Virginia History Texts Filled with Errors

Having served on the Standards of Learning committee that helped map out some of the requirements for Virginia history and social studies classes back in the mid-1990's, I am shocked but at the same time not surprised by recent articles such as the one in today's Washington Post that many of the history textbooks in use in Virginia are filled with errors. Personally, the problem stems from three main sources - (1) publishers such as the apparently incompetent Five Ponds Press which fail to have legitimate historians on staff or as review experts, (2) state review panels principally comprised of teachers who lack adequate subject matter expertise to even recognize error, and (3) college and universities education programs that put more emphasis on "education courses" at the expense of any subject matter knowledge. In Virginia, someone like myself with a high GPA history degree from the state's flagship university and a law degree from the same university cannot teach history in any Virginia public school because I did not take a batch of Micky Mouse education courses. With all of the talk of reforming public education in this country, one crucial requirement should be making sure that teachers have actual subject expertise. Here are highlights from the Post story:
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In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).
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These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.
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"I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes - wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?" said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College. He reviewed "Our Virginia: Past and Present." In his recommendation to the state, Heinemann wrote, "This book should be withdrawn from the classroom immediately, or at least by the end of the year."
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State officials plan to meet Jan. 10 to review the historians' concerns. "The findings of these historians have certainly underscored and added urgency to the need to address the weaknesses in our system so we don't have glaring historical errors in our books," said Charles Pyle, a spokesman for Virginia's Department of Education.
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The department approves textbooks after panels of reviewers, often elementary school teachers, verify that the books cover each of the Standards of Learning themes. Experts in particular subject matters also sometimes review books. . . . Teachers are not reading textbooks front to back, and they're not in a position to identify the kinds of errors that historians could identify," Pyle said.
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The fifth reviewer, DePaul University sociology professor Christopher Einolf . .. said many of the other books neglect key elements, such as the role of African Americans in 19th-century Virginia. "Making a mistake is one thing. Ignoring the role that African Americans played in the state is almost as bad," Einolf said.
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Historian Mary Miley Theobald, a former Virginia Commonwealth University professor, reviewed "Our America" and concluded that it was "just too shocking for words." "Any literate person could have opened that book and immediately found a mistake," she said.
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Theobald's list of errors spanned 10 pages, including inaccurate claims that men in Colonial Virginia commonly wore full suits of armor and that no Americans survived the Battle of the Alamo. Most historians say that some survived.