The New York City Board of Education today notified textbook publishers it will not accept textbooks and other instructional material for use in the city’s public schools which do not give an accurate view of minority groups.
Superintendent of Schools John J. Theobald, in stating this policy, said that most social studies textbooks still pictured “a largely white, Anglo-Saxon view of our society and its history” and that they tended to ignore such groups as Jews, Indians, Negroes and citizens of Latin and Asian origin in reporting on the historical development of the American people.
He cited complaints by the board to publishers concerning such inadequacies, and particularly the skimpy discussions of Nazi and Communist atrocities. Dr. Theobald declared in his message to the publishers that “our students find it difficult to get any adequate picture of Jewish life in America today from our textbooks” and that “rarely do we find a suitable discussion of anti-Semitism in our culture.”
Dr. Austin J. McCaffrey, executive director of the American Textbook Publishers Institute, replied that every effort was being made by publishers to meet the board’s standards. But, he added, textbooks require two to three years to complete.
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