"Just teach the facts," sure, but which facts?

In addition to the blatantly wrong things history textbooks can have, there's also the issue of "what's representative?"

Sometimes history books can be like watching baseball highlights on Japanese television. In their love of Shohei Ohtani, they tend to focus more on him than the rest of his team.

"Ohtani hit two singles and a home run! Ohtani struck out five and gave up only two walks! Ohtani is the greatest of all time! And ... the Angels lost 5-7."

It can leave you with a send of, "Wait, what?"

I saw this in Texas' history textbook from 1942 -- "A Story of Progress." [Source]

On pages 339 and 340, it tells of three Confederate victories over the Federals. One attack on December 31, 1862 "was a complete success."
Then there was "the most spectacular battle" at Sabine Pass in September 1863 (for which there's a monument, shown on page 338). Finally, "On May 13, 1865, a Confederate force captured a body of about 800 Federal soldiers."

But then Texans learned that "Lee and the main Confederate army had surrendered more than a month before" and the war was over.

By choosing certain facts of history and ignoring wider trends, textbooks reveal their bias. In this case, this was a segregation-era textbook, and its preference for the Lost Cause narrative is completely undisguised.

Textbooks can "just teach the facts" and still mislead students if the facts they select are misrepresentative. We need textbooks that teach not only facts, but facts that are representative of wider trends.