Other Poorly Worded Textbook Fixes From McGraw-Hill

Last week, textbook publishers McGraw-Hill came under fire when a Texas mother posted a picture of her son ‘s geography textbook, which described slaves brought to America as ‘workers.” McGraw-Hill quickly released an apology and listed their other unfortunate misnomers from their textbooks.

Heyyyyyyy guys,

So this week, we became aware of an issue regarding a caption in one of our textbooks. The caption described Africans brought to American plantations as ‘workers,” rather than slaves.

Okay, that was a definite boner on our part. We totally see that now. We ‘re not exactly sure how that one slipped by our editors, but we are definitely fixing it.

But here ‘s the thing. Once we got into our textbooks and started poking around, we realized that there were a few other sections that needed to be fixed. But do not even worry about it because WE ARE TOTALLY ON TOP OF IT.

Here are some of the updates you ‘ll be seeing in future editions:

1. Japanese ‘Summer Camps”

We realized after a quick Wikipedia search that the more accurate name for these camps is Japanese ‘Internment Camps.” We also realized that the U.S. sent 120,000 Japanese Americans into these camps during WWII, in one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history. Holy smokes! The stuff you can learn on the Internet is cool.

2. ‘Naughty No-Nos”

We thought ‘Naughty No-Nos” was a pretty good name for laws that enforced racial segregation in the U.S. from Reconstruction to the 1960 ‘s, but apparently it ‘s more accurate to say ‘Jim Crow Laws.” (This one ‘s kind of a ‘naughty no-no” on our part I guess, right??? Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, guys!!!)

3. The ‘Injun Parade”

Apparently this should have been called the ‘Trail of Tears,” which seems like a weird name for a period from 1830-1850 when the U.S. forced Native Americas from their homelands. (I mean, if that ‘s not an Injun Parade, we frankly don ‘t know what one is. BUT OKAY WE CHANGED IT. JEEZ.)

4. ‘Bay of Pigs? More Like Sleigh of Figs!”

Okay, this section should have just been called ‘The Bay of Pigs Invasion.” We definitely get that. But the thing is, our editor Janice wrote this section during fig season, and she was going kind of fig-crazy. Fig pies, fig cakes, fig muffins, you name it. We were like, ‘WE GET IT JANICE. YOU HAVE A FIG TREE.” Anyway, we probably should have proofread this section more.

5. Rainbow Unicorn Magic

This is what we called the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We don ‘t really have an explanation for this one. We feel like Janice might be to blame somehow.

And that ‘s it! Just a few minor updates to a pretty stellar series of books.

Happy learning!!!

xoxo
McGraw-Hill