Among the branches of study in Texas and Alabama for which law prescribed that there should be a uniform series of books was United States history, and in Alabama was added the history and constitution of the state.[115]
The most common regulation regarding textbooks pertained to the prohibition of books showing partisan, political or sectarian bias.[116] In the South, particularly, were such laws enacted. In February, 1890, a joint resolution “in relation to histories to be taught in the public schools of Mississippi” passed the legislature of that state. It urged “the utmost care in the selection and introduction of school histories,” in order to eliminate those considered “biased, prejudiced and unfair,” or that suppressed a “full, free and candid presentation of questions upon which the American people” had been “honestly divided,” and in the maintenance of which they had acted “according to the promptings of courage and honor.”[117]
Precisely the same motive actuated the lawmakers of Alabama later in establishing county school boards to select uniform series of textbooks for the public schools. These boards were instructed to avoid “textbooks containing anything partisan, prejudicial or inimical to the interests of the people of the State” or which would “cast a reflection on their past history.”[118]
Endorsement of history books favorable to the South was the burden of a resolution of Georgia, in 1866, which commended the Southern University series of school textbooks under the auspices of the University of Virginia from the pens of Captain M. F. Maury, Gilmore Simms, Honorable Charles Gayarre, Judge B. F. Porter, Professors Le Compte, Holmes, Venable, Schele, Devere, because they expressed a “correct sentiment.”[119] This particularism became more evident toward the close of the period as Southern legislatures threw off the influence of carpet-bag domination.
Maryland’s legislation of 1868 and South Carolina’s of 1870 declared that “school books shall contain nothing of a sectarian or partisan character.”[120] Virginia as early as 1849 had subscribed to a similar statement,[121] and in 1872 both North Carolina and Georgia forbade the use of books in the public schools which might partake of a “political” or “sectional” bias.[122]
In Georgia, the county boards were not permitted “to introduce into the schools any textbook or miscellaneous book of a sectarian or sectional character.”[123] A South Carolina law, pertaining to the general duties of the state superintendent of education, accepted the phraseology common to many laws regarding textbooks in forbidding “partisan” books or instruction.[124]
Partisan textbooks were also excluded from the schools of Alabama, Kansas, Arizona, Washington, and California.[125] In Idaho and Montana legislation stipulated the rejection of all books which would propagate “political” doctrines, and in Texas it provided that nothing of a sectional or partisan character should be included in the uniform series of textbooks selected.[126] In Kentucky the county board of examiners was given the task of selecting a uniform series of textbooks for the county providing that the selection did not include any books of “an immoral, sectional or sectarian character.”[127] The territory of Dakota legislating regarding school libraries forbade not only books unsuited “to the cultivation of good character and good morals and manners,” but all “partisan political pamphlets and books.”[128]
The evolution of laws respecting textbooks in this period indicated the tendency toward a spirit of localism. The South seized upon another opportunity in her legislation for textbooks to prohibit the teaching of a Northern viewpoint; nine states of the Confederacy passed laws prohibiting the use of “partisan” histories in their schools. The border state of Kentucky also forbade “sectional” textbooks, whereas the West attempted to exclude “partisan, political books.”[129] The laws passed by the North during the period dealt largely with the naming of textbooks to be used in the public schools.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Cf. Johnson, Henry, Teaching of History in Elementary and Secondary Schools (New York, 1915), ch. v; Russell, W. F., The Early Teaching of History in the Secondary Schools of New York and Massachusetts (Philadelphia, 1915). History was offered in states where there were not statutory requirements. The enumeration of these laws does not, moreover, indicate the amount of history studied.