The Ideology Of The Text

Looking back on the original period of school formation in her study of American history textbooks, America Revised, Frances Fitzgerald remarked on the profound changes that emerged following suggestions issued by sociologists and social thinkers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The original history of our institutions and the documents which protect our unique liberties gradually began to be effaced. Fitzgerald raises the puzzle of textbook alteration:

The ideology that lies behind these texts is rather difficult to define [...] it does not fit the usual political patterns [...] the texts never indicate any line of action [...] they actually confused the social sciences with science [...] the inquiry text permits authors to avoid what they choose to, and some of them avoid the main issues [...] In the days of Muzzey, American history had gentlemen, shysters, hotheads, statesmen, and fools; it now has only cipher people, who say very little and think nothing — who have no passions and no logic [...] no conflicts, but only"problems" created by no one.[p.176 →]

Indeed, the texts may be unfathomable, and that may be the editorial intent.