Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

For the past five months, my small cubicle has been clogged with an unusual sight in a newsroom: 43 middle school and high school American history textbooks.

Colleagues walking by would often grimace and say something like: “Ugh. This reminds me of studying for the A.P. U.S. History exam.”

But as an education reporter on the National desk, I relished the painstaking task I had set out for myself: reading about 4,800 pages of mostly sterile, written-by-committee prose to figure out what American teenagers are learning about our nation’s history in this deeply divided time, and how those lessons differ across the country.