Five Ponds Press

Publisher Of Inaccurate VA Textbooks Will Replace Them For Free

David Taintor | January 12, 2011, 2:02PM

The publisher of textbooks in which historians found major errors has said it will correct and replace the books at no cost to the Virginia schools they were used in, the Washington Post reports.

Five Ponds Press, a small publisher in Connecticut, is responsible for the books in question, which -- among other errors -- claimed that African Americans fought in large numbers for the south during the Civil War.

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Virginia

Historians Find Myriad Errors In VA History Textbooks

David Taintor | December 30, 2010, 8:30AM

Surprise, surprise, historians have found glaring errors in a textbook claiming that African Americans fought in large numbers for the South during the Civil War.

A number of additional errors have been found in other textbooks being used in some Virginia classrooms, since the state ordered a review of the books, the Washington Post reports.

Among the textbooks' errors are claims that the Confederacy included 12 states and the U.S. entered World War I in 1916. Five professional scholars reviewed the books, with three of them finding "disturbing" results. State officials are scheduled to meet January 10 to review the results.

"I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes -- wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?" said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College who reviewed "Our Virginia: Past and Present." The other book mentioned in the report was "Our America: To 1865."

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