[scott_s]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to plug "The Children" by David Halberstam: http://www.amazon.com/Children-David-Halberstam/dp/044900439...

Instead of following the historical figures that you know best, such as King, it follows the students who were the ground troops in the civil rights movement. What Halberstam makes abundantly clear is how dangerous what they were doing was. Simply, they could have been killed. Some of them very nearly were. And there were people killed, but they obviously weren't around for Halberstam to interview. The corollary to that is he drives home how naked some of the violence against the protestors was.

Something I took away is how sanitized the teaching of the civil rights movement has become. By doing that, we diminish what those young people actually did, and we conveniently forget how cruel humans can be.

Personally, I think history is best taught when it has a narrative. Hence, textbooks are not good at teaching history. Books with a focused topic - which hopefully implies a focused narrative - are much more compelling. I recognize that's probably not helpful to a high school teacher. I started reading history books, on my own, in college.

[hugh3]

Personally, I think history is best taught when it has a narrative. Hence, textbooks are not good at teaching history

I disagree. Teaching history as a narrative is the most dangerous thing you can do with history, because there's always the temptation to shoehorn it into a narrative. Good guys vs bad guys. Heroes and villains. Plucky underdogs vs arrogant empires. The human mind is stupid, and there's only a certain number of narratives which "feel" right to us, and the moment you start reducing reality in its vast complexity so it sounds like a good story, you've lost most of what was going on.

For example, what you just said:

What Halberstam makes abundantly clear is how dangerous what they were doing was. Simply, they could have been killed. Some of them very nearly were. And there were people killed, but they obviously weren't around for Halberstam to interview. The corollary to that is he drives home how naked some of the violence against the protestors was.

What about the violence committed by the protestors? Were there no evil acts committed by folks on the "good" side of this conflict? I assume there were (there always are) but these get left behind in the search of the simplified one-liner version of the "Civil Rights struggle" narrative.

History as narrative is more entertaining than real history, but it's also a lot less accurate. You might as well just watch Star Wars.

[scott_s]

The civil rights movement was rare in that the protestors did not commit violent acts - at least not the ones that were followed. These were people who were committed to non-violence as a principle. Why this is true is an interesting discussion unto itself; they spent months studying non-violent protest and had to mentally and physically prepare themselves to be attacked and not retaliate. While I did not agree with their reasons all the time, I have to conclude that in this instance, the tactic of non-violence was extremely effective. However, I think it's only possible when there is already an existing culture of the rule of law - or, at least, lip service to it.

He does, however, give rather complete biographies of many of the people involved, and they were not saints. Several suffered from depression, one's behavior with women earned him scorn, and another's naked political ambitions were distasteful to many others. (That "one" was Marion Barry.)

Reading one narrative is potentially dangerous. But when you read many books on a single subject, it allows you to compare and contrast what different authors say about the same thing.

Anyway, history textbooks are distilled from the kinds of books I'm talking about, so I find your complaint rather odd.