Lies My Teacher Told Me

(Ron) #1

CHAPTER 8: WATCHING BIG BROTHER: WHAT


TEXTBOOKS TEACH ABOUT THE FEDERAL


GOVERNMENT


1 Said regarding the writing of the history of the Mexican War; quoted by
Edward Pessen, “JQA... ,” in the Organization of American Historians
newsletter, 2/1988.


2 Lyrics from Tom Paxton’s “That’s What I Learned in School,” Cherry Lane
Music Publishing Co., Inc., all rights reserved, used by permission, copyright
1962, 1990.


3 “An Interview with Bill Moyers,” in Facing History and Ourselves News, c.
1991, 4.


4 Malcolm X quoted in Gil Noble’s film El Hajj Malik el Shabazz (Malcolm
X) (Carlsbad, CA: CRM Films, 1965).


5 Paul Gagnon, “Why Study History?” Atlantic, 11/1988, 63.


6 Unfortunately, the inquiry textbooks have gone out of print.


7 George Kennan quoted in Sheila D. Collins, “From the Bottom Up and the
Outside In,” CALC Report 15, no. 3 (3/1990): 9-10.


8 Frances FitzGerald, America Revised (New York: Vintage, 1980), 129.


9 Quoted in James Oliver Robert-son, American Myth, American Reality
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1980), 272.


10 Bessie L. Pierce, Civic Attitudes in American School Textbooks (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1930), 110-11.


11 Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1985
(Washington, D.C.: World Priorities, 1985), 35-37; Curt Tarnoff and Larry
Nowels, “Foreign Aid: An Introductory Overview of U.S. Programs and
Policy,” Washington, D.C., Library of Congress Congressional Research
Service, 2004; David Wallechinsky “Is America Still No. 1?” Parade
(1/14/2007) 4. Moreover, most foreign aid goes to just four or five countries,
always including Israel and Egypt, and is more military than social or

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