American History

A handsomely packaged, yet very curious beast, American History--aimed specifically at a 4th-grade classroom--presents a quintet of 5-minute pieces (each followed by a 5-minute Spanish version) whose only unifying theme is that none offers what we might call "American history." Here are the opening two segments: in "Native American Voices," performance artist Sandy Corley talks about diversity and plays her song "The Face of America" (a bland, yet earnest number), while in the much peppier but equally off-kilter "Ben Franklin's Colonial Times," an animated Ben Franklin talks mostly about newspaper publishing. The other titles are: "Secret Train to Freedom," "How Blue Jeans Became a Business" (Levi-Strauss is an editorial advisor on the series), and "Memories of the Home Front." It's possible that individual instructors can spur some decent classroom discussion with these shorts for viewers with truncated attention spans, but the series title is grossly misleading. This is force-fed diversity training with a little advertising thrown in to defray costs. I would have somehow expected more from Harcourt Brace. But, for about another $100, you can get a far better series: American History for Children (VL-1/95), which contains twelve 25-minute videos (as opposed to five 5-minute titles). Not recommended. Other boxed sets include: Communities, U.S. States and Regions, Texas (which includes--and I'm not kidding--the 'unit' "Ladybird Johnson and the Wildflowers"), and World History. Aud: I. (R. Pitman)