Roni Dean-Burren received a picture text message from her ninth-grade son about an inaccurate caption in his textbook.
Dean-Burren posted the above text message to her Facebook page and it quickly went viral. She commented, “The Atlantic slave trade brought millions of workers…notice the nuanced language there. Workers implies wages…yes?” Others quickly commented on the photo urging the language in the text book to be changed.
The photo made it’s way to McGraw-Hill where they agreed to make changes in the text’s language right away. In a statement McGraw-Hill said, “This week, we became aware of a concern regarding a caption reference to slavery on a map in one of our world geography programs. This program addresses slavery in the world in several lessons and meets the learning objectives of the course. However, we conducted a close review of the content and agree that our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves. We believe we can do better. To communicate these facts more clearly, we will update this caption to describe the arrival of African slaves in the U.S. as a forced migration and emphasize that their work was done as slave labor. These changes will be reflected in the digital version of the program immediately and will be included in the program’s next print run. McGraw-Hill Education is committed to developing the highest quality educational materials and upholding the academic integrity of our products. We value the insight the public brings to discussions of our content.”
