Pfitzer analyzes new life of antiquated children's history books
Greg Pfitzer, professor of American Studies, is the author of a new book titled History Repeating Itself: The Republication of Children’s Historical Literature and the Christian Right (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014).
According to the publisher’s web site, “Recently publishers on the Christian Right have been reprinting nineteenth-century children’s history books and marketing them to parents as “anchor texts” for homeschool instruction. Why, Gregory M. Pfitzer asks, would books written more than 150 years ago be presumed suitable for educating 21st-century children? The answer, he proposes, is that promoters of these recycled works believe that history as a discipline took a wrong turn in the early 20th century, when progressive educators introduced social studies methodologies into public school history classrooms, foisting upon unsuspecting and vulnerable children ideologically distorted history books.”
The book continues Pfitzer’s current focus on history for young readers. Children’s historical books of the 19th century, which he calls “monosyllabic stories of historic exploits,” are often about the childhoods of famous adults or boys and girls. Currently, many of these books are being re-issued by publishers on the Christian right for the home-school market. Said Pfitzer, “Some students in America today are receiving history lessons from books that were written in the 1840s.”
History Repeating Itself is Pfitzer’s fourth book, and marks another high point in a year that included his selection as Skidmore’s Edwin M. Moseley Faculty Research Lecture. Selection as the Moseley lecturer is the highest honor the Skidmore faculty confers upon one of its own. Pfitzer’s lecture, presented in February, was titled “The Unpopularity of Popular History: A Scholar’s Pursuit of Non-Scholarly Things.”
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