Reviewing a middle-school book in social studies.

World Cultures
1995. 692 pages. ISBN of the student's edition: 0-382-32180-4.
Silver Burdett Ginn, 299 Jefferson Road, Parsippany, New Jersey
07054. (Silver Burdett Ginn is a part of the entertainment
company Viacom Inc.)

A Rehash of History,
with a Spurious Title

Jerry R. Williams

An introductory textbook about world cultures may be grounded in cultural anthropology or in cultural geography. In either event, however, it must start with some discussion of what constitutes "culture." The writers must explain at the outset that culture is a phenomenon shared by all peoples, and that it has identifiable components such as language and religion and social structure. After students have learned those fundamental ideas, the writers next must enumerate, define and illustrate the cultural traits that they will emphasize in describing cultures and comparing one culture with another. Only when this conceptual structure is in place can the writers begin to tell about specific cultures and specific societies.

Some writers describe and compare societies that are (or were) contemporaneous. Others consider societies that have existed at different times within a well defined temporal framework. In all cases, however, the writers must ensure that students are mindful of what culture is, of the cultural features that are being examined, and of what we can expect to gain from examining them.

The writers of this Silver Burdett Ginn book have not done any of these things, and World Cultures isn't a book about cultures. It is just a highly generalized version of world history, occasionally mixed with some geography -- and even when it is judged as a history text, it fails. It has too much obsolete "information," and the writers have sloppily combined new and old material in ways that create inconsistencies, blur the dimension of time, and distort historical relationships.

The book starts out with a "Map Skills Handbook" that presents basic concepts of geography. If it were done well, this would be a welcome feature in a history book. Unfortunately, it is done poorly -- and while I recognize that small maps can't show much detail, I can think of no excuse for the grossly inaccurate maps on pages 24 and 25. The illustrator should have obtained information from a real atlas.

After the "Handbook" comes a sixteen-page section called "Countries of the World," which lists the countries alphabetically and provides some "facts" about each -- e.g., capital city, area, population, population density, and most important export. This section also gives the first signal that the writers have reused old material that was outdated even in 1995, the year of the book's copyright. The student learns, for example, that there is a country called "Former Soviet Union" and another named "Former Yugoslavia." This might have been excusable in a history book published in 1992 -- but not in a book dated in 1995.

The bulk of the book forms six units: "Ancient Civilizations (to A.D. 476)," "The Growth of Civilizations (476-1453)," "Time of Change (1453-1820)," "Nationalism and Imperialism (1820-1900)," "Entering the Twentieth Century (1900-1975)" and "The World Today(1975-Present)." Those unit titles, by themselves, suffice to show that World Cultures is really a rehash of world history, with a spurious title.

World Cultures gives me the impression that Silver Burdett Ginn has hired too many writers but too few editors. If this book had been put through competent editing, it surely would not have retained so much temporal confusion. Chapter 1, "Early Civilizations," has a page about a landing of American astronauts on the Moon! Chapter 2, "Ancient Egypt," starts with three pages about the geography of modern Egypt, complete with a map showing the Aswan High Dam. Then, as the text tells how the ancient Egyptians used papyrus and sailed to "foreign lands," a photograph shows a modern barge on the Nile. Such mixing of modern geography with ancient history shows up in other chapters as well.

(Another feature of chapter 2 is that it contains the book's one and only mention of the concept of culture -- a single sentence on page 84.)

Throughout the book, the tables and charts lack dates. Perhaps the information that they present was accurate at one time or another, but we can't tell when.

More confusion is created in the short atlas at the back of the book, because the political map of Eurasia (pages 648 and 649) contradicts the "Countries of the World" section at the front of the book. The map in the atlas doesn't show any "Former Yugoslavia" but does show the states spawned by Yugoslavia's disintegration, such as Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. Likewise, the map doesn't show any "Former Soviet Union," but it does show the separate states that emerged after the Soviet Union collapsed: Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and so forth. The map cannot be used with the "Countries of the World" list, nor can it be used with the book's chapter about Europe and the empire that Russia used to rule; that chapter continues to speak about a huge entity called "the former Soviet Union."

The ten-page gazetteer at the back of the book is helpful in locating places mentioned in the text, and the glossary is useful too. The glossary even tells, correctly, that the acronym OPEC stands for Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. This is an improvement over what the writers say in chapter 25 of the main text, where OPEC allegedly denotes "Organization of Petroleum Exporting Nations"!

World Cultures has been hastily pulled together by people who evidently lack any commitment to the standards which we, as teachers, set for our own students. Even as a history book, it will not do.

This "Cultures" Book
Is Bogus and Useless

Sara Thompson

This book seems to have been cobbled together from pieces of old geography texts and world-history texts. It presents a whirlwind tour across continents and time, with only the most superficial glimpses at peoples or events. The West receives more elaborate treatment than do the other parts of the world -- but in the end, no peoples or historical periods stand out from the general blur.

World Cultures has a 1995 copyright, but it already is long out- of-date. In this book, Nelson Mandela has not yet become the head of state in South Africa. Japan is still enjoying its "economic miracle" of the 1980s. Cuba is in good condition, and "poverty has been largely eliminated"; apparently, the Soviet Union's aid to Cuba hasn't yet come to an end. But the Soviet Union itself apparently has come to an end and has changed into Russia. The Silver Burdett Ginn writers continually call Russia "the former Soviet Union," sometimes to hilarious effect (as we shall see).

Besides failing to teach about cultures, and besides being obsolete, World Cultures does not live up to claims put forth in Silver Burdett Ginn's catalogue:

• The catalogue says that World Cultures "Promotes geographic literacy." To be fair, I must report that the book does provide a wealth of maps, which are well integrated with the text. For example, an appropriate map appears alongside a passage about the spread of Islam, and there is a useful map near a passage about Napoleon's ill-fated (and in this book, ill-described) invasion of Russia.

  But this book also does much to promote geographic confusion. For instance:

  A "Countries of the World" section, near the front of the book, lists such "countries" as "Former Yugoslavia," "Former Czechoslovakia" and the aforementioned "Former Soviet Union" (with their capitals at Belgrade and Prague and Moscow). Other than the writers' sheer laziness, there is no reason why these things should appear in a book with a 1995 copyright.

  On page 166 we learn that China has "the world's highest mountains." In fact, the world's highest mountains rise in the Himalayan range, which includes Everest, Anapurna and K2 among its peaks. This range isn't confined to China; it spreads across the borders of China, Nepal and Pakistan.

  On page 293 students are asked to read a color-coded elevation map and to find "the land elevation around the Grand Canyon." According to the color on the map, the elevation is between 2,000 and 5,000 feet. In reality, the elevation at the top of the Canyon ranges from 6,500 feet (along the south rim) to 8,500 feet (along the north rim).

  These mistakes exemplify the writers' general sloppiness in handling geographic matters.

• The catalogue says that World Cultures "Incorporates classic and contemporary literature." I hoped that this claim would be true, since literature can enrich our understanding of historical issues and of peoples' values. But World Cultures merely offers us seven brief excerpts from large works, such as the Torah, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and Don Quixote. Because the excerpts are so short, it is difficult to extract anything of value from them, and Silver Burdett Ginn's writers have not integrated them with the book's text; nor have the writers discussed how literature can be used as a source of historical or cultural information.

• The catalogue says that World Cultures "Presents history as a well-told story of people in time and place." Among all of Silver Burdett Ginn's claims, this is the most specious. As the writers dash through all of human history, they render every people's story into a bland mush, and they ignore the drama, passion and controversy that make history come alive. Here is a representative paragraph, on page 151, which supposedly describes what happened after the death of Caesar Augustus:

  Augustus' successors were made up of both weak and strong rulers. By the year 192 the Roman army took over the right to elect its commanders as emperors. These men were soldiers with little or no education. As a result, the empire weakened. The government was too weak to protect the roads from robbers and the sea from pirates. Commerce fell, while taxes rose.

  On the next page the writers tell the reasons for the fall of the Empire:

  [It was not only] outside invaders that weakened the Roman Empire; the weakening of Rome was also the result of internal problems. Economic problems developed as a result of increased taxes. These taxes were needed to support the army. The increased taxes made trading less profitable. . . .

Are you still awake? These passages have nothing to interest a middle-school student or any other reader -- not because the material is too difficult or abstract, but because all of the color and complexity have been bleached out of it.

Sometimes the book's pervasive dullness is relieved by a passage so bad that it is startling. Here's an item from page 204:

The Byzantine Empire [in the 5th century] was the center of Christianity in Eastern Europe, just as Rome was the center in the West. Christian missionaries spread the message of Christ to the Slavic people of central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

"The former Soviet Union"? In the 5th century? Evidently some writer found some old material about Byzantine missionaries in Russia, then made it conform to Silver Burdett Ginn's practice of labeling Russia "the former Soviet Union" -- even though the result is quite hilarious. In fact, even the notion that Byzantine missionaries traveled to Russia is hilarious. The state that we now call Russia did not acquire its modern name (Rossiya) until the 1700s, during the reign of Peter the Great.

Peter the Great, incidentally, makes an appearance in World Cultures. The writers tell us that he visited western Europe, invited foreigners to visit Russia, built a navy, and built St. Petersburg. Then they say:

Unfortunately, Peter's reforms affected only the top layer of Russian society. The way of life for the great majority of Russians remained unchanged for many years after Peter's reign ended. [page 368]

Why this should strike the writers as unfortunate isn't explained. What strikes me as unfortunate is that the paragraph is meaningless. It is meaningless because the book gives no description whatsoever of any "way of life" in Russia, either before or during Peter's time. The reader can only guess at how any Russians may have lived.

As a final example of this book's negligent, outdated treatment of history, let me quote a short passage about Japan's Tokugawa period:

After a history full of wars, Japan enjoyed almost 250 years of peace under the Tokugawa shoguns. But their practices maintained the system as it was, keeping foreign influences out of Japan. At a time when Europe was rapidly developing a modern civilization based on scientific and technological progress, Japan for the most part stood still. [page 340]

Here the writers are just reciting an old formula that was discredited long ago. As all recent scholarship has shown, Japan in the Tokugawa era saw rapid urbanization, the development of a brilliant urban culture, the establishment of a money economy, and the attainment of a literacy rate that was probably the highest in the world. Moreover, Japan's evolution during the Tokugawa period created the conditions that would favor rapid modernization during the succeeding Meiji period. In no sense is it correct to say that Japan "stood still" in the time of the Tokugawa shoguns, for this was a time of national growth and cultural flowering.

It's a Mockery
In Every Sense

William J. Bennetta

I previously have reviewed several such books for TTL, including a memorable high-school text that was published by Prentice Hall and was called World Cultures: A Global Mosaic. That book did not have anything to do with cultures, and it did not provide any account of any culture anywhere. It was just a load of scraps (most of which had evidently been clipped from old history books), and it was entirely untainted by any awareness of what cultures are, what the term culture means, or how cultures are studied. (See the reviews of World Cultures: A Global Mosaic in The Textbook Letter, March-April 1994.)

I'd seen fake books before, but I found the Prentice Hall product to be something special. By printing a book that didn't even try to deal with its declared subject, Prentice Hall seemed to have set a new standard for sleaziness. The company also seemed to have made an especially bold declaration that it viewed its prospective customers as suckers.

Now Prentice Hall's achievements have been matched by Silver Burdett Ginn -- which is, like Prentice Hall, a part of Viacom Inc. Silver Burdett Ginn's World Cultures mimics the Prentice Hall book in every important respect. Once again I see a "world cultures" book that does not have anything to do with cultures, does not provide any account of any culture anywhere, and does not show any recognition of what cultures are, or of how cultures are studied. Again I see a worthless jumble of scraps, apparently clipped from old history books. And again I see a book that seems to ridicule the people to whom it supposedly will be sold.

I see something else, too. Like Prentice Hall's book, this one has various passages in which the writers obscure or erase the distinction between history and legend, between fact and folklore. For example:

• On page 52 the writers conflate myth and legend with oral history, and in their glossary they do it again: They claim that oral history means "The history or traditions of a people handed down from one generation to another by word of mouth." That is just false; the writers have applied the name oral history to folklore. Oral history is, by definition, a record of a person's oral account of his own observations or experiences -- his account of things that he himself saw or did. It isn't a recitation of a creation myth, a fairy tale, a traditional belief, a traveling-salesman joke, or any other kind of hearsay. Nor is there any oral history "of a people." An item of oral history can only be ascribed (and indeed must be ascribed) to a discrete, identified individual.

• On page 154, at the beginning of an effort to promote Christian religious beliefs as historical facts, the writers declare that "Practically all that is known about Jesus" comes from "four books called the Gospels, or `Good News'." Then the writers summarize several Gospel narratives, including the ones in which "Jesus rose from the dead [three days after he was crucified], appeared to his followers, and told them to preach his message to all the world" -- as if those miracle-stories present things that are "known" and factual! What an abomination! By falsely representing the Gospels as historical documents, and by concealing everything that New Testament scholars have learned about the Gospels during the past 100 years, the Silver Burdett Ginn writers have made their purposes unmistakable.

• In their zeal to preach, the writers present as fact a miracle-story that was set forth by the 4th-century Christian writer Eusebius; it is the notorious story in which Eusebius claimed that the emperor Constantine had told him about a "vision" of a flaming cross in the sky. The Silver Burdett Ginn writers explicitly refer to Constantine's vision as a historical "event," and they characterize Eusebius as a "Roman historian" (without disclosing that he was one of Constantine's sycophants). Worst of all, they omit the most memorable aspect of Eusebius's narrative, which is this: Eusebius himself recognized that his cross-in-the-sky story was lame, so he tried to prop it up with a line that only a sycophant and apologist could write --

  If anyone else reported [seeing a miraculous sign in the sky] it would not be easy to believe, but when the victorious emperor himself confirmed it on oath in writing to the author of this narrative many years later when I was judged worthy of his acquaintance and conversation, who would hesitate to credit the story?

  I would answer: Nearly everyone, excepting the hopelessly credulous.

Jerry R. Williams, a specialist in cultural geography, is a professor in the Department of Geography at California State University, Chico. He is also a district coordinator for the California Geographic Alliance, which supports the teaching of geography in the public schools, and he has directed various teacher-education projects.

Sara Thompson is a high-school social-studies teacher and curriculum-development consultant. Her most recent project has been the writing of a curriculum about contemporary Japan for the Laurasian Institution (Atlanta, Illinois). She lives and works in Flagstaff, Arizona.

William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes frequently about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in schoolbooks.

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