Should History Textbooks ‘Out’ LGBT Figures?
Breaking Newstags: education, gay history, textbooks, LGBT
By next fall, millions of K-8 students in California schools may be learning from history textbooks that astronaut Sally Ride was a lesbian, Walt Whitman was gay, and a Gold Rush-era stagecoach driver named Charley Parkhurst was born a woman but lived as a man.
California earlier this month became the first state in the country to adopt textbooks that highlight the contributions of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender to the development of the state and country.
As education officials debated the content of the books, LGBT advocates clashed with some publishers about how to describe the sexual orientation of people who in the past did not “out” themselves. With the adoption of the books, California set a precedent, one historical researchers continue to wrangle over.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- What Happens When SCOTUS is This Unpopular?
- Eve Babitz's Archive Reveals the Person Behind the Persona
- Making a Uranium Ghost Town
- Choosing History—A Rejoinder to William Baude on The Use of History at SCOTUS
- Alexandria, VA Freedom House Museum Reopens, Making Key Site of Slave Trade a Center for Black History
- Primary Source: Winning World War 1 By Fighting Waste at the Grocery Counter
- The Presidential Records Act Explains How the FBI Knew What to Search For at Mar-a-Lago
- Theocracy Now! The Forgotten Influence of L. Brent Bozell on the Right
- Janice Longone, Chronicler of American Food Traditions
- Revisiting Lady Rochford and Her Alleged Betrayal of Anne Boleyn