How Textbooks Push Children to the Left

Are you surprised that leftist ideas have penetrated the minds of the people? Chalk up this reality to the leftist teachers and, especially, to the left-oriented textbooks now in use in our secondary schools. One book in particular that has been gaining traction in New York City in recent years is “The Americans.”

Although even the leftist teachers claim not to like this textbook used in U.S. history (a one-year course required in NYC for all juniors) because it is so skimpy on facts and is written in an opaque style, any informed reader would have to agree that it is one of the most politically correct textbooks one could imagine. Reading this book, one gets the message that the history of America is a theme of victimization. The list of victims is well known: Native Americans, women, labor, immigrants, blacks, farmers, urban dwellers, the mentally ill, migrant workers, unions, etc. “The Americans” is a somewhat diluted version of Howard Zinn’s openly communist college textbook, “A People’s History of the United States.” It is also worth adding that this reference to Zinn’s “communism” is not putting labels on anyone, and is not a McCarthy-like type of red-baiting of an innocent individual; Zinn openly announced his communism decades ago when he taught at Boston University.
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