Evaluating history and social studies textbooks : some non-technical considerations

Abstract

The search for a set of universal criteria with which to evaluate history and social studies textbooks cannot be an easy one; indeed it seems doomed from the beginning. Criteria can be of many different kinds but even as one tries to enumerate them for these subjects one could find oneself challenged with a very fundamental question which, answered affirmatively, would abort the exercise even before it is begun: should one have textbooks in these subjects at all? As I hope to show later this is far from being an idle question or a red herring. At the same time such textbooks already exist, they are in ready demand from teachers, their number on the market is growing, and they are not likely to be drawn from circulation in the schools and from the market in the foreseeable future no matter what some pedagogists and theorists like myself may say. What may be encouraging, in some countries at least, is that teachers and the public today appear, in general, to be more discerning, more concerned about the quality of the books on offer, and perhaps more discriminating because there are so many text books and schemes around to choose from when they are involved in the choice. In other countries the choice is made for the teachers by a centralised public authority. But whoever chooses and whatever the choice, the existence of a situation where choice is necessary, of itself, creates a demand for guidance on how one should look at the competing textbooks on offer; for criteria of evaluation.