Gamut of Subjects Related to American History.

¶ … gamut of subjects related to American history. The underlying themes of the course included race, class, gender, and power. Books such as Lies My Teacher Told Me and Zinn's People's History of the United States present a more rounded overview and analysis of historical events than what is typically offered in public school textbooks or in popular media. Modern resources ranging from newspaper and magazine articles to film and documentary productions help to round out the student's understanding of American history. The course shows that history is written by the victors, which paints a skewed and heavily biased version of events. The time has come to revise American history textbooks with a more truthful portrayal of how historical events unfolded. History has shaped, and his shaped by, sociological factors like race, class, gender, and power.

Race remains one of the most important topics in American history, culture, society, and identity. The nation was built on the backs of slaves, and the repercussions of slavery still reverberate in American social life. Moreover, the new nation was founded on the presumption that the people already living here did not count. The rights of Native Americans have been systematically trampled upon, something that has been whitewashed in standard school textbooks. In Chapter 2 of Lies My Teacher Told Me, the author discusses the mythos of Christopher Columbus, and how Columbus's story has been manipulated and appropriated to perpetuate the myth of European superiority over Native Americans. Overall "the level of scholarship is discouragingly low" in American textbooks because of the need to perpetuate propaganda about European superiority (Loewen 3).

Likewise, Chapter 3 on "The Truth About the First Thanksgiving" discusses how American history can be a form of political propaganda, even more than it serves as the dissemination of knowledge. It is not just the fact that the Europeans presumed superiority; it is the continued indoctrination of school children in this matter that is the real problem. Yet the European version of history has been presented as absolute and irrefutable truth until scholars have spoken loudly enough to dispel the myths. Thankfully, books like Loewen's are becoming increasingly more accessible and integrated into standard curricula.

Because of the importance of racism to the foundation of the nation, it is critical to focus on race in any American history course. As Zinn puts it, "There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States," (1). Yet the topic of race is approached in a way that is fallacious. Race is treated with too little attention, without properly addressing the way race has permeated every aspect of American society. Chapter 5 in Loewen's book, entitled "Gone with the Wind" like the movie, show how history books have been written in ways that erase race altogether. This is true even if "almost no genre of our popular culture goes untouched by race," (Loewen 136).

Furthermore, visual texts like the "Without Sanctuary" offer the photographic evidence to back up the written analyses provided by writers like Howard Zinn and James Loewen. Such visual evidence can and should be used more often in history textbooks because unlike current attempts to cover up reality, photographic evidence shows students exactly what happened. Students learn about Booker T. Washington instead of W.E.B. DuBois in a similar attempt to whitewash history. Howard Zinn writes about such uses of history as a weapon in Chapter 2 of A People's History of the United States. There is a "a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America," (1). Indeed, history is a weapon that is used to indoctrinate students, perpetuate myths about race, and avoid a frank and honest discussion of how racism shapes social justice and equality in the United States.

The Monumental Myths video accomplishes similar goals in transcending written text to provide a broader understanding of the darker sides of American history. Like history textbooks, monuments can be used as propaganda tools and "weapons" of indoctrination. While the film addresses race, the filmmakers also touch upon class and gender issues as well. In Chapter 11 of A People's History, Zinn discusses the robber baron phenomenon and the beginnings of what would become an essentially corrupt system of capitalism in the United States. Workers' unions and labor movements impacted ideologically by the writings of Karl Marx helped to raise awareness of worker exploitation and the need for organization as self-empowerment (Zinn). One of the reasons Americans continue to fear words like socialism is because the corporate oligarchy that began with the robber barons has systematically controlled the media, thus casting a negative shadow on labor rights movements. Magazines like Mother Jones overtly embrace a socialist ideology that provides intelligent counterpoint to unbridled capitalism, but such periodicals are deemed fringe in spite of their astute attention to detail and scholarship.

For example, Gilson charts exactly who in America earns income in the top one percent bracket. According to Gilson, "most Americans have flatlined," whereas the superrich grow exponentially richer due to their crafty use of market economics (1). In a different chart for Mother Jones, Drum and Gilson debunk myths that are perpetuated by the mainstream media. Because the mainstream media are owned by corporate conglomerates, it is in the best interest of the editorial staff to promote ideologies that support the success of its senior management team. As with the corporate control of textbooks, the control of the media restricts Americans' access to real information. The Internet contains too many sources, including too many unreliable sources, for the average person to sort through. Relying on what textbooks and the media provide means continuing to be brainwashed.