Columbus not only sent the first slaves acroiss the Atlantic, he sent more slaves than any other individual

So long as our textbooks hide from us the roles that people of color have played in exploration, from at least 6000 BC to the twentieth century, they encourage us to look to Europe and its extensions as the seat of all knowledge and intelligence. So long as they say “discover,” they imply that whites are the only people who really matter. So long as they simply celebrate Columbus, rather than teach both sides of his exploit, they encourage us to identify with white Western exploitation rather than study it.

Many Americans have never owned a book, and I'm not talking about because of the recent digital revolution. I'm talking about before there even was a digital revolution.

Nobody would ever want to read a textbook about the Civil War and then interrupt that for two pages about water rights in the west.

The layout of textbooks, I think, has been done with an assumption that students don't read.

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.

All of the common core standards stuff about critical reading and critical thinking and so on can only be positive.