What’s Not Being Taught About The Iraq War

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Salon.com / By Jonathan Zimmerman

What’s Not Being Taught About The Iraq War
As America’s war in Iraq passes from “current events” into history, we must ask what are our children being taught in schools about the conflict?

March 19, 2013 |


Upon the 10th anniversary of America’s war in Iraq, a critical question with serious ramifications has been little explored: What are our children being taught in schools about the conflict, as it passes from “current events” into history?

To answer this question, one obvious place to start is school textbooks. I looked at several of them, and was happily surprised. The books present a fairly complex and balanced view of the war in Iraq, avoiding the falsehoods and sugarcoating that has so often marred American history instruction. But textbooks only tell part of the story.

Just as important is what is actually emphasized in the classrooms, and the ability of teachers to engage in real inquiry. Unfortunately, a combination of school policies and judicial decisions have made it so that many kids learn little or nothing about what we have done in Iraq, or why we have done it.

I’m a professor of education and history, and wrote a book examining conflicts over history in American public schools. But for me, this probe is more than theoretical: My daughter is an 11th grader in a suburban public high school, where she takes Advanced Placement U.S. History. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/education/whats-not-being-taught-about-iraq-war

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