American History Textbook Analysis

As educators are working to use primary sources, historians can create another textbook so that they have more room to bring back more about people like Columbus who have more to do with how America was started. FitzGerald stated that the characters of people like Columbus are being reconstructed, but she believes that keeping the originality of history is important as it should be fact. Historians should be able to keep the originality of the characters, but still be able to add stories or pictures that help the students understand the concept that is being taught.
The technology that is available in today’s world is amazing, teacher’s pull up a program on their computer and use a special pen on their whiteboard to run the program. Students
In the article, Pictures Have Now Become a Necessity: The Use of Images in American History Textbooks, Masur states that “marketing experts understand that students today are visually aware in ways different from previous generations” (1409). This statement shows that students today have different tastes when it comes to visualizing a concept. FitzGerald discussed how the images she had in her textbook were images from the time period being discussed, meanwhile more current textbooks had images that were more modern and graphic. FitzGerald commented about a picture from a more current textbook “…ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine” (788). Figure 1 below, shows a picture like the one FitzGerald described. She uses this statement as she explains how some images are presented in more current history books. Her concern with images such as the one described, is that it shows how unpleasant American history is coming across. For a younger class, images that are seemingly unpleasant should not be shown, but for older classes, showing more graphic images may be the best way to keep or get a student’s attention about the