Beware of history textbooks published by Five Ponds Press, which is based in Connecticut, but provides most of its textbooks to the Virginia Department of Education. Two of the company’s books, Our Virginia: Past and Present and Our America: To 1865, contain historical inaccuracies that have sparked criticism from Virginia educators and historians. The factual errors or questionable assertions include statements that:

 

·       The Confederacy consisted of 12 states, when the real number was 11;

·       New Orleans started out in the 1800s as a U.S. harbor, when in fact it was a Spanish colony at the time;

·       The United States entered World War I in 1916 (try 1917);

·       Men in Colonial Virginia commonly wore full suits of armor;

·       No Americans survived the Battle of the Alamo;

·       Large numbers of African-Americans fought for the South during the Civil War.

 

The books in question were both written by Joy Masoff, who says she found the information about widespread African-American support for the Confederacy on the Internet. Although most historians strongly dispute this assertion, it is promoted by a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is open to male descendants of soldiers who fought for the South during the Civil War.

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Some Va. History Texts Filled with Errors, Review Finds (by Kevin Sieff, Washington Post)

Virginia 4th-Grade Textbook Criticized over Claims on Black Confederate Soldiers (by Kevin Sieff, Washington Post)