New report: Labor’s story left out of high school history textbooks
Key union contributions
to American democracy
and way of life ignored
or distorted
WASHINGTON. D.C. – The nation
celebrated Labor Day earlier this
month, yet few Americans have any
idea why. A new report on how the his-
tory of labor is treated in high school
history textbooks offers an explanation
— most Americans never got any edu-
cation about the labor movement’s
proper place in our country’s history
and its many contributions to the na-
SEPTEMBER 16, 2011
tion’s development.
“American Labor and U.S. History
Textbooks: How Labor’s Story is Dis-
torted in High School History Text-
books,” sponsored by the Albert
Shanker Institute, in cooperation with
the American Labor Studies Center,
surveys four major textbooks that to-
gether account for most of the market
in U.S. history textbooks. The report
notes that these textbooks often present
labor history in a biased, negative way.
For example, they focus on strikes and
strike violence while giving little or no
attention to the employer abuse and vi-
olence that were usually at the root of
such actions. Their persistent focus on
conflict overrides any attention to la-
bor’s central historical role in bringing
generations of Americans into the mid-
dle class.
In addition, while the report credits
the textbooks with some accurate re-
porting, it notes that the textbooks vir-
tually ignore:
• The vital role of union activism in
passing broad social protections and re-
forms such as the eight-hour work day,
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
occupational safety and health, the end
of abusive child labor, and environ-
mental protection;
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
• Organized labor’s support for the
civil rights movement; and the role or-
ganized labor played in the 1960s in
particular, when the rise of public sector
unionization brought many more Amer-
icans into the middle class and gave new
rights to public employees.
“This report explains why so few
Americans know much about labor’s
history and contributions,” said Ameri-
can Federation of Teachers (AFT) and
Albert Shanker Institute President
Randi Weingarten. “It paints a devas-
tating picture of distortion and omis-
sion. Too often, labor’s role in U.S. his-
tory is misrepresented, downplayed, or
ignored. The result is that most Ameri-
can students have little sense of how the
labor movement changed the lives of
Americans for the better. A vital piece
of U.S. history is disappearing before
our eyes.”
Weingarten added that contempo-
rary media treatments from such
sources as Fox News only make mat-
ters worse. “For example, the
Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa poll released
in August indicates that 68 percent of
the American public surveyed hears
more negative than positive stories
about teachers in the media,” she said.
The reports’ sponsors will be send-
ing a letter to each of the four textbook
publishers asking to discuss the issue in
person and to recommend more accu-
rate accounts of what labor has done.
Their hope is to encourage all publish-
ers and curriculum developers to take
another look at the social studies mate-
rials they have produced to correct these
kinds of inaccuracies and omissions.
“We urge all textbook companies
and authors to reconsider their treat-
ment of labor history and tell this cru-
cial part of the American story,” said
Eugenia Kemble, executive director of
the Albert Shanker Institute.
The report notes that the problem of
negative or incomplete coverage of the
labor movement in school textbooks
dates back at least to the New Deal era,
and that scholars began documenting
this biased treatment beginning in the
1960s. It concludes that U.S. history
texts have essentially “taken sides” in
the intense political debate around
unions — the anti-union side.
The report’s sponsors estimate 16
million currently enrolled public and
private high school students will never
be exposed to a serious account of la-
bor’s history.
“In order to fulfill their responsibili-
ties as citizens today, our students need
to understand the past sacrifice of
working men and women, individually
and through their unions, that gave us
the quality of life most of us still enjoy,”
said Paul Cole, executive director of the
American Labor Studies Center. “That
quality of life is threatened today by
well-funded anti-union groups.”
“The central argument of this report
is not simply to plead for equal treat-
ment for labor in history textbooks,”
Weingarten noted. “It is that American
history itself is incomplete and inaccu-
rate without labor history. Textbooks
that leave out or slant labor history sim-
ply aren’t fully reflecting our nation’s
history.”
The report reviewed hard-copy stu-
dent editions of textbooks published by
Harcourt/Holt (2009), Houghton Mif-
flin/McDougal (2009), McGraw
Hill/Glencoe (2010), and Pearson/Pren-
tice Hall (2010) for high school U.S.
history classes. It is designed to be both
a critique and a resource for teachers,
students, and others that can help fill in
the gaps left by many standard text-
books.
The full report is available at
www.shankerinstitute.org.
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