Hello,

Well, I use a widely used book World History: Connections to Today. Its principle author is Elisabeth G. Ellis. My edition is from 1999. We have the newest edition and its quite similar.

It got a "-" from the American textbook council.
I like it, its not perfect but its fine. Since the standards forces us to skip around in the book i don't know the whole text. As far as Asia it seems pretty good. I don't know of any non-western nations getting special treatment. I discusses Japan's imperialist moves into Korea in the early 1900s and describes how they built up Korea but for their benefit. It also VERY BRIEFLY mentions the Rape of Nanking (its basically 2 sentences.)

One additional thing about this book...It bugs me how they alter names. "Franz Joseph" becomes "Francis Joseph."

Of the textbooks I have seen, Prentice-Hall, and Holt-Rhinehart are the best of the bunch. They provide enough details to give context to the people and events mentioned, and make the narrative interesting. The fact that they are mostly in a narrative style is also a plus, since most other textbooks use mostly a descriptive style that seems to have the goal of at least mentioning every subject in the standards. One or two other that do use sa narrative style, for example, the TCI text, unfortunately leave out significant details as they use up space making those subjects that they do cover very well told stories (for example, TCI makes no mention of the Grand Canal, a rather important achievement that literally united China.)

Prentice-Hall is loaded with details, perhaps too much, considering the limited time that teachers have to cover the extremely broad 7th grade curriculum. Also, this mass of information often tends to overwhelm the main points,so that the student would have a hard time seeing the forest from the trees. However, this is preferable to other texts, such as Mcdougal-Littell, which do a very superficial job in covering each of the topics. I think that the Holt-Rhinehart text strikes the best balance, presenting enough details to make the narrative interesting, but clearly emphasizing the main ideas that students should know about each of the various cultures. They also have the best graphics, all with a multitude of labels, so that they aren't just pretty pictures, but add even more contextural information to the stories.

The world history books reviewed by the group at the start of this thread were all high school world history books. Perhaps, that is why the reviewers disliked the emphasis on graphics and special features as compared to an engaging text. At the 7th grade level, while its important for the text to be accurate and interesting, the lower level of reading skills of these students suggests that they should have more graphic support for understanding the concepts and facts presented by the text. This is even more crucial to EL students, who make up a majority of LAUSD now, and of course also for Special Ed students as well. Taking all these factors into consideration, I have had success using parts of the Holt-Rhinehart text on medieval history, and found my students grateful to see a text that they can both understand and enjoy.

My school is currently in the process of selecting a new history textbook. Many of our teachers really enjoy using the History Alive (TCI 1998) supplemental lesson guides, transparencies, audio etc.. in addition to our current textbook: "A Message of Ancient Days" Houghton Mifflin Company. We plan on replacing the Houghton Mifflin text and have heard that History Alive also has a textbook. I'm interested if anyone has feedback on the History Alive textbbook. I heard it might not be rigerous enough.

In searching for a text to be used in an East Asian literature course, I found one, and only one somewhat comprehensive book, published by Prentice Hall titled Literatures of Asia.

Literatures of Asia. Ed. Tony Barnstone. Prentice Hall. New Jersey, 2003.

The text covers all of Asia beginning with India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This section, as are the others, is organized chronologically and includes Buddhist texts which may be relevant to East Asian studies. Section 2 focuses on China and Section 3 focuses on Japan. The selections are relative to each historical period of their respective countries and there are also many poetry selections.

One major flaw, the three sections listed above are the only three sections aside from poetry; this means that other coutries are not represented such as Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc.

Patricia:

That is great news. With new text adoption likely being delayed four almost three more years, this is the best time for teachers to scour samples and make recommendations that will benefit our growing Asian population.

From taking the seminar last fall, the Asian additions I made this year had great impact. All students loved the information and my Asian students loved sharing their insight in their culture. So were even quizzical on where I learned so much. LOL

I appreciate the heads up.

Kyle Kulish

Help! I am looking for a good reference/text book for my classroom to have as a go-to aid on Asia/East Asia. It seems a lot of US and World History texts do not present enough perspective, especially regarding Colonialism. Can anyone suggest titles? I did see Clayton's website posted on July 15th and wonder if anyone prefers one title over another.
Thanks.[Edit by="agalloway on Dec 10, 10:48:47 AM"][/Edit]