>> guest: for a lot of reasons. partly i have three children and i was appalled by the books they had in school. i was also a newspaper reporter and i was asked to cover a meeting -- i was writing for the virginian pilot so i was asked to cover a meeting in richmond and the state school board looked at textbooks.

they actually looked at english textbooks and the textbook most used in virginia at the time have romeo and juliet, a very good choice. but the publisher changed shakespeare's words. wherever shakespeare -- i know, it is astonishing -- difficult or arcane word, the publisher changed without noting the changes had been made and this is the kind of thing going on in textbooks so teachers were teaching shakespeare, children were with reading shakespeare without knowing they were actually doing that so the state school board exploded, called a meeting and asked publishers to send representatives with the idea of improving, this is about 20 years ago improving school books and so i was sent to cover it as a reporter. it was a bizarre. the publisher sent sales reps and they are there to tell you how good the books on art, not to do anything about them. so after it was over the state

school board and people were just appalled. i was appalled and i came home -- i have already read things about how bad particularly american history books were so i came home and started thinking and i assumed everybody is calling for a good u.s. history. i assume if i could write one, and i had written some american history articles for the newspaper for "the wall street journal" i wrote an article on the thomas jefferson -- i thought all we have to do is write a good u.s. history and the publishing world will fall at my feet. no. [laughter] but that's -- there were a number of things but that's the number to be coming reason i got started. >> host: what kind of textbooks were your children and bringing home that appalled you? >> guest: one of my sons, danny brough -- i may write her so he brought home world history. their writing was incredibly bad.

it's the way we write, topic sentence, topics intends, it's boring. so i was running around screaming -- and we had to buy the books. i had to pay for this awful book. so negative and he came home from school a few weeks later and said mom, you're going to be so pleased. i said why? the teachers keeps the books to avises he will never use it. i said i'm not sure that's the answer. i paid for this book. so yeah, i had seen my children's school books. and also there was a book written 20 years or so ago by a rolled to the cuts gerald ander was in the new yorker. it got kind of wide play. and it was about american history textbooks and how that they were and compared the textbooks -- this was a problem going on for years now, compared the textbooks used at that time with those written in 1910,

early on. and there was a textbook, a standard textbook in american schools written by a copy named muzzie. if you had gone to school in 1912, he would have read muzzie. fitzgerald compared the books. talking to kids at is that they were intelligent people. so i read back on muzzie and i read a dog named coffin who broke for little kids or middle school kids at the turn of the century, about 1900. it was great. these were people writing real books then the publishing industry took over. and also, curriculum changed in america for the worst. so we kind of destroyed education. >> host: and we will talk about both of those things, the textbook industry and the curriculum. but your "histury of us" -- it

is possible its u.s. -- >> guest: there is a pun there. a 10-year-old told me. it's chronological. you start at book one. and graduated committed it more difficult. the first books are fairly easy to read and i feel the my readers will grow with me so the first book is about the first americans, the people coming over the bering strait. and you get the exporters and the pilgrims, puritans and by the tenth book i just updated the tin the book. it will be held in february so we have chapters on katrina, afghanistan very difficult to write about now. all kind of corinthians. the ideas get more complex as you get to the tenth book. >> host: you start at 1600 copay >> guest: i start before 1600, the people coming over the bering strait.

we're not sure, 30,000 years ago may be. >> host: how do you cover that? how do you do your research? >> guest: today i use the internet a lot but books. kids always ask me where you learn all of this? books, kids. i am a big time reader. in virginia beach where i lived when i was writing magic and take 15 books out from the library, i always had books and i would out line with history books line went to a lot of used bookstores. for history you can do that. for science you really can't. but yeah, i got my ideas from books and then with each book i had been read by an expert in the field. so, just to make sure that i was up to date. i had some -- some wonderful historians. one year writing for kids the best people want to help you so the top people in the field have to read my manuscript. >> host: you have a ten volume set right now. how many of those were written

before you found a publisher? >> guest: nine and half. >> host: why? >> guest: nobody -- the publishing of u.s. history or any history -- publishing books are in a huge scandal in this country. it is a big money-making affair for three publishers. when i got started there were many more but they've all been brought up. fox news just did a series on textbooks and was pretty good. three publishers who last year split $4.5 billion between them. so schoolbooks are not about educating kids. they are about making money. it's a business. >> host: three publishers of school textbooks? >> guest: school textbooks, yeah, k-12. mifflin, pearson and mcgraw-hill when you have a big business -- and if you get a contract to sell your books to los angeles

it is huge so you want to make sure there's nothing in the book that will offend anybody. if you have books like that they are like oatmeal but the scandal one textbooks is the standard -- and i want to make it clear i'm talking about elementary and middle school. with american history -- you see on the cover a prestigious university to author. we know books by celebrities are ghostwritten but college professors don't need ghost writers but the publishing industry buys these names and then has writers write the actual books.

>> host: welcome to c-span tv "in depth." our guest this month is joy hakim. she is the author of the did volume series "histury of us." she's also the author of the joy of science, story of science are two of the books she's written. she is also the author of "freedom a history of loss, quote which was a pbs special as well. we are going to put the number of one on the screen if he would like to talk with joy hakim. (202)737-0001, tuzee 027-37-0002 and we set aside a special line for students and educators because of joy hakim's special expertise, toussuire o2 0205. perhaps you have read her texts, so go ahead and trial and we will begin taking those calls in just a few minutes. by the way you can also e-mail

at booktv@c-span.org or kurson as a tweet, twitter.com/booktv is our twitter actress. you were quoted saying there's a lot of horse manure in history and our kids need to know about it. >> guest: i get wonderful letters from kids, and they loved the fact that i give them -- that i have a chapter actually where i describe the horsemen were on the streets of new york in nineteenth-century and the was a major pollution problem. broadway was fall to the colorful of horse-drawn carriages and the children love to hear about that kind of stuff. and that's part of history. >> host: you were also quoted as saying that most textbooks are not only dumbed down for the kids, they are dumbed down for the teachers. >> guest: they are dumbed down for the teachers, and we have an

education crisis. and i keep reading that the answer to that is to get better teachers. we have some great teachers and we need to appreciate them and listen to them and we need a new kind of teaching. we need -- the old model of the teacher is the expert standing in front of the class and lecturing. and it doesn't work in the information age so we need to create learning environments where the teachers learning with the kids and there is a general excitement and nobody can be an expert any more. but we are adding knowledge exponentially, so if you are at a classroom and a student asks me a question and i know the answer i give you the answer that's the end of the conversation. but if i say as a student i don't know the answer to that question you find it and come back to us and report and then we have everybody learning together. and a lot of teachers are terrified of teaching history or

teaching science because they don't know stop worrying about that. learn. let's all learn together. and when we have learning environments than school becomes exciting. >> host: where did you come up with your chapter heads, and i want to read one as an example. if a poet writes a letter, pay attention to a >> guest: yeah, as i say i was an editorial writer. newspaper writers don't write their own heads, but i kind of like that occasionally -- i like somebody that's an educator uses my books and says please, spare me your tonnes but i liked puns and kids to come too and they are a way to learn language so i have fun with those. >> host: terse one chapter, and i was looking for here, in the volume in the history of us volumes and you start off, it's about slavery, and you start off by saying okay, but all of your

thinking cap on because this is going to be difficult. this is tough to read. >> guest: i talked to children in my books and that's why i feel i get so much response from them because they feel an urge to talk back but yeah, i'm just -- there is a little bit of a quality my books. you may or may not like that but yeah i am in conversation with children and i think that is what authors do. and one head of social studies told me that when the adopted my books it's changed the way children right and allows them to use their own voice. and i tell kids when we talk about writing just pretending you're talking to a friend and get excited about the subject. >> host: have you had children review your books? >> guest: that is part of what makes my book different from others. one of the things that shocked me when i got involved in the public industry, and i try to sell my books or get a contract

was the publishers said to me again and again you don't write books for children because children don't buy books. this was a little mantra that in the publishing industry and it's true, children don't buy books but i wrote my books for kids and i paid them to review the books while it was still in manuscript. i wanted to know if it worked and i had been a free lancer and i had clients and the first thing you do when you're trying to sell its reliance you have to please your client. my clients for these books are children. so i gave them a manuscript, gave them a code, and i asked them to write in the margin before boarding, and every child knows that, and c for not clear. i asked them to underline words they didn't understand. >> host: where did you find these kids? >> guest: neighborhood

schools, three teachers. and i also found if you ask children for their opinions and you are not paying them they are too polite to tell you this is crummy. but i am a big spender. i spent $5 a book if you want to leave -- >> host: per child? >> guest: per child, yeah. and they were fabulous with some of the comments. >> host: i just want to show the lead out of a couple of pages of joy hakim's book, "history of us." lots of pictures, lots of little captions. why? >> guest: the books are written and especially the science books which we will get to later, on several levels, so there is a main thrust, there's the main story, and that's all you need to read. but kids come in different varieties and abilities, so i extend the story in the captions so some children will go further. sometimes the sidebars are meant

to amplify what's there and i explain words. it's just kind of, it's busy but kids are used to the busyness. that's all a problem. >> host: and you identify words. you give definitions such as "alamo." >> guest: all the time. i have the choice of either dumbing down and not using the words -- and kids love big words. so i use the big board and explain that and hope that their vote had -- in fact people ask me what's different about this riding and what i did on the newspaper. i was writing editorials. and editorials the major newspaper came in a fifth grade level. i don't know. but the difference between the editorial writing and this is i use bigger words in these books for children purposely because the kids love big words. and a lot of people don't think that they do. a big word makes you sound smart swipe the word in and the pronunciation and if i think it is necessary i explain it.

>> host: how did you find oxford university press? >> guest: that is a really interesting story. i started out -- i think i did this because i had no idea what i was doing. you know, it was really dumb about it. i thought it would take me a year to write u.s. history. i thought was going to be one volume -- >> host: of the entire 200 years or so? >> guest: yeah, i just didn't know what i was doing. so i just started out, and i sent the manuscript to a whole lot of publishers. i got a very nice rejection notes. i sent it to educators and got some real interest and that helped but i also put it in classrooms from the beginning and the response from kids was much greater than i thought. it was wonderful. and these kids were reading manuscript from then my matrix printer, no pictures but they

were reading. kids who normally wouldn't read. so i just -- i was going around trying how publisher after publisher including oxford, everybody turned me down so i had about five or five and a half books written and at that point i had brought in -- leggitt friends of the university of virginia they had read manuscripts, and i knew i had something pretty good. but i couldn't get it published and i went to a cocktail party in colonial williamsburg and ran into paul nagel, historian, and then the head of some history thing in virginia. so i told him i said story. i've got these history books, we've got a history problem in this country. kids loved books, teachers left the books but i can't get it published. he said there is a man in new york who if he can help you will help you in his name is bayh run holinshed and he had been president of oxford and american

heritage and had a small publishing house called american historical publications. so, when byron tells the story he says he got a big box with five and half volumes. he said a couple days later i called him and said have you read it. anyway, what better. byron if read the book, the manuscript and said this is good stuff. i will have no problem publishing this. all of his peers or publisher. he sent it out into the same response that i got, good stuff, byron. needs to be published but it doesn't fit. one publisher who had an innovative branch kept for several months and said this is to innovative for us. so finally, he took it to oxford and they decided it would be a fine library book. i don't think they understood its potential and they just

published a few thousand books and sold more than 5 million. >> host: how much editing of the history -- "history of us" was done? >> guest: byron produced all my books, so he hired the editors and the picture researchers and the editor with "history of us" was a woman named tamara, she's and who i love her -- >> host: she prefers to wait hours history of them since she's english. [laughter] >> guest: we had a good time. it was kind of an ideal. we fought over things but basically, you know, she let me edit but made suggestions and i was very nice. >> host: byron hollen said is quoted saying textbooks are not written for children, they are written for textbook committees to flip through them to make

sure they have the right ethnic balance and proper buzzwords. >> guest: the textbook adoption system is sick. it's synergistic with of the three publishers. it's very expensive. so a few as a teacher and individual have an idea for a textbook or write a textbook, in order to get that out is terribly, terribly expensive to go through the process. it shouldn't be. and once you get adopted my books have been adopted in california and texas for instance, but that's only the beginning. then you have to send armies of sales people to every single town that's going to adopt. it's prohibitive. my publishers don't do that. so the books that get adopted are those that have the best salespeople and it's very easy to change that, just have closed adoptions, no seals people allowed, and that's where --

some places do that and that is where i do get adopted, just through the books on the table and have people compare one with another. i would suggest you also have children look at them because even good teachers are surprised at what children respond to three >> host: joy hakim, you also talk about the curriculum changing in schools. >> guest: in social studies, which is sort of the buzz word for history and the other disciplines. the big change can a long time ago with something called a expanding horizons and there is a classic article on that written by diane who tells what happened to the social studies. it kind of destroyed -- we don't teach history will and often not tall to our kids, but back i think it was during -- after the

depression. history used to be every child's favorite and we would teach greek myths and everybody in world history was part of school and then somebody came along during the depression, i think it was a professor at the university of virginia and said life is tough, why are these children having fun with history? we've got to be serious about it and so they did something called expanding horizons, which says you start with your neighborhood and expand in first grade or kindergarten and expand to the greater neighborhood in the county and the state and in the united states and the world and that's kind of what we do. so kids coming to first grade, like i have a first great-grandson, he is a big thinker. he thinks in terms of dinosaurs, big trucks, a big space. that's where he sat, and most of the curriculum have you go to the neighborhood grocer. i do like the trip to the neighborhood fire station, but he can think big and there are

teachers who do a lot of world history, a few but none of the standard curriculum do that. >> host: have your books in the end anywhere? >> guest: yes. >> host: why and where? >> guest: there's a town in florida, trying to think somebody wrote to the superintendent of schools, newspaper reporter called me up and said they got a letter saying that the books were to with liveral, with a v, and the teacher was laughing at them and the superintendent took him out of the classroom and put them into the library where they could only be read with supervision of a library in. >> host: because they were two liveral? or your books liberal? to they have a liveral -- >> guest: i, you know, i used to be an editorial writer and i was paid to have opinions and actually i was surprised at myself when i did that that i

was more balanced, but i feel a real responsibility of writing these books to be as balanced as possible to show all sides because it's important. kids need to think for themselves and by constantly say in those books read somebody else, don't just read me with triet so i would hope they are balanced. >> host: just point out on the back of freedom, history of us it is endorsed by first lady laura bush, former first lady laura bush and henry louis gates jr.. >> guest: that is a nice combination. yeah, i mean first of all the demise of history in our times is outrageous. we must teach history if we are going to be thinking people. but history is so polarized as a nation and is just kind of knee-jerk stuff. history is a place we can all

get together, and teaching history we all, right-wing and left-wing we all want our children to know our history. and so it is an enormously important subject. adis -- it has been dropped in a lot of schools, completely dropped because of no child left behind, because the idea that it isn't a reading subject. history is the great reading subject, the great thinking subject. what we are doing in schools against, it's tough to generalize because at some are tough to grade but in a lot of schools it is constant, it is just nonstop skills, reading skills. there is no fault or content and in fact there is this jargon we talk about content subjects, and the first time i heard that phrase every teacher knows content subjects but the first time i heard it i was with byron in his office, and to

representatives of the publishing house came over i think we were looking for a publisher for someone but they kept talking about content subject reading books so when they left, byron looked at me and said are there no content subjects? yes, yes, most of the teaching in elementary and middle school now is no content. reading is not a subject, it is a skill. his trees and signs are subjects and you learn to read and do sophisticated reading, 21st century reading. what's going on is bizarre. if you can see the kind of stuff that is flooding the schools, it is appalling. i will give you an example. i was helping my grandson. he was 11 at the time. i was helping him with his homework, and he had a workbook,

and of these factories churned things from the industry and there's a paragraph and three or four questions. the paragraphs had no relationship to each other. they were mindless. we are trying to get through this and finally there was a paragraph i hit the ceiling and it was about three dicarlo, diego rivera's wife, an artist. i love her work, not sure she relates to a 11-year-old boy is. but there was no picture. my grandson had no idea who she was, this was an artist and no picture. why waste his time? i ran around the house, i wouldn't let him go on with his homework until i found a picture. all he wanted to do was finished his homework about the stupidity and there is no other word. >> host: what about political correctness? >> guest: political

correctness is out there. again if you have a book and you are looking to sell millions of copies you don't want to offend anybody. so, the -- >> host: does our history of and? >> guest: frito was there because political correctness. she's mexican and we have to have a token mexican, token this and that and she is a great subject and we want multidisciplinary but if we are going to put in people if it's an artist you do a picture. if it's somebody else there has to be story so that there is a reason for putting them in, not just politically correct. >> host: but does the u.s. history of and? >> guest: you know, it shouldn't. we have this fabulous history. so diverse, so vibrant, and we can't be -- we can't be citizens without understanding it and i constantly hear particularly on

television nobody knows history and nobody -- it's so interesting and we would be better citizens, for instance, right now is a lot of talk about libertarian kind of issues about pure democracy and with technology we may be able to vote soon on the issues and skip the federalist system. if you study history and go back to the time of the founders you find that they feared pure democracy and set up a system that would not allow us to have the bureaucracy and the reason is that during the revolution they thought if i could get rid of great britain and its taxes and heavy-handed government that there would be something called civic virtue and people would act decently and everything would be married and had the and people would vote with

responsibility. will we got the articles of the confederation and it was a mess. everybody was out for himself or herself. it was a total mess. there was chaos, there was rebellion. it didn't work, pure democracy didn't work so they set up this federalist system where there's time for deliberation, there's representatives. it's frustrating often we don't do what we would like them to do, we can be maddening but pure democracy is dangerous. we found that out in california with is a 13 -- >> host: prop 13. >> guest: people voted not to pay taxes and california, which had the best schools in the country now mabey has the worst three >> host: joy hakim is the guest the next two and a half hours and now it is your chance to ask questions. brad monroe, new hampshire you are first up, please go ahead. >> thank you.

i want to thank you, ms. hakim. i can tell you as a parent of two children that have been through the public schools and for our school board member, on a, like you, don't want to put words in your mouth but i have just about -- i have been appalled at the lack of teaching of u.s. history in elementary schools. i can tell you as a child, i was born in 1962, i mean i'm an american history buff, but my father would say things such as i shall return and i would allow douglas macarthur or my dad would say we have nothing to fear but fear itself and i would yell roosevelt. history was all around us whether at school or home, especially american history. and i guess what bothers me is my job is taking me into an awful lot of schools in the rural areas, and you would be hard pressed today to find as i did when i was in elementary

school a picture of lincoln or washington in any classroom. american history is taught for one year and one year only and i find it not only appalling but depressing and you touched on this earlier in your conversation. do you have any observations or do you think this may change or do you think this is a concerted effort buy any individuals or groups that are ashamed of who we are? it just bothers me a great deal yet that is why i find this topics interesting and i will hang up and listen to you respond. thank you. >> guest: thanks for the question. i don't think anyone is ashamed of what we are. it's just incompetence or ineptness or what the first going on in school, schools shouldn't go on. we should be teaching u.s. distributors this idea we have to teach to the test and test phase reading. and it just we don't value of

the thinking qualities that go on with history. but also you talked about pictures in the classroom of lincoln and washington treat our kids need heroes. most kids only heroes they know our sports heroes. i have a friend who is a great teacher who has written a book on heroes for kids and if you want to teach issues of morality we need to do that. people in elementary school -- if you get up there and preach about these things it's boring and you shouldn't be doing that. but if you study heroes and villains i have a chapter on tweed, just a delicious ballan, you know, hitler -- you can make judgments. kids can make judgments and they will learn to be thinkers. so taking history out of schools has been and in same kind of

thing and that's one of the main reasons the schools have classroom achievement has gone way down. it is dole. >> host: don in california, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. good morning. where i am it is funny that you would mengin -- ms. hakim, good morning. it's funny that you would mention the california prop 13 tax situation. i just bought my first townhome in hillsborough then and was excited to get the proper 13 to save on taxes and i was only 30-years-old at a time. but anyway, and then the girl that answered the phone said by on thomas san francisco and i said that's where i was born and raised, too, third generation to get my kids are fourth generation. anyway, the reason i'm calling is when you mentioned coming over the bering straits, of calling of the people and i said that must have been my ancestors. and then you mentioned 30,000

years ago and i thought no, that's on them. but i have different books at my home collected, and one of my mother's ancestors were the founders of bannered maine and the last naim was candid and i was wondering in your history looking a taste for places is that any of the information you have run across? >> guest: i haven't run across your ancestors but i do have quite a bit about mane and the first settlers there and it's interesting. i -- when i talk to kids i tell them one of the problems in writing books like this -- i have ten books yet i've left out so much. it's just -- and so making choices. i suggest to the teachers to children, that the of their class is write their own volumes

of history of us and actually buy them and collect them and eliminate the covers and give them a number and put them in the school library. the chapters, the easiest way to start is to have children go to their grandparents and ask them about their heritage, about where they came from and what school was like when you were in school and write their own history so me and has a wrist to the eckert registry is california. >> host: is important for students to know something about all 50 states? >> guest: he certainly showed. yeah, little something. but it's -- yap -- >> host: and remember the maps they would show a piece of corn in indiana and the car in michigan. >> guest: i have all of that and like most kids are a member of the capitals of a free state. i think every other year, don't ask me for them now. we love memorization. i think yes, at some place you

need to at least touch on each states. >> host: are the dates important? >> guest: there was a time when kids memorize and kept in their memory more than they do today. i suggest -- i think there's only a few dates that are important actually, and i suggest to the teachers they have a close line in the class and click on it for american history the key date and then little tabs in between so that you know 30,000 years ago, 1492 you'd be amazed how many kids don't know when columbus arrived. i go into the classrooms and say 1492 columbus sailed the ocean blue, keep that in your head, kids, 1776, 1860, 1917, 1945, the 60's may become and that was about all you need to know. you clip that on your clothes line and then you know that something came in between.

we're donner and graphic to book a few years ago where she found most kids couldn't put the civil war in the right half century. you do need to know things like that but no, the memorization of individual dates i don't think is important. for me history is ideas. and it's so easy to turn it into memorization of dates. >> host: you attended a history class with david herbert donald? >> guest: yeah. david donald, who later was to win a pulitzer prize and is a great historian -- >> host: where did he -- >> guest: this is at smith college, and he died not long ago. i was like most kids. i went to school in vermont. i did have a fabulous teacher but a lot of my teachers were not great and history -- i didn't think much of his story particularly american history when i was in school. i was always a big time reader

and in europe they had kings and queens and lights and armor and there were things going on so their history at least was palatable but american history people were regular clothes, they didn't go -- it was just dull. i got to smith and someone told me i should be talking to the taking mcdonald's course and i had to be urged, and i was astonished by the title of course. i didn't understand it because it was called american intellectual history and i was puzzled. when the world as intellectual that history when the only history i knew was the succession of dates and that's just the wording so i got into this course and it was about ideas. amazing. and that turned me around. i wouldn't have written my books i had to give mr. donald's course. >> host: but there is a special story about the first class. >> guest: david donald was a small pixie man with a little twinkle in his eye.

the first class that he taught at smith was really he got up there and started lecturing intensely and like all of my years i was taking notes, what did he say, how do you spell that? everybody is for the whole 45 minutes or whatever it was the he never stopped. it was one fact after another and we are all writing it down and at the end of the time period we are exhausted and then he stood up there with his smile and said i gave you the standard american history lecture. i will now spend the rest of the term shall be none of this is true. [laughter] through are your notes, girls. he made us think. >> host: next call for joy hakim is palm coast, florida. please, go ahead. >> caller: hello. listening to you has been a pleasure. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: very nice to hear ideas i've had in my 40 years of

teaching and as a school media specialist expanded upon. i do have problems definitely with what is happening to history in the classrooms particularly at the elementary level. but i feel that problem starts before the elementary school. i feel the problem starts when the teachers go to the universities and listen to the same gerbil i was given the i didn't believe it all. they take this back the library has the same stuff in the textbooks for instance you just mentioned columbus. columbus did not discover america. he opened the gateway. and unless we start putting those thoughts in children's head and have them explained and connect and to send we are bound

to stay in the route we are in. do you have any ideas how we can get out of it? >> guest: in today's world particularly in the classrooms that have access to the internet there is so much available for children the more you can have them research and bring out these ideas in class and argue with each other and understand history is not static, steel. it is a very vibrant a disciplined, and the first three grades in most schools is just fabulous. we should be spending a lot of world history early on in bargaining of -- are doing about ideas. this is a place to do it. >> host: we have a tweed here. please ask joy how to proceed with professional development for teachers. how do you read teach teachers? >> guest: professional development is a big thing now and a huge professional development in history. and a whole lot of it is a hoax.

i've been to a few sessions. i went to a science session and sat they're squirming. everybody has a good time because the teacher gets to spend some time out of the classroom and connect with other teachers its needs to be done. but professional development can be as vacuous as the textbooks so if you're going to professional development, get some good people. stephanie hardee and joanna alvan dewey great job and there's others that degree job there's an awful lot. money coming into professional development and a lot of hucksters but mainly i think we need to have teachers, we need to provide time for teachers to talk to each other and use the good teachers out there. we have great teachers and schools and most of them today or beleaguered by the no child left behind. if we can work with our great teachers and let them teach each

other we won't have any problems. >> host: stand in little falls new jersey. >> caller: yes, hello, good afternoon, joy. i have a couple of points i would like to make quickly and there are three. i see you made a beautiful model of your textbook there. i saw the pictures and presentation and it looks quite nice. but john taylor was on c-span it's got to be over almost a year ago and he referred to the loading of that, he called it chair time, that is how he referred to it. bill errors was also one c-span a few months back and claims schools now should be what he calls palaces of learning and the third thing i would like to say is my son is at the university of delaware and he could not navigate through the university without a laptop. he happens to be a math major by the way, and i was a schoolteacher for 14 years. what i would like to say, my question to you is why would you refer back to an older style of

presentation making this will textbook series and history instead of linking it to a more dynamic process like the internet? >> guest: interesting question. there is a lot of discussion out there that the textbooks are a thing of the past and everything will be delivered via technology garbage gin and garbage out. if you and a whole lot of the same people are lining up to put things on disks with the idea this is better it's only better if it is better. i would be happy to have my books on the kindle or whatever, technology. but for me it is content, ideas, giving it -- putting it on the screen does not necessarily make it better. >> host: how many of your books have sold in bookstores

and how many are sold to school systems? >> guest: i don't know, publishers don't tell me that there is one of the things i wanted to do from the beginning and i had no idea i was breaking ground with this or how difficult it would be. but the idea of textbooks that do not sell in stores is appalling. that means they don't have to be reviewed, they don't have to face -- we just get this stuff that nobody has looked at so i wanted my books in bookstores and classrooms and if ebook isn't good enough to sell in a bookstore if people won't pay money for they should not be a classroom and we should just do away with this distinction. there is a wall, you would not believe how thick it is in the publishing industry between trade and text and even houses that have both don't communicate

between each other. it just makes for poor books. the people of the trade side spin a lot more time thinking about quality. the people on the textbooks side. it is formulaic stuff. so we need to get away from that. my books come in what oxford has done and even the price i just don't go along with this whole system. but anyway, the books in bookstores are peter backend aimed at the trade market, the oil market and books for school or hardcover and pricing is different. this quantity pricing for the hard covers. they are different worlds and they shouldn't be. >> host: next call for speed is john and fort lauderdale florida. >> caller: good afternoon >> host: please go ahead.

>> caller: yes, i hope they never go to the internet for textbooks because there's no where to write anything on the margins on the internet. i like to use margins to write my notes and textbooks so i hope they maintain that. >> guest: i agree. >> caller: i wanted to make a question about a teacher that is teaching science, math, english, history why shouldn't that teacher have a degree in that subject first matter and having a degree from education, and educational degree with an ancillary degree with a subject matter they are teaching? in other words, -- >> host: we got the idea, let's get a response. >> guest: those are good questions. the first one about the underlining or margin commentary. one of the new e books or whatever you call them does

allow you to underline. we don't teach nonfiction reading very much and nonfiction is the art form of our time. as you know on c-span. and the average high school graduate never reads a cold nonfiction book in four years of high school. a day read bits. to read nonfiction, i can't read nonfiction without a pencil. i have to underline but some of the new e books now allow you to underline so i, where we are going with that but i like books. and the other part of the question was about education in schools and the kind of education a lot of teachers are getting. in colorado where i now live you can get licensed as a teacher without a subject matter degree which i believe in that. many of our education schools are appallingly bad. they are factories and turnout

teachers with any kinds of stuff. and a lot of very good people go into that thinking with the best of intentions and they don't get a good education so they are feeling the prospective teachers. we need to change that. >> host: what is your degree? >> guest: i have a degree in political science. i did get a master's degree and also have an honorary doctorate master's degree in education. the education courses are taught were dumb, stupid. what can i tell you. but the program i was and was very good. at a school like. >> host: why were they done? >> guest: education courses -- >> host: exeat? >> guest: i don't know, it is just all about methodology. and even when you get to be a teacher and have teacher meetings every teacher -- every meeting is about methodology, about, you know, how to present

material but not about ideas, not about the material itself. teachers stop being the learner's and after a while unique methodology. you need some skills. but after awhile, you know, you need to also have something about the excitement of learning. he need to learn yourself so you can convey that. we do very little of that. a friend of mine some years ago ran a ground-breaking conference in virginia and which she had professors, and teach the teachers subject matter for a week and it was exciting. she also balanced with methodology. cao word gardner came and talked about history and there were other people there was excitement. talking about how to present materials, you know, you've got to know what you are presenting. >> host: i remember my sister talking about an education course having to do with sweet potato and art and she had been

to create it was the analysis. allen, cleveland ohio, please, go ahead. >> caller: hello, joy, it is wonderful to hear your id sue were vince -- exuberance and to know the drawbacks have that kind of -- i was sitting there thinking the teacher is so important in presenting the textbook material because i look back at the class is oe took an especially junior hockey as far as six, not african-american history but american history. funny thing is i had an african-american teacher in the mid-70s. i in my 40's now. teaching american history and retrospectively looking back with that man probably had to go through in a predominantly white school district. you'd think he was the only african-american teacher in the school but he was a wonderful teacher and presented the

subject matter so brilliantly. and it's just really nice to hear someone writing books with your kind of excitement. basically what i want to touch on is with today's polarized society a teacher has to walk a fine line on how they present even the most basic subject matter. i think what he touched on as far as educational factories it takes the desired for the teacher to want to learn all of it but all you are really teaching is reading comprehension. you touched on that earlier, too. kids are tested on their reading comprehension, and there is no enthusiasm for the subject. >> guest: yeah, i mean, there are teachers, there are a lot of stories and i hear some of them. parents who object to things, and i think you have to have the courage of your convictions coming and if you have them you will get through.

in california a parent complained about my books and the teacher got called in to the office and she was scared of her job and the principal called, this was an african-american issue, the principal called in a local african-american minister and he sat and read the book and he said this is exactly what we want. so a few don't get intimidated to easily -- and if you are attempting to be fair and balanced the offending -- i talked about -- i mean, i pretty much only meet good teachers and i know a lot of great teachers and the reason for that is i go to conferences and books signings and teachers to come to those conferences are self selected. if you are not a very good teacher you don't make the effort to go to a conference so you seek out and author at a book signing. so i know great teachers all

over the country, and they know how to tweet know how to teach. they should be spending more time teaching their peers. the should be given more autonomy and i hear lots of complaints that in fact they are being squashed. but the one criticism i would have of the good teachers is many of them go into their classrooms, close the door and do a good job. they don't do enough teaching of other teachers. we need to have more collegiality. we need to give, allow time for teachers to teach each other. there is a teacher in texas who is a friend, barbara is a texas teacher of the year so you know she's good and she has used my books -- she's now a teacher, trainer which is what we should do with these great teachers and she is a great teacher says she has my books in 22 classrooms with non-reading kids, katrina

refugees and kids who couldn't read and she's all -- she used them in a way that saw reading comprehension go up ten, 12, 14% and i will tell you quickly what she did. so she's using history to teach reading which i love. she had these kids before she allowed them to read a chapter she gave them a one synopsis of the chapter so they would know what was coming. she gave the import rules and tough vocabulary they would have an advance she gave them concept drills and then she had been read the chapter and tested them. then she had been read the chapter second time with different -- she gave them -- she had been read each chapter four times which is astonishing. but as adults if you want to read nonfiction and read it well and this is what i do professionally you've got to read something more than once before each rating she gave the children a separate bowl and

outcome and so there's the comprehension between the first and fourth reading was ten, 12, 14% higher. read something for times you should learn something but these are kids not used to reading well or comprehending and at the end of the process they could. they also have a model for future reading. so anyway, teachers like this, like barbara and jim bentley in california. i know wonderful teachers who are doing it right. we need to use them. >> host: a reminder that we have a student educator line. if you would like to call and talk with speech, (202)628-0205 is that number. e-mail from eni, high school student at bishop kelly and paulson oklahoma. i'm currently in u.s. history class and we discussed the content of what should or should

not be any history textbook. this topic arose when we were studying the civil rights movement. we were shocked to find our textbook looked over the tulsa race riots which to me, amy, seems an important subject to discuss. i was wondering what you think is most important to have in a textbook. >> guest: i don't know what is most important but we certainly should have things like race riots. we want to show the good and bad. there is -- >> host: did you include the tulsa ressa try it? >> guest: i think i did you better look. it's been awhile since i wrote those books. but the -- it's really tough to decide what to put in and also makes a difference -- this is a high school student who called? >> host: yes. >> guest: there is an educator, kiran egan, we don't

have enough philosophers, she's one of them. education was good enough for a plateau and rousseau and motang. we should have good minds in the field, and kiran is one of them and makes the point that elementary kids are very different from middle school kids from high schools, and so the way that we present history needs to be different. i've written mostly for elementary and middle school kids. i think that you need a positive history, a solid foundation. if you are too negative in the early grades we turnout skeptics who don't have any real beliefs. by the time we get to high school where the call is from i think we should be questioning everything, and so you do quite differently for different ages ..

some people think that children are too young to know, but in this book the children were smuggled out under horrible conditions and put back

together, they were 10 years old. they were drawing butterflies on the wall >> minutes before they are killed. the children can handle it and know what is going on in. we think we have to protect them. of their suffering horrible things the they can leverage your help protect the problem, the economy, a stress and why doesn't anybody talk about these problems in a child? >>guest: that is true producer of the talk about the racial issues leading up to the but civil war, a jim-crow. i do not spare i talk about the problem in the fortresses made but overall i say we have remarkable

country and can fix our problems of the constitution. a lot of things to be proud of and a lot of things to be ashamed of. we need to balance that. >> thank you for write your volume of the of series. use it as the homes cooler they make history enjoyable if they did do it if you'd be surprised to learn as an adult and enriched by a understanding of u.s. history so much i am breezing through the u.s. constitution course. >>guest: that is nice but we have not been teaching history for a long time. i hear the parents learned a lot. >>host: what about home schoolers? >>guest: it is a good book [laughter] this sounds like bragging but it is better than anything out there. it is not bragging but the

other stuff is bad. >>host: or again go-ahead. >> caller: day q4 taking my call progress was due to call-in on the educators' line but i am not sure if the home schoolers line qualified as genuine nine educator. i find the history books as i assist home schoolers, with the science curriculum i have noticed the u.s. series they find it very useful and i have noticed that home schoolers that have been a great deal with through the years are much better leaders than the students and the public schools that i have encountered.

54 your series on u.s. history and they do for beginning this series on the science. a couple of recent events president obama alt a held a star party and talked about the science technology engineering and mathematics beat me -- being important and later there was another event held discussing robotics i think at the eisenhower building president obama again talking about this down the education and secretary of education arne duncan also. which brings me to the reason that i called. i supplement the various else goes i have encountered through the years inside direct them to the resources of an asset. the fence aired on nasa television at various times

whether the space mission or a press conference or something like that. and i found that nasa television is the best kept secret on cable tv. if you group won't nasa and comcast bid you can substitute the word comcast for any cable company will find there is no major cable company that provides mass the tv. we get ours with through the community access station and they devote an incredibly generous amount of time bearing asset tv. >> we're talking science i like the subject. thank you. there is enormous amount of material out there and some of it is superb. of lot of it is superb.

we also do a lot of hands-on science we have been doing that for about 30 years now and if you go into a classroom with hands on science it is exciting with electricity in the airbus somehow it is not working but despite that the science scores go down region not keep up with the rest of the world. there is a dichotomy and a problem. i think there is no idea base you do hands-on and it is great and everybody has fun but a lot of it is entertainment. even at the time they may understand it but one month later it is gone. there was no idea base. i'm trying to write books that planned experiments in context so when you read about galileo that is time to experiment with the kinds of things that he did then you have a sense of why they were done and hopefully it

will stay with you. i was in a classroom in rural connecticut for this kind of thing and the teacher came of to me afterwards, a fifth grade teacher, it was her first year and she wanted to be the best in the world. so dedicated in bright and told me a few months earlier had finally done the perfect lesson and she did a science thing about the water table. they did amado or i don't know but whenever they approached it from every side. she was so pleased. one month later there was a standardized tests the kids would take and one of a answers was the water table. i know how they will do with they will all get that right. not one single child.

so we talked about that. later she talked to one for students and said don't you remember by perfect lesson? clearly, he didn't. there is a connection that science is disconnected activities. they do not stay with you. history and in the elementary grades this experience also we're doing it with hands-on history. so as colonial people it is more than fun but it has to be in conjunction. i am fighting with my history books fact there read too much less but what

they're doing art into lesson plans. teachers do the labyrinth lesson plans. they take a chapter from one of my books and original document, when activity and put it together with great acclaim from our peers and the teacher has learned a lot, i had this conversation with a friend who was a teacher i said people are not redeemable books but only chapters. >> her 13 year-old daughter was standing next to her and she said your books are in our schools. i said am i right? are you just reading chapters?

she said no. we've read paragraphs. [laughter] i don't know what is going on out there. >> host: the author of founding myth rights this. >> of all of the text that perpetuates the most untruths about the american revolution come i found a whopping one is joy hakim immensely popular a history of us. this is no accident she is a masterful storyteller and based turner count on the stories played to young readers not whether they are true to seven. >> guest: i answer the appalled to hear that and i wish he would give me specifics let me say all of my books history and science read by experts in the field. that is one of the great things about having oxford for every book was read by

somebody who was an expert in the field. the civil war and reconstruction books was read by james mcpherson and you cannot do better than that. he is a professor and pulitzer prize winner. he found a few things that were wrong but it is very good history. there were experts at read the revolutionary. >> host: you have not read that before? it is from 2,041 i have never seen that the people don't like, but i would like to know specifically. singh of way, but i don't want to say delighted, but when we're at our most passionate and arguing about politics and history is politics of the past and

kids should be aware that. some people say we don't like this and let's read some others and that is how you think. >> host: the next call is from them this tennessee. >> caller: hello. pro i am enjoying you so much. i am thrilled there is hope from the peach -- future looking at you and what you are trying to do. i taught for 50 years and started out to with degrees in english and history. and then i taught in every imaginable situation, a private school, public school, all levels. i taught to substitute teaching in some situations and between raising four children. i am a little nervous. excuse me. the point* is after doing

all of that i went back in my forties. one of the first women to do this and it actually lived in the dorms with the route -- young girls because of the commute to with the permission of my husband and took the teacher course is. i did learn from them because i live down my nose a must say i went to a good teachers college and i did learn. one teacher who has problems with her children who could not do the test, who you do have to teach to the test and you cannot talk all day. you can have the best lesson plan in the world, but when you walk in the door a good teacher role tell you, you cannot teach until you have

their attention. it may take a whole hour to get their attention. >> guest: there are many ways to teach. at one school the class's are sitting in rows and the teacher is authoritarian and rigid and it works then the next classroom the kids are grouped in the tone clusters and everybody is talking and a very free spirit and if the teacher is good, but it works. there is no one way to teach. i think we need to be more appreciative of teachers and allowing them to express themselves. but for me, some of the best teachers -- going are the classrooms.

and who won a major figure in education is with the american and federation of teachers. with the may manuscript before it was published and i needed financial help so he gave me jobs and sent me out directing assignments and send me out to write about the best schools. this is a teachers' union that he knew good schools. what of the schools that i went to come i came and the night before and i had dinner with one of the teachers to met once a week in each other's homes. but then i spent one day in the public school and i never saw a teacher's standing in front of the class lecturing. never wants. of it was amazing. the school was totally

student run for a poet who kids were running the class and teachers were sitting at their desk and i spent a lot of time in the fourth grade and i arrived early in the morning. the kids went right to their deaths or they had folders and a reading and writing assignments that they did first for as they set their busy with their work each of them have at least one or two sessions. there would take their work up to the teacher. then after the reading was over, they did arithmetic and the teacher divided the class room into groups. the kids worked together on that and even had a behavior

monitors. they ran the classroom. it was great. it works. >> host: the next call comes from hickory north carolina. >> caller: i am very interested in responding to her comment about the quality of teachers. this is something that has come to my attention personally. i don't have anybody in school anymore. but they do come in contact with teachers to our in teacher training in my town and i have learned a little bit about their curriculum recently. i have to tell you i had a minor in history but i feel this english i tried to pay

attention to what these people are supposedly the earning and i can tell you the content is unbelievably bad. these people are going out and they will teach your subjects. i know that english is not your textbook field, but please let me tell you what these people who were training as teachers have to take to satisfy their english literature requirements. one sinister. and currently this is the curriculum, stephen king the shining other house next door and if you are not familiar with hershey is a speechwriter henry james and surely jackson.

this is what they're having as their english requirements. i think you can appreciate this. if this is the english requirement, think what they're having as the rest of it and they are going out and teaching her subjects? >> guest: yes. we do have very good education schools. our just saw the harvard is instituting a new program on educational leadership. let's hope that there are good things coming out of at and there are some people although they may be disappointed. i have written books that attempt to teach the teacher as well as a student. that is about all i can do. a really nice young history teacher came to visit me and will be using my book and is

said i am so scared. what can i do? i said learn with your kids. again, if we can create learning in fireman's fireman's -- learning in fireman's. education is the most democratic revolutionary thing. information is out there. that used to be if you really wanted to be educated you had to go to the cambridge or massachusetts but today you can be on a mountaintop and do have access to all of the world's education. all of m.i.t. courses are on the internet for free. it is up to them and good administrators because so many are bloated with administrators we need to get rid of a lot of them. we have good ones but also

some that are not. >> host: house of teachers is stimulating material to students while still meeting the state requirement for standardized testing. >> guest: standardized testing, but teachers don't need to do with there doing if they feel they're under pressure but i have a friend who is a teacher and california and he tells me two weeks before the testy starts teaching to the test but the rest of the year he does good teaching. there is no reason to teach her to the test all year. once the test is over then they play. they do not teach before or after. it should not be. reduce spend the whole year teaching for the test to

have mindless kids and they do poorly if you chartwell education group your kids will do well on the test. you give them the droll two weeks before. >> host: have you ever been asked to a question whether the three most important things about u.s. history? >> guest: i have not been asked. for me it is the i.d.'s. it is amazing constitution. my favorite document is the virginia statute for religious freedom written by thomas jefferson. hardly anybody knows about it. that is the most unique contribution from american history from political theory. no nation before had said to the people believe what you want or nothing. it was the hardest.

jefferson wrote it but madison got it through the general assembly. and he fought against it. he had a bill of christian education even george washington thought that all people 1/2 to believe in something or go to church. they will think it is the morality. so finally, it got past and they're asking the members to open their doors to the very dangerous fringe that were scary. it took them nine years to get the bill passed and madison helped along by getting it kicked upstairs to the governorship. and it is allowing people to believe. and amazingly, virginia was no more or less tomorrow

then it was before. washington became a big fan of the statute and that led directly to the first amendment. there was no need to fight the issue because it had gone on for nine years. so we have a great first amendment that allows us to be free. we never had a religious war in this kind -- country contrast to places all over the globe. >> host: you close out the current volume 10 of the history of us with religious freedom to date for yourself. is it tough to write about religion and history? >> a lot of us stay away from it. people have believe systems and that is part of the history that as it should be in there without touching any one religion. i do that. >> host: jacksonville, florida. please go ahead you're on

with joy hakim this is booktv in depth. >> caller: good morning. you ever write a black history book? why is black history not being taught in school and why is it we pick and choose when to insert african-americans? we have come here and have been here for his three starts with the fact we were slaves but i am curious as to why we are not teaching and enough about black americans and where we come from. >> host: besides pre-slavery, what else do think is important to teach in history? >> caller: where we come from, attributes to this country, there are many. besides that so many people that they you did not want

an african american president to speak to the students. we have come a long way but we have not because that is clearly shown in our attitudes. i am curious. it just seems that we came along at a certain time but we have been here. >> guest: first of all, read my books. i was pleased when i went into the city where they are using the books and i met a teacher who is african-american and she said you couldn't have written these books and she said i would sure you were african-american. they are filled with african american history come a background from africa, i am very proud of my coverage of the civil-rights movement, jim crow, and i feel strongly about this.

african american history does not the long just to you but me as well. it belongs to all of us. it is a great thing. we're doing something that is so unusual to take people from all over and making them americans and you have all kinds of reasons to be aggravated the way they have been treated in the past and still are, but i tried very, very hard to be fair about that. i would hope that you look at my books and read them. >> host: chapter 23 volume iii from colonies to country. here is a desert of james fortune 21 he fought during the revolutionary war as a young boy and corrupt to be a prominent citizen in philadelphia. >> host: next call is from huntington west virginia. go-ahead. >> caller: yes i would

like to say yes. thank you for having me. i am an educator and i do teach fourth grade. we are under a system right now where we have to write these la habra lesson plans and once we get the lesson plans written comedies administrator or county comes through and they look and say come if we're not on those we can get into serious trouble. another thing bringing up the mandatory testing, right now their jobs hang in the balance upon how well their students do on state testing. it is not fair to us to put us under the gun so to speak

with mandatory state test. the biggest thing that i can see coming this has come down over the course over the last 20 or 25 years, we have taken education from an institution where ass it is mandatory it is there. reading today is not respected as a whole. parents do not expect their kids to read. a quick lines or sentences on a video game and that is about it. if they cannot read that their parents who read it for them. >> guest: there are a lot of issues that you talk about. we have two kinds, two systems of education, which isn't and four. -- rich and poor if you're

in a county school you will have a good education or a suburban area you will have a good education and elsewhere, you will not. we need to address the issue. i am thinking of a fancies suburban neighborhood school system that uses my books and they ask parents to buy the books in their bookstores, there is a commitment with parents but somehow it would help a lot touche try to get parents excited about about learning so they can carry on. as far as lesson plans, i do not know what to tell you. i had to do less of plans and i never ever used the lesson plan in teaching. i did it to please a supervisor but i do not teach that way. i've learned how to outline a nablus and high-school as

far as a base for right thing i never use it. if i use a laundry list are shopping list but then this story evolves. everybody teaches differently. some two use less of plans but a good principle makes all of the difference in the world. somebody who appreciates who was on your side sensitive to what makes a good teacher. also we need to do more looking at good teachers. there is a very, very good teacher in denver who is super. her principal understand that and send out a note to of the teachers and and said if you want to sit in on a class i will see that you get a substitute. you should see this teacher inaction. nobody to occur upon it. we need to learn from each

other and share lesson plans. i don't know the lesson plan now is her days important and that teaching and that is silly. that test is way out of hand. they have to stand up for their own rights and quit being afraid they will lose their job. when i was a teacher, i had a terrible principal you was really in a bad situation. teachers would gripe about it and everybody was unhappy end their word teacher meetings i would voice some of those complaints and i would look around. here i was. teachers are scared they will lose their jobs. if ever there is a protected industry, it is teachers. you have to rape or kill something to get fired. do not worried about your

job. teach well and you will be fined. >> host: why is a good principle so important? do they review the lesson plans? >> guest: no. they're supportive of the independent teacher they are the buffer from the main office but we have this staggering levels of administrators the big difference between the private school that charges enormous tuition, there is a principal and layers of assisted principles and in the home office but very few administrators is upscale schools. in public schools there is layer after layer of administrators. in denver, the school administration building is nine stories high.

nobody will talk to me. they keep the public out. 30 years ago or 40 years ago when denver had many more students before the flow to the suburbs, it was a little two-story building. now with your students, and each time you add administrator that person has to justify his job so they make forms a teacher asked to fill out. it is bizarre. of those people are not in the classroom. there have been some wonderful meetings. a few years ago i went to this thing called tiebreakers. teachers had been chosen from around the country to spend a weekend. it was four all outstanding

teachers and somehow i got into the next. it was fun. it was 22 that told about a school from say diego and it had been closed because there was so much crime that drives all of the inner-city stuff. this teacher went to the school administration and said i want to open that's cool with one caveat. i guess the number of the administrator said i would nobody except somebody to answer the phone and one administrator no counselors or nothing but the same number of people put on a point* of them all to be teachers. they opened the school with

a low ratio their articles and it worked for the same kids, but the teacher support in the principal who chose them and cared about them. i do not mean to attack administrators but there are too many better not. >> host: we have an hour and a half left and we will turn to joy hakim the science books in the last hour and a half. you can talk about history or science that you have. but to close out the first half of the program come of this is from war peace and all that jazz. at the beginning of this volume you talk about i debt and john michael. who are these two people? i want to read a little about idea who played on the

first curls basketball team in new york and a flapper who wore a coat with a mink collar and hardly beyond her teens when she won the automobile for selling more subscriptions to the klan fall post-dispatch newspaper than anyone else. >> guest: i am blessed to have wonderful parents. i asked my mother. she won the car and a license came with the car she got in a car with her sister who 50 years later talks about how terrified she was. my mother did not know how to drive she cranked it up and drove to saratoga. i set out in the world did do sell more papers than anybody else? she said she went into the inaccurate district where nobody spoke english. or hardly and she sold the paper. how did you do that?

she said i told them it was good for the children. she knew education and way back then and how it was good for the children. >> host: what is the importance of opening this volume with your parents? >> my books are personal so my father is great. my grandfather is in the books. i wanted this to be a conversation. the children need to understand that authors read books. textbooks are written by committees. good books always have a discussion. >> host: and what is this? >> guest: that is a pbs special that was made. the picture is wonderful it is immigrants coming into ellis island but it is based on "the history of us." that was exciting.

that was a few years ago katie couric was the narrator and christopher reeve was the creative consultant. his brother is a history teacher in vermont. he was very interested in history and he called all of his friends in hollywood and ask them to be voices. nobody would turn down christopher reeve so anybody you ever heard of in hollywood is in this series. and they all did it free. astonishingly. and they had a choice. big names. they had a choice and they turned down astonishing people. that is available for teachers and schools. >> host: it is a dvd but you told me the book? >> guest: the book is out

of print and that is awful and that is because of the war between texting and trade it was called a trade book so folks -- schools could not buy it. i said in west virginia with the state school board and they wanted to buy the books for all of the students in west virginia. that is a lot of students they would not sell that to them because this salesperson did not have it in his list. what ever. it was a lose louis. the school people were furious and they have a chip on their shoulders. we are not good enough? that is one of the frustrations of trying to bring through a new idea to have real books in the schools. i got an e-mail from an

administrative it wanted to buy 1,000 copies price said i am sorry there out of print and last i heard she found 500 copies. she said there is no redouble u.s. history at high school level and easy to read with john indignity is and we're hoping to get it republished. >> host: will take a short break and issue a little piece from the pbs special free down. and all but zero of joy hakim reading or talking about a history of bus. then some of her favorite authors then we will be back live with of -- author joy hakim. >> it was sunny december 7, 1941. at the white house eleanor roosevelt preparing for a four will lunch with her

husband and 30 guest. at the last minute the president sent word he could not attend. he received a message from a wide as said air raid on pearl harbor. this is not a drill. >> united states of america was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval air forces of the empire of japan. >> at 7:55 a.m. sunday morning japanese planes had dropped on battleship row where u.s. warships were lined up making a hard to miss target. by the time the plane's left much of the pacific fleet had been crippled or some. more than 2,000 people were dead. >> december 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy.

>> one day after the attack it was president roosevelt's request congress declared war on japan and three days later germany and italy declare war on the united states. america found itself by teeing a war in the two parts of the world the atlantic and the pacific for the first battles were gramm and american soldiers took a terrible pounding in the pacific. >> it was scorching hot and corpses were piled everywhere. nightfall we were attacked one shell landed so close i was thrown to the ground i had to hold pieces of gravel out of my face to my but then the allies 13 big victories. guadalcanal and midway island and rose about rallied the country in the name of freedom. >> this nation must place

its future in the hands and hearts of the millions of free men and women. freedom means human-rights everywhere. [inaudible] >> i have a lot of women rights stuff in the book but the question is that i considered rite aid a book on the women's rights movement? my skill seems to be too big things and bring in lots of little threads so writing about one single focus does not interest me as much as to try to put the women's movement into the perspective of the big coulter. other people have done

wonderful books on that and will continue. i will read you a little something about women. i read you about all the negro chapter and this is a sidebar called where the men stared. 1931. the yankees play in exhibition game against tennessee. chattanooga owner, joe anglo who wants traded day ball player for the thanksgiving turkey just signed a 17 year-old pitcher, jackie mitchell. when the great babe came to the plate the new pitcher was called to the mound and surprise come a mitchell was a she. the first pitch was low. babe ruth's one and mr. . ditto.

babe ruth did not like missing anyone's pitch and a woman? he demanded to see the ball. there was nothing wrong with it. mitchell roundup and let go and the day but watched it flyby. strike. the bambino through his back and stomped off and the crowd roared. the next batter was lou gehrig. jackie through three times and lou gehrig's long three times and that was that. some said that ruth and gehrig were just being polite to a woman but nobody who was there believed it. years later jackie mitchell said i had a drop pitch it when i threw it right, you could not touch it. baseball commissioner did not care.

he was a misogynist. which means someone who dislikes women. landis said mitchell's contract was void and baseball lost out. sometimes telling stories like that tells you a lot about the time. win this was not only prejudiced against women but also people of color like hispanics. we had to wait to get rid of him before there was say say-- there was change. the word misogynist? of of big words i tried to use them all lot.

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>> host: we're back live with the tv and joy hakim is our guest. author of several different volumes in u.s. history and currently working on a bunch of books? biology. why? >> guest: it is the next up. writing added expertise as a professor of science or physics you write about what you know, . the other way is to write to learn as a journalist. if you are a newspaper reporter you're not intimidated by any subjects. i have been a reporter and i

was asked to be a business writer. i do not know anything and the editor said that is okay. you are a good journalist and you will learn. i did per car wanted to learn science so i jumped into a. of. >> host: you really did not know anything? >> host: basically what we all know? >> guest: i was scientifically illiterate. i like to think of myself as a model. if i can learn it, you can. the difference between my book and all of my books are reviewed by specialists to make sure it is right. but i have the quality that if i discover it did is so exciting. then you spend your whole life and is subjected is harder to be quite as excited by it. >> host: you describe albert einstein as he adds a

new dimension. you say he had an attitude? [laughter] >> guest: yes. he was a character. he'll love life and was larger than life and loved people but he had an attitude and annoyed all of his professors wang graduated when everybody was given a recommendation for a job that he could not. he was destitute because he could not find a job so finally he was in the patent office. he was a smart alec. he had great friends. they appreciated how brilliant he was. but the teachers did not. >> host: i want to read just a little bit

from the story b >> i want to read a lot of it from the story of science, the einstein volume on the nuclear bomb. i want to know why you write it like this. "the manhattan project might be the most ambitious scientific endeavor humans have ever undertaken. was it a success? you can decide that for yourself progress a work of science and technology, it was spectacular. the german effort never got very far. of the german scientists believed it was impossible to make a bomb in time for the of warsaw and never convince hitler to give them enough money but the allies did not know that.

>> guest: are we better off having an atomic bomb? i guess it might have happened anyway but it is a spectacular government collaboration in a very short time everybody thought would be impossible to doing it is exciting in terms of the science most of it is about the time they realized they were doing, many of them changed their mind. then after the war may got into the piece process. >> host: is it important for students to make up their own mind? do you give your opinion? >> guest: i have to say my opinion keeps changing pricetag it is so complex. i don't know. i am not sure what i think. but the story of the

manhattan project is fascinating. >> host: endless story of science aristotle leads the way, why did you start with him? >> i did a historical approach we do not teach science history we're not teaching science but the wind of and the greatest scientific era ever. the 20th century was spectacular and we're not teaching and even to some of the best high-school sand not teaching quantum theory and relativity and yesterday flying in from denver i sat next to a young man a senior in high school, a very bright and personable this kid will go far in his generation. he wants to be a lawyer. he is a very good school and i said to know anything about quantum theory or relativity? and no.

physics? no. we started talking and i think i generated some interest but it is the basis of all science is. you cannot study chemistry or biology unless you have some background. these three books are a base of physics of like to see them used in the middle school. there was a movement and one of the nobel prize fighters there has not been successful i think the reason is he tries to get i schools to change and have 61st ride on think that will work. they are to set in their ways. they're like having physics at the end of the line but to get middle school kids to understand something about quantum theory and the idea

is then high-school so have to change and we can no longer have to the two cultures with the idea that coming up with the phrase 50 years ago the idea that a lot of people opt out but the most of my friends. they say science i am a literary person. whenever. science is for other people. not any more. you cannot claim to be educated in the 21st century. >> host: did you opt out? >> i am akon for. it is so exciting. one of the reasons is we don't do this because we don't teach science history. we need to do that. >> host: you start the

first volume with aristotle and you start off with genesis and the beginning god created the heaven and earth and also about hindu and some religious text. >> guest: in those are telling us who we are and give us a place in the universe but they have day story for their place in the anniversary and understand at and balance it with whatever religious beliefs we have, but science with the big bang we certainly proved it. science is constantly changing it is the story of the evolution of the universe is exciting stuff. weighed down know it is 13. 7 billion years old the

earth is only 5 billion years and we have these stories. i am now right thing about the making of earth's itself. they're all of these articles hits each other and they congealed into there versus 10 a great big huge asteroid came careening toward earth and if it was a head on hit it would have been the end. that it had to add an angle. fad is why we're at a tilt and that was the moon and add of the debris they recreated in it themselves. >> host: is there a place for religion in science? >> guest: but coexisted in most of us have a spiritual side and we have a belief system.

that would be separate non conflicting parts. >> host: have you been criticized for starting off that way? >> guest: i am criticized in "the history of us" because i have been the second book i go into world history and i mentioned three names of moses, jesus and muhammed and some critic has followed about that and said they are not historical a week cannot prove them what they doing? it is part of our culture. >> host: node joke there earth is pancake flat? [laughter] >> guest: that is what people believed. . .

caller: my question is, could the lack of history being taught and the last 10 or 20 years be a great scheme of being able to rewrite history because the younger generation never learned it? and my main question for her is, obama has said that he wants to reform education.

what direction do you think he is going to take us in? i will go ahead and listen. hoguest: i am not a conspiracy theorist. i do not think there has spent any scheme. it is business interests that run schools to make money and that is a problem. we need to open up schools to all the books that are out there. i don't know. i cannot speak for obama. i am concerned about some of what i am reading about technology -- business interests. the technology companies. there is an article this week on a consortium of technology groups. there will be a lot of money spent. they are lining up together. unless they find good riderswri the writing gets the least amount of income.

host: should every student have a laptop? guest: yes. our kids need to know how to work computers in the computer age. if you know what quantum theory is, you will know where the computer come from. host: what is quantum theory? guest: the smaller than atomic world. the signs that we are teaching primarily is a 19th century science or earlier -- newtonian science. which is the science of the world we inhabit. so that if i throw a ball at you, the trajectory of that ball follows new's rules. most of what we learn in school is the size of the macro world. but there is an atomic world and the atomic world does not follow those rules. and that is the quantum world. to give you an idea of the size of an atom, taken at all and

blow it up until it is the size of the earth. the atoms in at apple are the same size as the original apple. that is how small atoms are. no magnified scope has ever seen and atom or ever will. you have seen pictures. they are done with electronic tunneling microscopes. yeah, it is so small this atomic world that it hurts your head to think about it. the rules are different. atoms never die. in our world, we have the second law of thermodynamics. things run out and die. atoms are forever and they are all moving. this table which seems solid is full of atoms that are moving -- slowly but they are moving.

they are scrunched together. they are so astonishingly small that they are scrunched together and give the illusion of solidity. leave this in a tomb or ceiling up for a few thousand years, and the atoms will deteriorate by themselves because the atoms are moving. you open a bottle of perfume and the atoms which are moving will scoot out. but the same thing will happen with this. and a bar of iron. their rules of engagement are totally different. that is the quantum world. host: what the practical effects of that? guest: in 1900, a little more than 100 yars ago, we were not sure that atoms existed. in 1905, einstein davis proved

that they were. we did not have any idea that you're is an unbelievably small entity. we discovered that it is really small and the nucleus hold most of the matter, the mass of the atom. and we learned all the rules, we learned about electrons w ooshing around. i think this is the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humankind -- understanding the atom. once we did that, we could understand quantum theory. the rolls -- the uncertainty principle, all of this. then we could have an electronic revolution. all the things in the studio are because we understand quantum theory. it is pretty amazing stuff. as is relativity. the method involves is difficult. -- the math involved is difficult. you and i can only go so far.

but we can both understand the ideas. and yet we keep those from our kids. i don't understand. and it is so exciting, and we live in a world -- host: i feel like i am in eighth grade again. i remember being taught there were electrons and neutrons. i wasn't very good at science. guest: the picture you have in your mind is not the way it really looks. the basic idea -- that was boris atom, and we have gone much further. the electrons are in a cloud. they're very fast. it is fascinating. read my book. host: i am. guest: i would like to tell you something about that particular book. the first two books -- i had experts read them. but the third book was a

challenge. this stuff is top. i had finished the book on einstein -- this of this tough. -- this stuff is tought. . they had found some things wrong. i had fixed it. and it was done. then i got an email from edwin taylor at mit. i think today he is one of the greatest physics educators. he has to know a little more about physics than i do. he offered a few suggestions on science writing. he had read an article about me. anyway, i just got my lasso out. anybody who wants to help or gets involved -- >> i went back to him and said, if you want to help me, i can

use some help. thinking he would give it a third quickly. and then i would get it published. -- by getting a third quick read. he started reading the book and he came back to me and said, are you sure someone read this book? i spent the next year and a half with edwin taylor with it -- like a personal tutorial. learning physics. we re-wrote the whole book. this is the einstein volume. he is the author of watches the greatest textbook for students in quantum theory in relativity. archibald wheeler was one of the great physicist of our time, hence the physics department of princeton and university of texas -- i was sitting in a

restaurant in denver, a japanese restaurant outside it. studying edwin taylor;''s physis book. reading with great intensity. eating might sushi and seaweed or whatever. i was just very conscience that there was a presence standing next to me. i looked up. and there is this handsome, tall, from sweden, and he said, that book. where did you get that book? i said i am working with the author. he said, you are working with the author? can i sit down? he said that with me. he had a girlfriend of in the distance it standing there. i have total attention. he read that book in sweden and said, that is the greatest text book i ever read. we talked about it. a few days later, i was with a friend of mine and i told her this and she said, where did you

get that book? all my life i've been looking for a book that would attract men. i said, whatever. it is a great book. in the text -- which appreciate textbook riders. this is not for high school students. it is due -- to zero difficult. it starts with a parable. it is a wonderful book. max borne who was a friend of einstein's and a nobel prize winner, it was an artistic endeavor. in the explanation of science and history and things like that take it real creative skill. max borne was olivia newton- john's grandfather. great scientist. but he appreciates the importance of a textbook writing. edwin worked with me for a year- and-a-half. that book is good science. caller: joy, it is a joy to hear

you speak of these things. i have one suggestion. i read some months ago and "times magazine," it takes the future about seven years to get up to speed. in those early years, especially those of us know how difficult it is to try to write one lesson, rather than be able to write lesson plans for every subject, especially in science. i love to hear you speak as a teacher. you did such a good job with your book. i wonder if maybe it is possible for you to work with some of these wonderful teachers and

make, not lesson plans, but scripps. ts. and maybe even half boxes of the materials teachers needed. so that when they get ready to do a lesson, they could see a video of the wonderful -- that have all the scripts that they needed to get up in the class. and could have maybe even some videos of the things that you have done with the teachers in signs and history -- in science and history. guest: first of all, i am a writer. i am not in the classroom. i feel like i am a partner with a teacher. but we do have incredibly good

materials to go with all of these books. with the history books, oxford has done it teacher materials for elementary school and teacher materials for middle and high school. and today are kind of standard stuff. -- they are kind of standard stuff. and education team at johns hopkins discovered the history books and was using them in their programs for particularly going into inner-city schools. i was sitting at my desk and i got this email saying, we have done teaching materials for your books. they did them for their own use. would you like to see them? yeah, sure. i was totally unprepared for what they said. it was incredibly extensive stock. hundreds of pages for each book. there is an assessment books.

there is everything. oxford has published the johns hopkins stuff which is terrific. it is imaginative. it is too much for some teachers that are overwhelmed by it. but there is a hopkins material. there is oxford, there is an assessment book. the science books. johns hopkins wrote materials for the first two books, which address them as reading books. and it also has coordinated experiments that are really good. and for the third book, nsta is the co publisher. the national science teachers association. a teacher named it juliana did teaching materials to go with the einstein but. they blow me away. if you are a member, you can download the free. -- that free. whahost: what is the website?

can you go to your web site and find it? guest: it is joyhakim.com. it should be there. host: who keeps your web site updated? guest: the smithsonian people. host: fort myers, florida. it is an alleged that boys still like to read but the harry potter cedars has proved they will if you give them the right books. it -- have you found that boys and girls have responded differently to your books on science? guest: the first teacher for use my books in virginia beach. i went to the school board. i had been a reporter. i knew all the people. i want to try this with kids in a classroom. i assumed there would ask for a volunteer and i would have a teacher that was eager to work

with me. they assign me to a teacher. she was very unhappy. the picture with good reason because she had to be out social study classes. a fifth grade teachers. one was going to use a standard textbook and the other was going to use my manuscript. i made two preparations for her. she was unhappy. she was also at first. when i came back a few weeks later, she had totally change. and she said, if she gave the kids in the classroom with a standard textbooks three pages to read, they usually did not read it. she said, i can give them 10 pages or you are -- of yours -- this is a great man is good. they want to read more. -- of your manusscript and they want to read more. girls are much more apt to fall

the rules. they will read more. boys will. on't. in one of the books, i describe how you load a musket. there is a different. host: if you want to email or tweet, twitter.com/booktv -- -- as opposed to specific scientific material for zoobug 64. guest: i don't think we should teach critical thinking. it is be able to think. one of my sons had a course called critical thinking. i asked him what it was like. he said, boring you teach the history and science and give them something to critically think about. to put them in the abstract it doesn't work.

if you write a compared of paper, comparing any two things, you have to think critically. compare apples and oranges. how are they different or how are they alike, particularly if you get into his drink. tory. host: what about liberal arts education? guest: i am all for it? it makes you think. it gives you access to the great minds of the past. you need some much vocational education. i think we need a national discussion on what we mean by educating. but what i am hearing from this administration and others is we need to do something about education because we are not providing workers for our industry. is that the purpose of education, to turn out employees? or is it the purpose to and rich individuals who will then that become thinking employees?

host: philip in brisbane, california. caller: thank you very much. as i have studied the history of my state, as an adult, it seems to me that what i was taught as a child, particularly about the native tribes in my area, was this informational -- disinformation. how do i go about finding a textbook that was in use 50 years ago? and if you were to try to do a search like that, would you first searched the library of congress or seek out publishers? how would you go about that? guest: i am astonished at how much i can get on the internet as a start. i would start there. the library of congress would be someplace else. 50 years ago we were not doing a great job with native tribes. we were buys about that. we are doing a better job today. -- we were biased about that.

i went into a lot of used bookstores. it takes a little digging and work, but we should be able to find that out. host: joy hakim's "freedom" book is 27 ties. tell the true history. boring. -- it is too -- did you keep anything of that book? guest: not because i am trying to please them. i only please myself. i am tough on racial issues, on slavery. so i am not sure what she thinks i sanitized. host: are there past controversies comparable to current debates on a roll of science and scientists like the

climate change issue? guest: climate change is a really major kind of thing. signs became a popular endeavor only in the 19th century -- science became a popular endeavor. before that, jefferson -- science suddenly became very popular. before that, maybe it was just left to the scientists. there was a lot of debate, when we first found dinosaur bones and 19th century. we found these bones for a long time but there were considered mythical beings. we began to look at them scientifically and rationally and began to understand. there was debate about what they were. i think we are in a unique time right now. at the end of the 19th century, the president of harvard, based

on word from scientists, told his students not to study physics because everything that had been discovered pretty much had been discovered in physics. this was just as we were about to enter the greatest era of physics ever. he picked up on a speech by the first nobel-prize winner in this country who said the same thing. and then along came einstein, and they were all wrong. but science has really come into its own in recent times. i think there's more awareness out. host: connor in cleveland, ohio. you are on with joy hakim. caller: i should be asking you about quantum physics because i am one of these english-major lawyers. i want to get your take on a

college education in general. i do some tutoring in cleveland and in washington, d.c., to the baroque cities where the difference between the haves and have-nots is fairly clear. what about people who lack the necessary foundation to go to college? is it always the answer? guest: this is not my field of expertise. i am answering as a layperson. i don't know that much about college. but i would say probably not. if we had a really solid high- school foundation, i would think that there are many people who don't necessarily need to go to college but we should beat -- we should be graduating high- school students who know more. in denver, for instance, there is a high school that i know about in a hispanic neighborhood were only 24% of the students

graduate. that is appalling. and they graduate without much of an education at all. this particular school, right here it is a school that i spent time in, and it is run by the diocese. it is a private school. gets its kicks from the same neighborhood. and all those kids go on -- it gets its kids from the same neighborhood. this particular school is especially interesting. they may get on $4,000 per kid. were denver public schools spent $8,000 per kid. the principal told me that denver came to them and said, we would like to incorporate you. you don't have to worry about money anymore. you'll get $8,000. the principal fought long and hard and he realized he would have to fire all of his death, because they did not have the teaching courses, the teaching credentials. there are a lot of roles that

are keeping schools from -- we have a whole generation of people my age who could be in schools helping out. who would volunteer it does take the village to raise a kid. our schools should be bringing in the lawyers and doctors, who are retired and who have time and would love to be called on. i actually ran a program in virginia, in which i brought in members of the community. i got the president of the largest bank in virginia, who was a science buff. he came in every friday afternoon. i got butterfly expert. he had gone to the amazon. i had a doctor who came and taught chess to kids. they acted as if i was giving them a gift. these are very busy executives -- they were dying to do this for kids.

there are a lot of people out there who will help. host: 0 plus 0 -- oklahoma city e-mails, i believe that our elementary schools would be better service with a history teacher, of math teachers that all first graders in the college model. that is why our elementary schools are weak. and have no mastery of their jobs. guest: i don't agree. i like the socratic model, where the teacher is learning with the students. one of mites sons went to st. john's college. -- one of my sons went to st. john's college in annapolis. the teachers teach everything. and they learned with the kids. they give a lot of initiatives to the students. there is self-discovery. everybody learns everything together. if you have bright people, science is discovery.

first of all, we are not going to get science majors teaching in second grade. we have some. and it is exciting. but we will not get many. so we have to find another way. and get the right people in schools. it we went to the national sciee foundation, a big meeting a couple of years ago in boulder to address the signs crisis in schools. -- the science crisis in schools. there were all kinds of educators to try and figure out how to improve science education. they let the general public come and in. i sat there and listened. when i arrive, was given a booklet about what was wrong with a science education.

i thought, wow. whoever wrote this has got it. it is very well written. it zeroed in on all the problems. i was to learn during the course of the date that this book like had been written 20 years earlier when the nsf had another meeting. nothing had changed. things have gotten worse in the 20 years. i sat all day listening to all of these experts. at the end of the day, they said that the answer was to pay teachers more and to get more science majors in elementary and middle schools. that is exactly what they had asked for 20 years before. it is not going to happen so let's use the teachers we have and educate them and give the books that will teach them and bring them some of the excitement that comes with learning. host: you have mentioned your family. let's start with sam. guest: sam is my husband. he has been very supportive.

he has an actor. he has acted and directed. he is doing something in virginia beach. she was in virginia beach for a staged reading of a new plague. sam is teacy. he is teaching at an osha lifelong learning institute, an adjunct of denver university. he has taught theater there. he is going to be teaching a course in mccarthy -- the mccarthy era in the winter. host: what did he do? guest: he is a retired businessman. host: now he is teaching? guest: yes, and his teeth -- and he is acting. host: readers of "the new york times" might know who danny is. guest: he is our youngest son.

danny is great. he went to st. john's college. he won a pulitzer prize this year. for investigative reporting. he is head of the albany bureau. he broke the eliot spitzer story. danny has two little boys -- casey and eli. casey is a world expert on space. he knows all about the apollo missions and he loves space. host: any other kids? guest: jeff is the associate dean for science at american university. he is a mathematician. he is wonderful. danny is married to latest blue is a writer and she just had an article in "the new york times" about a school in search togo were kids, kindergarten kids are outdoors, rain or shine for three hours every morning. jeff is married to a speech

pathologist in the maryland schools. she is wonderful. i think the kids are all perfect. and jeff is terrific. he is a typical mathematician. few words but a lot of thinking. they have a baby, mimi, who is adorable. i am going to be seen her. and then ellen. ellen is in denver. that is why we're there. she is a dynamo and she is gorgeous. she is my daughter. she is a marketing director for a firm. she is flying all over the country. and her husband is a landscape architect. he is a partner in a firm called design workshop which is the best plastic aleandscape architn

the country. and they have two children. sam is at the university of colorado. and natalie is gorgeous and wonderful and she wants to be a chef. host: were you a busybody mom when the kids were growing up? guest: it was difficult. i will say that danny was trying to describe his mother to a friend, and he said, to give you an idea, our favorite tv station is c-span. host: also appearedwesome. jeff and berkeley, california. caller: i am trying to be concise, but my son's experience is with nominally episcopal, private schools. it is hard to get in.

expensive. the issue there is there were no religious or political filters hampering the teachers. i don't know what demands there were put under, but they were pretty much open to teach without any criticism. the only thing that parents were interested in it is, what college can you get my kid into? but you mentioned freda callo. in to pick them apart, she was married to diego rivera, who was a communist. he came to the detroit area and somehow got money from the ford family, but his murals were not always accepted because of the communist witch. twitch. to bring these things out, in teaching history and in science, it gets filtered out. i had a little experience in a public high school where my history teacher was a very good.

he was inhibited from saying certain things. that is my point. if you can take off from that -- i think the filters to get in a public school are tough and inhibit a teacher and inhibit teaching. guest: we have got to teach everything. if you are really steading chairman history, you sure readmei mein kampf. he should know about communist. if you're scared of ideas, you should make them attractive. if you cannot read something, it will make you want to. what is communism and why his appeal to so many people? if we have a political philosopher lit -- philosophy that we feel is superior, the only way to make that case is to understand the other. i wrote my books for upper elementary or middle school. you can only go so far, but the

eighth book in my series, i call the economics book. in that book, i define economic systems. so i have a definition of communism and other free markets and of socialism. we certainly cannot keep them away from kids. nor, should we. host: you call it in age of extremes. guest: you had the labor movement. you had the robber barons. all of them had excesses and good and bad. we have so much polarization and knee-jerk polarization, we cannot see the good in those who think differently than we do. none of us is perfect or has it all right . host: lebanon, tennessee. good afternoon. caller: i teach u.s. history to

eighth graders. and i love u.s. history. i continue to read and learn about it. thank you for "freedom: a history of us". my problem is teaching u.s. history is motivating my students. do you have any advice for teachers of students who think they do not need to know u.s. history? guest: i would give them projects. i don't know if you know about national history day. i love that. it is an organization. a lot of kids, maybe 600,000 or more participate, and they do projects in history to very high standards. it is a competition. you compete with kids in your own great. you can do a paper. that is usually the least popular. you can do a story board.

a lot of the kids -- i have been a judge -- and a lot of the kids have been judged on plays. you can do an individual play where you write and perform it. or you can do the groupthink. the quality of the stuff that kids do. some of the things i have seen, i cannot imagine doing it even as well. this is just on the local, state level and the winner come to washington. i judge in washington. by that time, you are getting good performances. whether you participate in national history date or not, that method of teaching. there is a teacher in denver who, all for kids every year to take part in national history date. and they usually win. some of this stuff is so. and so wonderful. poignant. the last time i went, i had

gotten on to some people with disney, the creative people, the idea people. i told them, you have to come to natural history date. i dragged them kicking and screaming. they were blown away. one woman was weeping over one of the episodes that these kids did. there were to grow that we saw that they could not get over one. these two little boys did a play about the irish-british conflict. and they wrote letters. the play was about two boys who grew up together and then separated. they wrote letters back and forth. and in these letters, which the children made up, they explained the conflict. at the end, one of the boys, who is a soldier dies. it is something to weep about. then we also watched four girls who did a play on nurses during the vietnam war.

i had read all the stuff on vietnam, it never occurred -- i had not thought about it. they described the war from the point of view of active nurses. it was so insightful. i would say to you, projects. get kids to be creative. and research. with national history day, you do this to high standards. it cannot make up stuff. we need much more of that. host: at the same time you said earlier, you did not think dressing up as pilgrims -- guest: i do not want to say that i don't think you should do that. you should also be reading. we now have a history program that is all experiential. it is all dressing up. if you dress up into don't do the research, if it is just a momentary thing where the teacher sets the scene, the kids don't research themselves, and

they are doing an experiential -- that's fine, but you don't remember. we need to have them participate and dress up and pretend, but the pretense has to be based on something actually. in the third book, i talk about, colonies to country -- about how history is pretending in a way. but attending based on information. -- pretending based on information. host: had their e-mails, if you mention the kent state massacre or wounded need to high school student, they have no idea what that is. guest: they don't know what the anomaly is. they don't know about the civil rights movement. -- they don't know what vietnam is. they know rosa parks. my 10th book goes into kent state in all of that.

there are stories there. if you divide your class up into different kids take different projects and come back to that class, they will all learn. host: frank in texas. caller: my question is involving politics and science. 1953, the americans -- society published a book on environmental science, then we got a doctor in california who said -- the manufacture sulfuric acid which is in direct opposition to the proper chemistry i learned. today i see environmental science, let's take for example, ozone. nobody is told that the ozone has a half life of 20 minutes and then it changes in minimum of six times completely in the stratosphere, which defies the probability that you will have an ozone hole.

host: what is your question? caller: the role of politics in modern science. today, politics has taken over all of science. guest: i am sure it has. that is something i am not expert on. i think it takes a village to raise a kid. i think we need to have more and more scientists and people in the community getting into schools. if you have ideas and information, get out there to your local schools or put stuff on the internet. reach as widely as you can so we can have those discussions. host: an e-mail -- in reading reviews on your science series, i have found numerous arguments that state an attack upon the christian faith in compiling the history of science, especially in the middle ages. my question is, do you find an

absolute divide between faith and reason? guest: i am astonished on amazon how good the reviews are. i am writing books on biology and change over time, which is another way of saying evolution. i think i will have a lot of trouble with parts of the religious community. i seem to get myself into tough things. i don't think there should be a gap between science and religion. i think it is imperative, actually, that we address this issue and talk about it. i am certainly not attacking the christian faith. but if you are a hard-liner and only see things through a narrow prism, then i don't know. write your own books or there are books that will address your issues. don't read mine. host: tucson, arizona.

caller: 40 years ago, the teacher -- i am a locomotive engineer -- i am curious about college entrance exams and competition to get into schools. our home schooling parents capable of challenging their own children sufficiently to prepare them to take the achievement tests and entrance exams which are required to get into good colleges and universities? guest: i said before that a pretty much only need good teachers, because when i go in to conferences, it is the teachers who are there. i would say the same thing with home schoolers. i have met a lot. i am blown away by them. i think they are probably -- if you are going to have a sliding scale, the best home schoolers provide an education and better than anyone else, because it is what -- one-on-one, they have flexibility. they take their kids places. they learn with their kids. it is astonishing what the really good home schoolers to.

i talked to one family, and they all participate. they were teaching their kids the greek and latin an elementary school, because you cannot find schools. i am a big enthusiast when it comes to home schooling. i have a friend who is out in the real world and sees something else. she keeps telling me, you don't know what some of these, coolers are home schoolers are doing. they are neglecting their kids. i am sure that is true. just like a lot of public schools are. host: in the religious community, a lot of home schoolers teach for religious reasons. guest: and they like my books very much. there are extremists. and there are those who don't. the homeschooling community and the religious right -- i am

amazed and delighted, and i do think i have fans on left and right. and i think american history is where we can all come together, and we should use that to celebrate what we are and talk about our differences. host: about 5 million of your books are in print? guest: have been sold. host: how many school systems are using them? guest: my publishers don't tell me that. not as many as should be. that is because of the adoption system. i will tell you what happened in indiana last year or the year before -- they adopted new history books. we were not even in the mix, because there were not willing to go to the process which was too hard. and too expensive. so they adopted, they have an adoption list, and then schools choose between them.

after the adoption process was finished, the indiana school board looked at the books. they were so appalled by the books that they had adopted, that they said none of these are viable. none should be used. there was a big article in the newspaper. that is when i first became aware of it. then the people, the school administrators said, we have gone to the process. we have to send them out. these are the books that children -- the teachers got to choose between. and it came with a letter from the school board, this is education malpractice using is. it was bizarre. one of the problems in one of the reasons that publishers like mine don't want to get involved -- indiana is a relatively small state -- after you go through the adoption process, you have to said salespeople to every town, city and hamlet for presentations.

they all this work it -- they all work this out, so on monday you are in this state. on tuesday, you are here. in indiana, it is an eight-week process you have two sales people from the whole office. you try to find somebody from indiana. that is very expensive. eight weeks. to say nothing of salaries and presentations. the books that come out of this are the ones that have the best presentations. the salespeople have been working on lighting up, making themselves very nice to the key people. this is not -- forget all of this. first of all, you should not have this formal kind of thing. have someone in indiana or california, whatever, go out and look at the books available and let them be the decision makers. not have it based on fancy

presentations from publishers who hire people to do nothing but make presentations. and then there is a lot of corruption that goes with this. oxford did have a sales person in california who told me, i know this second hand, but i am sure it is true, that they were asked to make it $10,000 contribution in one city to get considered. which they did not do, nor, should they have. south carolina did in adoption of few years ago, and they asked me to be a speaker at their social studies conference. this is an adoption year. i had something else. i did not want to do it. there was a lot of pressure. and the head of social studies for the state was one of those who urged me. i went down and gave my speech. no one would talk to me. this man who made me too, would

not have a cup of coffee with me. i thought, what is going on? in the time between when they asked me and this conference, he had been hired to be there salesperson. so he left the schools. 9% of the state went with what his books -- 90% of the state. don't do it this way, guys. the book they adopted has no rating. it is all work. -- it has no reading. there is no textbook. textbooks are no good. therefore, we will do workbooks. this is a scandal. host: joan in portland, oregon. caller: 2 white infinitely c- span -- thank you.

i have a question. your first reference to getting their attention of potential learners. once upon a time, on this very channel, i did get attention in trying to engage the world in pursuit of a nobel peace prize, making the mistake of not. ing ou pointing out how many wau can spell nobel peace prize. which is the premise-date in my teaching -- what we hear and have no opportunity to directly understand from the person, or the source, giving information. i worship messengers. my question -- how do you deal

and have -- to your own personal welfare? because anything you have offered in the way of engaging people in pursuits of education and learning together? guest: i have not had threats to my life for anything. there's a guy on the west coast to is very obnoxious. he used to call me at home and had some suggested remarks. i asked him never to call me again. he started putting stuff on the web. that is about the most unpleasant thing. some people like my books and some don't. that is the way it should be. a one r -- one other thing on the adoption process. teachers are the only professionals who don't get to choose their own tools. why should every teacher in this city or state use the same book? i might want to teach --

host: is there a cost efficiency? guest: may be. certainly with my books, if you buy in quantity. if you buy 1,000 -- we're talking huge numbers when a coal state or city -- one that allows flexibility? in the western part of virginia, in montgomery county, virginia, which is different from montgomery county, maryland -- the supervisor chose two books, to adopt two books, mine and a standard textbook. he gave each school the opportunity to pick. half the schools went one way and have the other way. seven years later she gave them the same choice, and only one school chose the textbook. if you make the choice, then you are committed to it.

when i was teaching here, i was asked to teach a subject i did not want to teach. i did not like the textbook. i agree to teach it if i could pick my own textbook, which i did. the text book i picked was terrible. i made a bad choice. but i had chosen it, and i was going to make it work. let teachers make that decision. don't force it on them curren. host: here is the fifth grade teacher who uses your books. he says, i am lucky to use her book, "freedom: a history of us", in my fifth grade classroom. the reason they worked so well is the quality of writing. joy is absolutely right about the poor quality professional development offered by school districts. that is not to say all professional development is bad.

the folks at the center for civic for education know how to provide equality trading as well as quality teaching materials. guest: thank you for those comments. the big thing is professional development. they are vultures out there getting in and trying to make money. we the people, which is civic development, does a very good job. gilder lehrmann is fabulous. be very selective. the publishing houses are now sending out professional -- they either charge for it or they put it into the cost of the book. they send out professional development people. i spent a lot of time as wrtier in residence in los angeles, and the teachers talk about the professional development people as gestapo agents.

they were forcing teachers to use their books. so, yeah. professional development, teachers need help. host: is it important to have a national department of education? guest: we did not have one until relatively recently. i don't know. i think maybe, yes, that it is. but the more centralized things are, the more uniform the further we get from trusting the individual teacher. if we don't trust our teachers and treat them like professionals and intelligent people that many of the mam are, it is good teachers who make the difference. most of us, if we are lucky at all, can look back on a really great teacher. i grew up in vermont, which did not have great teachers. i had a high school english teacher who changed my life and

everybody who had there. we all came out able to write. after i wrote these books, i searched for her. she was in a nursing home in england. i center thank you no. -- i sent her a thank you note. a lot of teachers today want to be loved. but this teacher was a stern, new england tight. i was scared for. i did not like her. but when i got to smith college, i was -- i could write better than most kids who may have, from this press schools. -- fancy prep schools. host: our guest is an joy hakim. joy