This thesis is a study of the Native American experience as reflected in the grade school American history curriculum. The study was based on the analysis of American history textbooks used in the Washington Metropolitan Area public school systems for grades five through eight. Ten previously used textbooks, dating back to 1965, and ten currently used textbooks were used to compare the progression of Native American representation in textbooks over the last 30 years.
The reasons for my interest in the subject and what I aimed to accomplish by conducting this study are presented in the Introduction.
Chapter I comprises the textbook analysis, beginning with an outline of the methods I used to select the textbooks. A list of the 20 textbooks is included with the title, grade level, year published, and publisher of each textbook. Chapter I is divided into ten sections: Pre-Contact America; the Age of Exploration; Christopher Columbus and the 1492 Encounter; Pestilence; Population; Ecological Impact; Geopolitical Impact; Relations Between the Colonists and the Indians; the Indian Wars; and the Twentieth Century.
Chapter II is an overview of the current multicultural education debate and how the debate affects the inclusion of the Native American experience in the classroom. The arguments of both critics and proponents of multicultural education are presented. However, the middle ground of the debate, between the extreme left and right views, is where I concluded that the benefits of multiculturalism exist.
Chapter III overviews the extent to which multicultural education has been implemented in the Washington area school districts and offers suggestions for including the Native American experience in that implementation process.
While portrayal of the Native American experience in American history textbooks has improved considerably over the past 30 years, I concluded that it is still largely incomplete. All of the categories covered in Chapter I were incomplete in one sense or another, with the most damaging omissions in the Twentieth Century category: all of the textbooks either omit or only briefly treat contemporary Native American issues. Thus, students are left ignorant of the continuing Native American struggle, leading to an indifference toward present-day Native American issues.