The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has switched out a controversial middle school history text book.
The School boards held a series of work sessions in Seward on May 4 during which they reviewed the replacement text book, “American History: Beginnings through Reconstruction”.
Board President Joe Arness…
Arness: “Some of the books that we had out of that series were books that we weren’t supposed to have. They had a section in them that we didn’t want and we went back to the publisher and asked them to replace those and they said, ‘Well, we don’t have enough of those to replace them, but what we do have is the new version coming out this spring and we’ll give you an entire new set of these for free.’ And it’s actually a much less objectionable book. It doesn’t have nearly the political overtones in it.”
The incorrect texts, “America: History of Our Nation, Beginning in 1877”, were intended for students in Texas and included a “politicized” epilogue and prologue.
Fellow Board Member Penny Vadla, a former English teacher, started reading the textbook when parents called about concerns the books emphasized a Republican Christian perspective…
Vadla: “And I found inaccuracies mostly in the beginning and mostly in the end, but they were interspersed throughout the book in relation to the commandments, in relation to Martin Luther King [Jr.]. The only mention they have of Kennedy, John F. Kennedy is that he was assassinated. Five words and then they go right into Lyndon B. Johnson, who is also a Democrat, but he’s from Texas.”
The publisher, Prentice Hall, provided the replacements at no cost to the district and included some supplemental texts.