A Social Studies Text I'd Like To See

I've posted before about my disappointment in my daughter's 4th grade social studies textbook. Last week, it finally dawned on me what I'd like to see. She goes to a Catholic school and as far as I can tell, her text is a standard one, Our Golden State. Let me start by telling you what's there.

Her text focuses on the history of California. Every chapter takes the story a few years farther. She just finished the chapter on the transcontinental railroad. Every chapter lays out a timeline and gives a basic idea of what life was like back then. Each chapter also details how one group or another was oppressed. In her current chapter, it's the Chinese. Chinese workers were brought over to help build the railroads. Once the railroads were done, they looked for other jobs. The locals didn't like the competition and passed anti-Chinese laws. There was plenty of racism and oppression.

Dittos for racism against the Indians, the Mexicans, the blacks and lots of others. Sexism is detailed as well. All of this happened and it was fought by brave, visionary people. Why did it happen in the first place? How is it that the Americans got the upper hand? The Chinese weren't importing American workers to build railroads. Why? If someone came to you today and offered you sub-minimum wage work to pick tomatoes in Mexico, would you go? Why not?

The study of success is what's missing. All cultures are not created equal. If they were, then you'd see equal outcomes. The Aztecs didn't explore the globe, the Portugese, British and Spanish did. The Ashanti in Africa didn't develop railroads, America and Europe did. The Japanese didn't develop the germ theory of modern medicine, the French did. The Kumeyaay Indians of California didn't develop a banking and investment industry, others did. How come?

Christian Europe and America blew the rest of the world away. In any objective terms, they completely out-competed everyone else. By objective terms, I mean that wealth is better than poverty, education is better than illiteracy, health is better than sickness and so on. How did that happen?

I want my kids to be successful. If they're going to be successful, they're going to have to learn what promotes success. I want them to be moral and caring, too, so the lessons in racism are important, too. Both need to be taught. Leaving out any critical analysis of the causes of success or even mentioning the concept that one group outperformed the other doesn't make sense to me. Until I asked the kids why Americans didn't go to China to build railroads, it had never occurred to them to wonder about it.

Do all textbooks out there omit this as well? Do you think this is an important lesson, too?