books like "lies my teacher told me"

[sypher]

do you know of any?

[Exploited Class]

I don't know if it is out and out lies told by our teachers or the omissions of truths that are worse.

I think the teaching of all of us being equal in an unequal world would be a great place to start. Since yes, me in a 30,000 a year world is real equal to somebody with a 100 million a year job.

How about teaching us that WWII was to fight the Nazis and not about a grab for power by the U.S.?

[abstractmentality]

A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn

[Revolution Hero]

All of the bourgeoise historical literature.

[vox]

I second the Howard Zinn recommendation and also add Killing Hope but Blum, which documents military and CIA intervention by the US since WWII. Quite good, heavily documented and very readable. This is stuff that doesn't even get mentioned in school.

vox

[abstractmentality]

here is something i have on my computer from Mumia Abu-Jamal concerning the text of A Peoples History of the United States:

ACS ITHACA COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
=================================

An Alternative Speech for an Alternative School
M.A.Jamal ©2002

Ona Move!

I thank you all at the Alternative Community School (ACS), the graduating class, teachers, parents, family and administrators, for your gracious invitation. It seems fitting for an alternative speaker to share some thoughts with an alternative school, like ACS.

From what I’ve read about it, ACS is most remarkable; it must be so when they use Howard Zinn’s classic work "A People’s History of the United States" as a main text! Just imagine if this excellent text was used in mainstream schools, instead of in “alternative” schools! How many millions of American kids would have a real grounding in history? How many would know about why there was a U.S. Civil War?

Quite recently, the U.S. Dept. of Education released a report on the abilities of American students to understand history. If the report is correct, millions of junior and senior high school kids, an estimated 89% of those tested, could not handle history at their own grade level! One member of the test’s governing board, historian Diane Ravitch, was quoted in published reports, describing this lack of historical knowledge as “truly abysmal.” Again, according to this report, which tested some 29,000 kids in 4th, 8th and 12th grades, only 10% of American school students performed at grade level, and only 1% performed at advanced levels.

Now, I have no way of knowing, but I’d dare to bet that very few of those in the 89 percentile used Zinn’s "A People’s History of the United States" as a required text.

For these millions of kids represented as failing even grade level history, the subject probably filled them with dread, or worse, drudgery. They were required to remember mounds of meaningless data, dates, names and places of great men, great wars, and great empires. For most of them, history was as remote as the moon.

Zinn’s People’s History, however, deals with the lives and struggles of real people, working people, people of color, women, and how they tried to make democracy a reality, not just words. Sometimes, many times, they failed, because of the powerful confluence of government and business, yet, they persevered, as many people do today; like many of your parents, many of your teachers, and many of you.

For Zinn, and historians like him, history is the study of popular and social movements, to transform their societies. It is not the story, from the top, but dozens, no hundreds of stories, from the broad bottom, where most of us are. It is bringing in the histories of African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, female Americans, Japanese-Americans, poor folks, soldiers, students -- all of us -- to tell us all, American history.

The teachers and administrators at ACS are to be commended for their vision, and this broad, alternative example should be expanded, to strengthen, enrich and refresh the American educational mainstream.

How can it be, in the richest nation on earth, that almost 90% of its students cannot perform at grade level?

What does this say about the government’s commitment to education? About how most of the nation’s students have a “totally abysmal” grasp of the history of the nation that they will soon inherit?

The government does not prize its schools; nor does it privilege the learning of its young people.

For, while higher learning is about the best in the world, and competitive with that of other nations, primary education is left to languish on the vine.

A society determines the worth of people in its society by rewarding their labor with pay. If that is so, why are prison guards paid more than school teachers, and in some cases, more than college professors?

School teachers receive virtually all of the criticism of the failures of the public schools, while the system gets a bare portion of necessary resources.

While Zinn’s People’s History may be required in some classes at ACS, I wonder if I might suggest another? The writer, Jonathan Kozol, has written many remarkable works, but his recent "Savage Inequalities" tells a story of schools, in today’s America, which are windowless, or with human waste running like a river down the hallways.

Isn’t this the kind of system that is badly in need of alternatives?

ACS is an important beginning.

Perhaps it can light a way for others to follow.

I congratulate the graduates, and all of you, for your time

May your futures be fruitful;

Thank you! Ona Move!
Long live John Africa
Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Spiritual Minded]

A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn
^^^
i heard this book wis suppost to be really good...

i doubt i will be able to find it in a Swedish library though

[Incognito]

Howard Zinn is great. I especially enjoyed Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideologies.