displays no hint of feminism or socialism. Surely, a feminist author would
write a textbook that would help readers understand why no woman has ever
been president or even vice president of the United States. Surely, a socialist
author would write a textbook that would enable readers to understand why
children of working-class families rarely become president or vice president,
the mythical Abraham Lincoln to the contrary.^67
If textbooks are overstuffed, overlong, often wrong, mindless, boring, and
all alike, why do teachers use them? In one sense, teachers are responsible for
the miseducation in our history classrooms. After all, the distortions and
omissions exposed in the first ten chapters of this book are lies our teachers
tell us. If enough teachers complained about American history textbooks,
wouldn’t publishers change them? Teachers also play a substantial role in
adopting the textbooks: in most states, textbook rating committees are made up
mainly of teachers, from whom publishers have faced no groundswell of
opposition. On the contrary, many teachers like the textbooks as they are.
According to researchers K. K. Wong and T. Loveless, most teachers believe
that history textbooks are good and getting better.^68
Could it be that they just don’t know the truth? Many history teachers don’t
know much history: a national survey of 257 teachers in 1990 revealed that 13
percent had never taken a single college history course, and only 40 percent
held a BA or MA in history or a field with “some history” in it, like sociology
or political science.^69 Furthermore, a study of Indiana teachers revealed that
fewer than one in five stay current by reading books or articles in American
history. An audience of high school history teachers at a 1992 conference on
Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploitation gasped aloud to learn that
people before Columbus knew the world to be round. These teachers were
mortified to realize that for years they had been disseminating false
information. Of course, teachers cannot teach what they do not know.
Most teachers do not like controversy. A study some years ago found that 92
percent of teachers did not initiate discussion of controversial issues, 89
percent didn’t discuss controversial issues when students brought them up, and
79 percent didn’t believe they should. Among the topics that teachers felt
children were interested in discussing but that most teachers believed should
not be discussed in the classroom were the Vietnam War, politics, race
relations, nuclear war, religion, and family problems such as divorce.^70