Tag Archives: textbooks

Those VA History textbooks

There has been a lot of reporting  about the many many errors in the history texts used in the  Virginia public schools, including the really nasty one about the black confederates but many many more.  But what’s really terrible about it isn’t the wrong dates. It’s the complete lack of historical argument. I spent some […]

Virginia and the Black Confederates

Recently the news was full of the fact that VA’s fourth grade history textbook described large numbers of black men serving in uniform for the confederacy. The claim is these slaves were loyal to their masters and fought to preserve slavery. This is simply absurd: it’s wishful thinking. It’s true that late in the war, […]