HISTORY: Text books

John Wonder says that my proposal for a collection of history textbooks may be asking for the impossible, since historians will go on giving their own version of history. True, but at least they would see whatever versions are being taught in other countries and could denounce evident falsehoods or omissions, such as the omission of any mention of the rape of Nanking in Japanese textbooks. I agree that, even though history textbooks are seedbeds of bloody conflict, most historians are too specialized to pay attention to the big issue of the war of textbooks.

David Pike in Paris can tell us if UNESCO in Paris is doing anything about history textbooks. Bienvenido Macario says that countries would gladly donate textbooks to the proposed collection. Certainly every country would want to have its own viewpoint represented in it. Some university should start it. Stanford would be a good place, since its Learning Lab. with its international network, could logically engage in the proposed study, in cooperation with the Institute for International Studies, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, the School of Education, the History Department, the various area programs and the overseas campuses..

Ronald Hilton - 7/23/00