wonderful, fair, and progressive our society has been give some students a
basis for idealism. It may be empowering for children to believe that simply by
living we all contribute to a constantly improving society. Maybe later, when
students grow up and learn more, they will be motivated to change the system
to make it resemble the ideal. Maybe stressing fairness as a basic American
value provides a fulcrum from which students can criticize society when they
discover, perhaps in college history courses, how it has often been unfair. This
all may be an instance of Emily Dickinson’s couplet “The Truth must dazzle
gradually/Or every man be blind.”^100
Since fewer than one American in six ever takes an American history course
after leaving high school, it is not clear just when the next generation will get
dazzled by the truth in American history. Another problem with this line of
thinking is that the truth may then dazzle students with the sudden realization
that their teachers have been lying to them. A student of mine wrote of having
been “taught the story of George Washington receiving a hatchet for his
birthday and proceeding to chop down his father’s favorite cherry tree.” To her
horror this student later discovered that “a story I had held sacred in my
memory for so long had been a lie.” She ended up “feeling bitter and betrayed
by my earlier teachers who had to lie to build up George Washington’s image,
causing me to question all that I had previously learned.” This student’s
alienation pales besides that of African Americans when they confront another
truth about the Founding Fathers: “When I first learned that Washington and
Jefferson had slaves, I was devastated,” historian Mark Lloyd told me. “I
didn’t want to have anything more to do with them.”^101 Selling Washington as a
hero to Native Americans will eventually founder on a similar rock when they
learn what he did to the Iroquois.
It is hard to believe that adults keep children ignorant in order to preserve
their idealism. More likely, adults keep children ignorant so they won’t be
idealistic. Many adults fear children and worry that respect for authority is all
that keeps them from running amok. So they teach them to respect authorities
whom adults themselves do not respect. In the late 1970s, survey researchers
gave parents a series of statements and asked whether they believed them and
wanted their children to believe them. One statement stood out: “People in
authority know best.” Parents replied in these proportions:
13 percent—“believe and want children to believe”