith). This paper endeavors to show that these textbook changes were clearly politicized; different political parties promoted conflicting ideas on Indo-Aryans due to incompatible religious beliefs. To provide context, there is also a discussion of the different historical issues regarding Indo-Aryans, such as the mystery of their origins and their relation to the Indus Valley Civilization. Additionally, this paper attempts to explain how the textbook changes were uniquely important to Indian national identity.

An Elementary School in Chittoor, India (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

To accomplish these ends, I use direct quotes from all three sets of textbooks, as well as newspaper articles from The Times of India. An analysis of the textbook quotes shows that the ruling political party could dictate its own views on the culture, identity, and society of Indo- Aryan peoples. Furthermore, an analysis of newspaper articles reveals the public’s reaction to textbook changes, showing that India is uniquely prone to such changes because its history is so ancient and ambiguous. Indians do not have the knowledge or clarity about the ancient past to pass down stories to future generations. As a result, students learn about their ancestry and identity through the material provided in textbooks, but that material is at the whim of political parties. This project reveals how political parties tamper with history to achieve their own ends, and the effect it has on the public’s conceptions of history and national identity.

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