I ran across my old high school history book today. It is nearly 40 years old.

[Karia]

3. Students are capable of more

but it is hard to find good textbooks these days. Publishers seem to think students want books that look like web pages and are easy to scan quickly (rather than read carefully).

Low expectations start long before college though. For a good article on the textbooks for elementary, middle, and high school, see http://tinyurl.com/csfydy8 , "How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us," by Gail Collins, New York Review of Books, June 21, 2012

"All around the country, teachers and students are left to make their way through murky generalities as they struggle through the swamps of boxes and lists."
<snip>
"And that’s the legacy. Texas certainly didn’t single-handedly mess up American textbooks, but its size, its purchasing heft, and the pickiness of the school board’s endless demands—not to mention the board’s overall craziness—certainly made it the trend leader. Texas has never managed to get evolution out of American science textbooks. It’s been far more successful in helping to make evolution—and history, and everything else—seem boring."