| dc.description.abstract | The Japanese-American Internment refers to the involuntary incarceration of approximately 120,000 alien-born Issei (first generation born in Japan,) and citizen Nisei (second generation, U.S.-born naturalized citizens of the United States). Both groups, if they resided on the West Coast, were interned without due process under President Roosevelt s Executive Order 9066, from 1942 to 1945. The internment exemplifies, among other things, a severe violation of the civil liberties of U.S. citizens and a failure of the United States Government in general and the Supreme Court in particular to intercept and prevent such a violation. Sadly, this unprecedented event has not received ample attention in secondary education in the United States, making it yet another issue of U.S. history that, according to a number of recent studies, the majority of the nation s students is ignorant about. The narrative of American history in secondary education is mainly determined by the state U.S. history standards of the individual states. The reason for this is that curriculum standards function not only as a guide for teachers, but also for textbook publishers, because the standards declare what the students of each state should know and be able to do within a field. Furthermore, state standards determine the content of standardized tests, the dominant form of student evaluation for the past two decades. Creating, publishing and following up on state curriculum standards falls outside the mandate of the United States Government, making it a state constitutional responsibility. The central research question of this thesis is to evaluate the treatment of Japanese-American internment during World War II in the fifty-one state U.S. history standards used around the country. Through contextual analyses, spread across three chapters, this thesis evaluates the treatment of Japanese-American internment in the fifty-one state U.S. history standards used around the United States. On the basis of seven individual historical criteria points, the analyses demonstrate substantial shortcomings in the treatment of the majority of the state standards. If future generations are to fully know and understand the complex history of the internment, the current state U.S. history standards need to be drastically improved. The seven historical criteria points listed in this thesis can be the starting point for such an improvement. | eng |