Historia revisada: una investigación y re-imaginación del libro de texto y su potencial influencia

The textbook is a tool that has had a central position in the educational world for centuries. It has become a subject of controversy in recent years because of the monetary and political agendas that influence its content and distribution. This study explores and exposes some of the background of the controversy that surrounds this educational tool. Through the lens of the sixth edition of America Past and Present, an AP-level high school history textbook used in a variety of different political climates and geographic locations--the study explores the representation of the United States-Mexican War in a close linguistic analysis. Grammatical components (participants and processes) from M.A.K. Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics provide the mechanism through which critical discourse analysis is conducted on the text. The study finds that the text has a tendency to portray the United States (and its participants and processes) with much more detail and nuance than it includes for Mexico, which it represents very vaguely and generally. Following the close analysis of the sixth edition, the study includes an exploration of the evolution of the text and its images in more recent editions of the book. Finally, the study discusses ways of re-imagining the role of the textbook in the classroom so that it is not seen as a source of absolute truth, but rather a tool to promote the student's active participation and interpretation