He and other historians say it appears in texts as a stress on group identities, race, class, and gender, emphasizing the history of ordinary people rather than elites. It can include different ideas about America's past, often highlighting the nation's shortfalls and unfinished business, they say. So far, not much is known about the new textbooks. Legislators, educators, and interest groups are scrutinizing a few elementary and secondary texts that entered the adoption process this year. Multiculturalism was one of the central issues in that debate.
Social studies is ripe for pressure from a multitude of special interest groups.
It's the most difficult area to publish in, no question about it. After a vigorous debate seven years ago, California adopted just one history textbook series, published by Houghton Mifflin of Boston. It will not be easy. Representatives of California's native American community, for example, say they will watch how any textbook depicts Father Serra, a Roman Catholic founder of the California missions who mistreated Indians in the 1800s. Analysis of history texts since the '60s shows a rising proportion of women and minorities replacing traditional figures in Western civilization, Mr. Lerner says.