Human Heritage: A World History
Human Heritage also shuns most of the pedagogic innovations that
have been introduced into the teaching of history during the last
decade, such as activities aimed at helping students to develop
their intellectual skills. By furnishing only a meager selection
of skill-building activities, Human Heritage harks back to the
history books that were common twenty or thirty years ago.
(Some non-Western peoples -- the Nok, the Zhou, the Guptas and
the Maoris, for example -- turn up in twelve "Culture Close-up"
sections, but the sections will probably do more to mislead
students than to teach them. The "Culture Close-up" pages are
given largely to pictures of artifacts (with little text about
the humans who brought the artifacts into being), and they seem
to be afterthoughts. The things that are depicted or mentioned
on these pages are not listed in the book's index, and the book's
main text doesn't provide cross-references to the "Culture
Close-up" material.)
The book's resolutely Western approach is reflected not only in
its scope but also in its historical perspective. Even when the
writers deal with the modern period (i.e., the past few
centuries), they view non-Western societies chiefly as substrates
for Western colonialism and imperialism. We learn that such
societies were less developed than Western nations were, in
economic terms, but we read little else about them. One need not
be a militant advocate of "multiculturalism" to regret the
writers' nearly complete failure to discuss indigenous peoples in
the modern period, or the nearly complete failure to tell how
indigenous peoples were wiped out by warfare and disease during
their confrontations with Western colonizers.
One virtue of Human Heritage is that its chronology is focused,
emphasizing basic social and political matters. The
chronological flow does not get lost in masses of details, as can
happen when textbook-writers insist on plodding through
successions of monarchs and dynasties. In Human Heritage the
discussion of European feudalism, for example, gives a vivid
picture of the feudal way of life. An engaging aspect of social
history turns up in a list of rules governing "Renaissance
Manners" -- for example, "Do not stick out your tongue, rub hands
together, or groan out loud." This material (which seems to have
come from the first volume of The History of Manners, by the
German sociologist Norbert Elias) is invariably fascinating to
students and teachers alike. Unfortunately, Glencoe's writers
have failed to exploit its pedagogic potential; they should have
asked students and teachers to consider what those rules tell us
about how people lived differently in Renaissance times.
As far as historical accuracy is concerned, Human Heritage seems
neither better nor worse than other books. Some of the errors
are superficial: On page 372, for example, the writers repeat
the long-discredited belief that, in medieval Europe, girls from
noble families "were often married by the time they were 12 years
old"; and on page 439 they invent the strange claim that Venice
did not feel the influence of the Renaissance until the late
1500s. Deeper problems stem from the writers' avoidance of
theological ideas in their discussions of religion. Medieval
Christianity is presented more as a way of life than as a set of
beliefs about the supernatural. In the writers' account of the
English Civil War (page 505) the Puritans and the Anglicans seem
to differ only in moral respects.
Exercises labeled "Critical Thinking" appear in the review
sections in Human Heritage, but they are not very productive.
Too many of them seem fanciful or unrealistic. (In chapter 28,
for instance, the student reads two sentences about Rabelais: "He
believed that humans were not tied down by their past and could
do whatever they wished. In his most popular book, The
Adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais's main
characters were two comical giants." Then the student is
supposed to answer this question: "How do you think people of the
time reacted to Rabelais's ideas?") And some of the "Critical
Thinking" items are just plain silly. (Example: "What things
about your life today would be different if the people of
Mesopotamia had not invented the things they had?")
The student who uses Human Heritage is supposed to keep a
"journal" of notes, and the introduction to each unit suggests a
topic. Most of the topics are so general, however, that the
student will need considerable supervision and guidance in
note-taking. In the unit on the late Middle Ages, for example, the
"Journal Notes" suggestion says: "What was life like during the
late Middle Ages? Note details about it as you read." In the
next unit: "What changes took place in western Europe between
1300 and 1600? Note details about them as you read." These are
not easy undertakings for an unguided 7th-grade student.
Some of the sidebars in Human Heritage are lists, each occupying
much or all of a page. There is a list of Roman emperors, a list
of Norse gods, a list of recent scientists, and so on. But the
lists aren't cast as lessons or used in lessons, and it is hard
to see what the teacher might do with them. Again, the Glencoe
writers have presented raw material without trying to develop its
pedagogic potential.
The book's major pedagogic successes spring from the fact that
the writers have taken geography seriously and have tried to
show connections between geography and history. Maps are used
extensively and are sometimes coupled to skill-building
exercises. On page 511, for example, two "American Revolution"
maps appear in a lesson called "Reading a Military Map." On page
657, a map of contemporary world population serves as the basis
for a lesson on "Reading a Demographic Map." Some of the maps in
Human Heritage, however, are hard to read because the colors --
the browns and oranges especially -- are hard to differentiate.
(See, for instance, "The Religions of Europe," on page 463.) And
the atlas at the back of the book does not have any climate maps
or natural-resource maps, though such maps are common in other
world-history textbooks.
It seems to me that Glencoe's writers have sought to satisfy two
contrary criteria. First, they evidently have tried to sustain
the traditional view that "world history" means a survey of the
political and social history of Western lands; but at the same
time, they have tried to comply with current fashion, and have
tried to make their book look up-to-date, by adding a little
material about some non-Western societies. Not unexpectedly,
this attempted compromise between tradition and faddism has given
rise to a book that lacks coherence, lacks continuity, and lacks
a point of view.
Nowhere in Human Heritage do we find any references to the
scientific or artistic revolutions associated with the names of
Freud, Picasso, Joyce, Stravinsky, Einstein, or Watson and Crick.
Some other major omissions deserve notice. The text rightly
points to the use of African slaves by Europeans, starting in the
1500s, but it fails to tell about the widespread use of such
slaves, long before 1500, in the Muslim countries of the Middle
East. It also fails to tell that Muslim traders, such as those
that Vasco da Gama encountered in East Africa in 1497, dealt not
only in "cloves, pepper, gold, silver, pearls, and precious
stones" (page 470) but in black slaves as well. Because of these
omissions, Glencoe's book reinforces a common and false
impression, which Thomas Sowell has described as "the impression
that slavery is something created by or for one particular race."
[See "Where Did Slavery Come
From?" in this issue of The Textbook Letter.]
Another glaring defect is the total omission of substantive
information about American blacks in the years since 1865 --
their status as a persecuted minority, their political struggle
to secure their civil rights, and their musical, literary, and
other contributions to American culture.
Along with omissions, I find many errors of fact, a few of which
are hereby corrected:
Page 101: Glencoe's writers are wrong when they claim that the
Philistines were Phoenicians. Page 207: Most (not just "many")
words in Spanish, French and Italian derive from Latin, while
about half of the words in English derive from Latin or French.
Page 248: Among the ancient Romans, the extreme penalty of
crucifixion was reserved for treason or other high crimes, and it
was applied only to persons who were not Roman citizens. (To
suggest that crucifixion was merely a way of killing "lower-class
criminals" is inaccurate.) Page 505: Generally, the Cavaliers
comprised the gentry, the Anglican clergy and the peasantry,
mainly from northern and west-central England; the Roundheads
consisted of the great merchants, many of the great nobles, and
members of the middle class, mainly from East Anglia, northern
England, and London. Page 604: World War 1 certainly was not
"the first war where civilians . . . were also attacked." (Most
wars before 1500, and numerous wars thereafter, had included the
killing, wounding, torturing and raping of civilians.) Page 611:
During the civil war in the Soviet Union (1918 to 1920), the
Whites consisted largely of Tsarists and Cossacks, along with
separatists from Ukraine and the Caucasus. (The text is wrong
when it equates the Whites with the Mensheviks.)
Aside from its comparative brevity and its strong Western slant,
this book's most striking feature is its idiosyncratic style of
prose. The Glencoe writers, evidently trying to keep their
language plain, use a style that combines numbingly simple
syntax, peculiar diction, muddled phrasing, and a propensity to
suggest questions without answering them. As a result, their
text is often opaque or puzzling rather than transparent. Let me
cite a few examples. On page 29 we read that Mary Leakey "worked
with her husband until his 1972 death." (What were the dates of
his other deaths?) On page 59: "Part of the Gilgamesh story
tells of a great flood that covered the whole world. The account
of the flood is very much like the biblical story of Noah and the
ark." (Is this really just a quirky coincidence? Or is there
some explanation for the similarities between the two tales?)
On page 362 we find that Ghengis Khan "improved many areas."
(Geographical areas? Areas of endeavor? And how were they
"improved"?) On page 417: "[During the Hundred Years' War] the
French arrows were not as sharp as the steel-tipped English
arrows." (Why not? Didn't the French know how to make steel?
Didn't they know how to sharpen a steel weapon?) On page 612:
"In Ukraine, Stalin caused famine to control the people." (How
did such a sentence get past any editor's desk?)
The writing in Human Heritage is also marked by lifeless
understatements, such as "Pharaohs were treated with great
respect" (page 71) or "The [Roman Catholic] Church did not like
being brought under state authority" (page 518).
Human Heritage gives a decent amount of space to old-fashioned
social history, so we learn a great deal about daily life among
some peoples of the past. We learn about the lands they
inhabited, the foods they ate and the jobs they performed, and
sometimes we even learn about their recreations, houses and
attire. This is all to the good, for it adds some vitality and
immediacy to what otherwise would be a fairly dry account of
political, diplomatic and military history. On this score I
particularly recommend the passages about the Etruscans, the
early Germans, and the medieval European nobility.
Finally, I praise the writers' handling of geography. The
conventional five themes of geography are set forth in chapter
1; then all but the theme of "Regions" are extensively
illustrated in the rest of the book. The writers typically
introduce particular civilizations or peoples by providing maps
and descriptive paragraphs that reflect the theme of "Location,"
and there are various passages that resonate with the theme of
"Movement" (which deals with connections among people and
places). Especially noteworthy is the section on the Etruscans:
Besides telling that the Etruscans drained marshes and built
fortified towns on hilltops, the text tells what the Etruscans
learned about military matters from the Greeks, and it tells some
of the social, political and religious customs that the
Etruscans passed on to the Romans.
Despite such occasional achievements, however, Human Heritage is,
as a whole, a failure. I do not recommend this book as a
teaching text, much less as a text that allegedly covers world
history.
William Weber, a specialist in modern European history, is a
professor in the Department of History at California State
University, Long Beach, and an editor of The History Teacher, the
quarterly of the Society for History Education.
Charles Paul, a specialist in cultural history, is a professor of
humanities, emeritus, from San Jose State University. He has
published scholarly articles on literature and music, and he has
written a book, Science and Immortality, about the science and
the scientists of 18th-century France.
Reviewing a high-school book in world history
1995. 696 pages. ISBN of the student's edition: 0-02-823187-2.
Glencoe Division, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing
Company, 936 Eastwind Drive, Westerville, Ohio 43081.
(This company is a division of McGraw-Hill, Inc.)
A Misnamed, Outdated Book,
Preoccupied with WesternersWilliam Weber
Human Heritage: A World History is an attractive, approachable
textbook, advertised for use in grades 6 through 12. It
provides a smooth, chronological account of history, written in a
way that is suitable for middle-school students or for
high-school students whose reading abilities are limited. This book,
however, does not deserve to carry the subtitle A World History,
because it follows a traditional path and pays little attention
to anything but the history of the West. In this respect, it
differs considerably from most of the other texts that have been
published in recent years.
As a whole, Human Heritage offers desperately little discussion
of regions other than Europe, North America, and the colonial
outposts of European or North American nation-states. The
opening chapters take the usual route from Mesopotamia to Egypt
to Greece, but we find only ten pages about peoples of the
"Eastern River Valleys" (the valleys of the Indus and the Huang
Ho), fifteen pages on the early peoples of "Africa and the
Americas," fifteen on Islam and the early Islamic states, and
thirteen on "The Eastern Slavs." The rest of Human Heritage is
strictly a history of Western civilization and the extension of
that civilization into other parts of the world.
Pedagogic Defects
A Failed Attempt to Mix
Tradition with Faddism
Charles B. Paul
Human Heritage: A World History is the most idiosyncratic of the
eight world-history books that I've reviewed for The Textbook
Letter. It is only 696 pages long (while the average length of
the seven other books was nearly 900 pages), and it is strongly
focused on the West. Of the 39 chapters in Human Heritage, 30
deal entirely with Middle Eastern, European, or North American
civilizations. Only four chapters are given entirely to
civilizations in other parts of the world. The main text is
augmented by twelve "Culture Close-up" sections, but these do
nothing to relieve the book's heavy Western emphasis. They
merely present tidbits about such peoples as the Australian
aborigines, the Nok of West Africa, the Khmer of Southeast Asia,
or the Maori of New Zealand.
In a book that is so heavily slanted toward Western civilization,
it's surprising to find that no more than ten pages are devoted
to material about the West's fine arts, literature and
philosophy. The book's treatment of the history of science is
even thinner -- so thin that it is virtually worthless. Some
ancient Greek thinkers are covered on pages 187 through 190; then
the Scientific Revolution is dispatched in five short (not always
accurate) paragraphs, on pages 523 and 525, which mention
Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. A few other scientists -- such
as Harvey, Lavoisier, Dalton and Darwin -- are named in a chart
on page 524, but they are not mentioned in the book's text. (The
chart's description of Darwin consists of one evasive phrase:
"advanced theory on development of plants and animals, 1858."
This seems to be a relic from the days when many textbook-writers
devised false statements and false synonyms to avoid using the
word evolution. The great theory that Darwin put forth in 1858
and 1859 dealt with organic evolution, not with organic
development. The term development is not a synonym for
evolution, and the note about Darwin in Human Heritage is false.)
Given all the defects of content and style in Human Heritage, is
there anything in this book that deserves commendation? Yes,
there is, for the writers sometimes do an excellent job of
summing up a culture or of gathering different historical strands
together. I particularly commend the passages about these
topics: the ancient Persians; the Catholic Church's influence on
daily life and on politics during the Middle Ages; the Crusades
and their effects on European political and economic life; the
causes of 19th-century imperialism; and the Nazi effort to
exterminate Jews, Gypsies and numerous Slavic peoples.
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