I found this paragraph in James W. Loewen’s “LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME” to be interesting, and thought I’d share it with my friends:
Textbooks in American history stand in sharp contrast to other teaching materials. Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism. “Take a look in your history book, and you’ll see why we should be proud” goes an anthem often sung by high school glee clubs. But we need not even look inside. The titles themselves tell the story: The Great Republic; The American Pageant; Land of Promise, Triumph of the American Nation. Such titles differ from the titles of all other textbooks students read in high school or college. Chemistry books, for example, are called Chemistry or Principles of Chemistry, not Triumph of the Molecule. And you can tell history textbooks just from their covers, graced as they are with American flags, bald eagles, the Washington Monument.