Muzzey’s History of the United States as a proper text book for North Carolina High schools was defended by H.P. Harding, superintendent of Charlotte schools and a member of the state high school text commission. In commenting Monday on numerous complaints made against the history by chapters of the Daughters of the Confederacy,
“The Daughters are victims of propagandists among book-sellers,” said Mr. Harding, who charged that agents who failed to get their books listed as those acceptable by the commission spread propaganda to the effect that Muzzy’s history was unjust to the south in giving an account of the civil war period.
“The histories for North Carolina high schools were selected only after a careful investigation into the merits and accuracy of the books,” said Mr. Harding. “We did find a few sentences which we considered might injure the feelings of a southern reader and we had those sentenced changes so that nothing offensive to a southerner is contained in the book. Agents whose books were not listed by the commission spread propaganda that the Muzzey’s history was unfavorable in the hope that it would be rejected when the commission meets again.”
Muzzey’s history has been taught in the Charlotte city schools for the last year and nothing objectionable has been found in it, Mr. Harding said. Professor Alexander Graham, rated as one of the best informed historians in the South, taught the history last year. He had made the statement that it gives a more complete and accurate account of North Carolina’s part in the Revolutionary war than most any other record.
Record Is Fair
Muzzey’s history, said Mr. Harding, records events of the civil war period in a just manner so that a student after studying it will not have a prejudiced or biased idea of the history of that period. The port on the history contained in the bulletin of the state high school text commission, which was written by Holland Holton, professor of education at Trinity College, and endorsed by the entire commission, says of Muzzey’s history:
A virile and interesting explanation of present day conditions and problems by showing how they have come about. The author’s freedom in indicating his opinions adds flavor to the text and gives the teacher an opportunity to train the student in discriminating between fact and opinion, thus avoiding the common tendency towards ‘book-worship.’ A teachable and well proportioned book.”
The text book commission selected four histories, choosing both the liberal histories, or those dealing with American history from a national standpoint, and the southern histories, or those colored with the southern viewpoint. A thorough investigation of all the books was made before the selections, and positively nothing objectionable to a southern reader can be found in them, Mr. Harding asserted.
Muzzey’s history, he considers the most unbiased book of the four, it having been written as though the author might have lived in Australia or some other country where he would not be influenced by sentiment and view-points. The facts in the book are accurate and opinions by the author, after the changes ordered by the commission, reflect on neither the north or the south, Mr. Harding said.
Book Agents Responsible
He claimed that book agents ran to members of the U.D.C. with unrevised copies of the history and sought to influence them against it with the hope that the book would [be] stricken from the list and another’s history selected. Muzzey’s history is being taught in many schools of the state, and it will be used again next term in the Charlotte schools.
The Raleigh correpondence of The News Saturday carried an account of protests from numerous local chapters of the U.D.C., and the announcement that other books might be chosen by the schools as four were available from which to make selections. The members of the state high school text book commission are southerners, and it was aid, no danger existed of them choosing a history which would be hostile to the south. Mr. Harding backed up his claim of the love for the south with the statement that his father was a major in the Confederate army and that an uncle left on the field at Gettysburg among its Confederate dead.
N.W. Walker, professor of education at the University of North Carolina, is chairman of the commission. The other members besides Mr. Harding are H.B. Smith, superintendent of schools at New Bern; M.B. Dry, principal of the Cary High School; and Holland Holton, professor of education at Trinity.
From the front page of The Charlotte News, Monday, August 1, 1921
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