Prentice Hall World History: Connections to Today
The most important changes seen in the 1999 version pertain to the
book's pedagogic features. These have been improved
significantly.
The narrative in the first seven units, dealing with history prior
to 1945, shows only minimal revisions. Most of the changes have
involved the altering of a few words to rectify factual errors that
appeared in the 1997 version. For example, Urdu is now described
as "a marriage of Persian, Arabic, and Hindi," rather than as a
blending of only Persian and Hindi (page 274). Marco Polo now is
credited with two trips to China, rather than one (page 316). The
biblical account of creation is correctly described as spanning
"six days," not seven (page 571). The 19th-century European
characterization of the Ottoman Empire is correctly rendered as
"the sick man of Europe," not "the dying man" (page 597). And
Liberia has been added to the short list of nations that maintained
their independence during the scramble for Africa (page 639).
In Unit 8, "The World Today" -- which deals with the years since
1945 -- the revisions are somewhat more conspicuous, and the
writers have mentioned some developments that occurred between
late 1995 and mid-1997. Some of the timelines at the beginnings
of chapters have been extended; a few population estimates have
been adjusted; there are updated statements about political
conditions in some countries; and there are new passages about the
expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe (page 869), about China's
assumption of control over Hong Kong (page 886), about Singapore
(pages 887 and 888), and about the revolution in the Congo (page
935). There is no systematic updating of world affairs, however,
and the new passages have been forced into the page layouts of the
1997 version. (As an example, the writers have shortened their
treatment of Hong Kong to make room for the new material about
Singapore.) In various cases, information that could have been
updated has been left in place. For instance, the 1999 book fails
to tell about the results of the struggle between Russia and
Chechnya (page 866), and it retains outdated information about
petroleum production (page 908) and the death toll in the Algerian
civil war (page 945).
The very last page in the 1999 version is a bizarre add-on titled
"Stop the Presses," which lists some arbitrarily chosen, unrelated
events that occurred in 1997: the deaths of Princess Diana and
Mother Teresa (lumped together), the re-election of Jiang Zemin in
China, the escalation of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, and the
signing of the Oslo treaty that banned land mines. This gimmick
cannot be considered a significant addition.
Though the alterations in the narrative text are paltry, there are
substantial changes in the book's pedagogic features. Each of the
37 chapters concludes with a two-page study-aid section, now
entitled "Chapter Review and Skills for Success," and all these
sections have been broadly revised. They now require the student
to give more attention to reviewing factual material, interpreting
primary sources, and analyzing graphs or charts (including seven
charts that are new).
Another pedagogic innovation is the addition of 32 pages of
excerpts from primary documents (pages 996 through 1027). The
documents range from ancient Egyptian and Sumerian literature to
statements made by some of today's human-rights activists, and
each excerpt is accompanied by study questions to guide the
student's reading and interpretation.
In conclusion: The 1999 version of Connections to Today contains
an expanded and significantly improved portfolio of exercises and
materials that will help the high-school student to study, but the
book's narrative of world history is essentially unchanged.
Connections to Today is still limited by its Eurocentric perspective, and
it contains many problematic interpretations -- particularly in its
treatment of the history of religion and the history of science --
which were noted in our previous reviews.
James Jankowski is a professor in the Department of History at the
University of Colorado at Boulder. He specializes in the history
of the modern Middle East.
Reviewing a high-school book in world history
1999. 1070 pages. ISBN of the student's edition: 0-13-434326-3.
Prentice Hall, 1 Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458.
(Prentice Hall is a part of the entertainment company Viacom Inc.)
Old, Patched-Up Material,
Better Pedagogic FeaturesJames Jankowski
The 1997 version of Prentice Hall World History: Connections to
Today was analyzed in two reviews -- one written by Charles Paul,
the other by me -- which were published in The Textbook Letter for
July-August 1996. The 1999 version, which has just been
introduced, is much the same as the 1997 version, with few changes
in factual information and no substantive changes in perspective or
interpretation. Teachers who would like to read detailed critiques
of the historical content of Connections to Today should consult
those earlier reviews.
Minimal Revisions
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