Michigan Surveys Textbooks, Rates May's Book Favorably

A Michigan survey on the treatment of minority groups in high school textbooks has given a high rating to a history book co-authored by Ernest R. May, professor of History, but noted that the book failed to discuss several domestic problems.

The group of teachers and historians who reviewed The Land of the Free--A History of the United States for the Michigan Department of Education in 1972 concluded that May's book did not trace the history of racism or poverty.

Fair Presentation

Robert L. Tresize, director of the study, said yesterday that May's book "gives a fair presentation of blacks and Indians, but in our fourth year of doing the survey, we have become far more critical than we used to be."

May said yesterday that his objective in writing the book was to give a "varied and balanced history of the United States." "The relations between blacks and whites is a consistent theme in the history we have written," he added. Only 31 per cent of the books reviewed in the survey received a "very good" rating. Tresize said that women and Mexican-Americans are still ignored in most of the accounts.

The Michigan Department of Education began making the textbook surveys in 1968 after the legislature passed a state law requiring a yearly examination of course materials. Tresize said that most authors have made limited efforts to include the accomplishments of different racial groups.

May co-authored the book with John W. Caughey, professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles, and John Hope Franklin '36, professor of History at the University of Chicago.