I was not taught about Juneteenth in school. I learned from my own reading, when I was probably about 10-12. As an adult I worked with museum professionals and followed state-mandated standards of learning and publisher guidelines to make multimedia materials for classrooms. 1/? https://twitter.com/WriterJennDunn/status/1273990170061287426

We made materials about Juneteenth. About Tulsa. About lynching/anti-lynching, Green Books, redlining. We wrote about U.S. imperialism in its takeover of Hawaii and the Philippines and the suppression/oppression of native people there as well as in continental North America. 2/?

We wrote about different genocides, the doctrine of "just war," the abuses enabled by the ever-expanding powers of what some historians call "the imperial presidency." We wrote about Jim Crow. About Lochner v. New York. 3/?

About Dred Scott and Homer Plessy and Brown v. Board but also about Near v. Minnesota and Gideon v. Wainwright and Griswold v. Connecticut. The Trail of Tears but also the Iroquois Confederacy, Molly Brant, Opechancanough and Tecumseh. 4/?

We included primary sources ALWAYS, talked about how to read them and evaluate what the people of a given time said about other people, events, and issues--and how to identify bias in those sources. How to ask "whose voices are you NOT hearing here?" How to think critically. 5/?

The Know-Nothings of the nativist movement. The Chinese Exclusion Act. Ellis Island but also Angel Island. The quotas of the 1920s. The KKK resurgence in the 1920s.

My point, I guess, is that the information is out there. It may not have been in your school history textbook. 6/?

It may not have been taught to you. Maybe your teacher was undertrained, apathetic, politically disinclined to teach the whole story---or more likely, overwhelmed by the million standards and testing requirements and hoops they must jump through just to do their damn-hard job.7/?

Textbooks are a shortcut. They're relied on, sometimes exclusively, by overstretched (or underqualified) teachers. How do those textbooks get into the schools you and your kids attend? Gigantic, consolidated publishers have entire departments of people who create and design...8/?

...curricular materials (textbooks and "consumables," or workbooks/worksheets, which they like because they make more money next year selling another batch) to adhere to state standards. Florida mandates its history books must contain XYZ. Oklahoma mandates ABC but not XYZ. 9/?

Texas mandates a slew of stuff relevant to Texas. Same with California. Michigan. Illinois. New York, and on and on. Do publishers make fifty different editions of each textbook? No. Too expensive, not just to make/publish, review, and get adopted (more on this shortly), but 10/?

to send their marketing and sales people to the various enormous school districts/boards who consider which textbooks they're going to put on the "accepted" list for the upcoming school year. Every state has these. Publishers know the schedules. 11/?

Without getting into all kinds of minutiae here, the result is: the vast majority of textbooks in history/social studies/civics (which has all but disappeared from schools, more shortly) are published by a half-dozen publishers who cater to states with the MOST $$ to spend. 12/?

There are very few publishers who create curricular materials to be used in multiple states, and there's a difference between "basal" (i.e. approved for use entirely, without extra materials, to meet the learning standards for that state) and "supplemental" materials. 13/?

Where I worked, with an award-winning educational team, our materials were considered/expected to be "supplemental," and we encountered a lot of surprised education professionals when we told them it was actually basal. And covered civics standards as well as social studies. 14/?

Because it was digital-only (with downloadable/printable consumables), we could insert material that covered, say, the two standards in FL that no other state had. Or the three sections of standards in Oklahoma that other states didn't have. 15/?

We could also make corrections and revisions as new material was published by scholars who came to different conclusions. Or as new events happened--such as the election in 2012, when we created a whole new unit. But I digress... 16/?

The issue is: how come certain important stuff doesn't get into history/social studies textbooks in the first place? Two short (but complicated) reasons: Textbook publishers, and adoption committees. The situation in the U.S. is patchwork, and always has been. 17/?

And also a 3rd, the people/committees who create state standards. There are great organizations like the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) that create broad national standards. But they're recommendations. Each state may start with those, or do what they want. 18/?

So you have committees that decide "every kid who goes to X grade in this state should know these things to pass this subject." They come up with "standards of learning" (a/k/a SOLs) for every grade, in several subjects. 19/?