Class Dismissed Transcript

Howard Zinn, Historian: What is most important in a textbook is not what is in

there and how they treat what is in there. Yeah, thats important. But what is more
important is what is omitted. High school textbooks reach I think the most important
part of the population. I mean thats when the ideas of kids about society, about
government are formed. So this is a very, very important point in their lives.

Student: The history they give us in school is short-changed. I mean I was starving for
more.

Student: I think its important to know about the world around you and where you
really come from.

Student: But I learn it. Its boring, but I learn it.

Interviewer: Why do you learn it if its boring?

Student: Because they make you.

Student: As a mother, what I found in my sons textbook was so poorly written and so
inaccurately written it was impossible for him to find information in the textbook
because it wasnt there.

Interviewer: And who do you think makes the textbooks?

Student: I know its not a black person.

Chapter 1: Triumph? of the American Nation

Carmela Soprano: Were having a discussion about Christopher Columbus.

Anthony AJ Soprano, Jr.: They would make fine servants. With fifty men, we
could subgate them.

Carmela Soprano: Subjugate.

Anthony AJ Soprano, Jr.: And make them do whatever we want. That doesnt
sound like a slave trader to you?

Student: If you have to write a description about what happened when Columbus got
here and then you look in the textbook, youre obviously not going to find out what
happened when Columbus got here.

Student: Leaving out the part about what they did to the Indians, about how
everything happened, about how everything came together, how they came over here,
why, for what.

Student: The fact that he slaughtered the Indians and that the Spaniards raped and
killed a lot of Native American women, they tend to leave that part out.

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Carmela Soprano: George Washington had slaves, the father of our country.

Anthony AJ Soprano, Jr.: Well, whats your point?

Student: I remember specifically talking about slavery and asking, like, you know,
what happened, whatever, whatever. And basically, to me, it just sounded like they use
examples of slavery in other places because, like, it was just that everyone was doing
it. That was just the time to have slaves. Like it was a trend.

Student: So its kind of like this whole mindset where, like, yeah, okay, slavery
happened, but we made up for it, you know, because, you know, blacks are in a better
position today than they ever have been, so therefore, I shouldnt question, you know,
the economic difference between black and white, or rich and poor.

Anthony Tony Soprano: So you finally read a book and its bullshit.

Carmela Soprano: Tony!

Howard Zinn, Historian: The fact is the title of this book, The Triumph of the American
Nation, you know, The Triumph of the American Nation is a very nationalistic kind of
description, a very positive description, and says nothing about the complexities of
American history in which for the most part, you know, the triumph has been the
triumph of the wealthy people, of the powerful people, and the triumph of certain
groups over other groups. The great myth in this country has been always that we are
one big country, that we are all together like one big happy family. And the
Constitution starts off the Preamble with we, the people of the United States, as if
we, the people of the United States, all of us, black, white, men, women, immigrant,
Native American, we all established the Constitution. Not so!

Andy Snyder, High School History Teacher: How many people here feel like your
own ethnicity, you spend enough time reading about that in history class? How many
people here feel like their ethnicity, you havent had a chance to study that enough?

Keith Catone, High School History Teacher: Most of the students that I teach are
Latino or black. The ways, in which their histories are in the U.S. history textbook, its
not a constant presence. And I think thats what the biggest drawback to traditional
texts is that theres never a constant presence of any of the marginalized communities
in the text. The constant presence is that white male dominance, and that is always
there no matter what chapter, no matter what topic, no matter what page.

Howard Zinn, Historian: Whats interesting to me about this textbook is it

represents a certain concession to the changes in history teaching and history writing
since the 1960s when we began to have more of a history recognizing women and
black people and working people. And so the textbook makes nods in that direction,
but essentially what this textbook does is give us a traditional non-class version of
American history. By non-class version of American history I mean, theres no real
recognition that our society has been divided from the very beginning, you know, from
the time of the colonists, you know, has been divided into rich and poor.

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Keith Catone, High School History Teacher: I would agree with Zinn in that
analysis that there is no social class analysis in the textbook. And just dealing with our
students in particular, we are in a school where well over half of the students are
receiving free lunch, which means that their families are below the poverty line, the
poverty level. And if you ask our group of students if they are living in poverty, or if
they are poor, or what kind of class they consider themselves, most likely say middle
class.

Steven Shreefter, High School History Teacher: I worked in the South Bronx for
fourteen years where large numbers of kids were terribly marginalized. You know, the
South Bronx is the poorest Congressional district in the country. And almost
everyone, almost 100% of the kids, you know, said things about people on welfare,
which was amazing considering that most of them were on welfare. So its this
schizophrenia of this society because you are rooting for, very often, the wrong guy.
You know, its like watching a John Wayne movie and knowing, even if you know about
history, rooting for the cowboys.

Chapter 2: The Founding Fathers

Howard Zinn, Historian: The fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention

were a remarkable cross-section of American leadership. The word leadership is
very important there. They werent a cross-section of the American people. They were
a cross-section of the American leadership. Now what does that mean? That means
that these fifty-five men who drafted the Constitution were a cross-section of the
richest people, the most powerful people in America. They were a cross-section of
slaveholders, of merchants, of bondholders, or land speculators. They were white.
They were male. And they owned a lot of money. So thats the group they were a cross-
section of. Or, to put it another way, the Founding Fathers were not a multicultural
group. There were three important people among the Founding Fathers: John Jay,
Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. They wrote these articles for the New York
press to persuade people, to try to persuade people, to ratify the Constitution. And
even the most conservative people in this country agree that the Federalist Papers,
probably, if there is any body of writings in the history of this country which
represents the political theory of the United States, they say, Ah, its the Federalist
Papers. The most crucial of these Federalist Papersthere were eighty-five of them
is Federalist Paper No. 10. Theres nothing here, nothing in this textbook, about the
Federalist Papers. Nothing. Zero. What do they think? Do they think that young
people are not going to be able to understand the Federalist Papers? No. Maybe they
are worried that young people will be able to understand them too well. Federalist
Paper No. 10, which was written by James Madison, asks why are we setting up a strong
central government. Well, because we are worried about faction, about the conflict of
factions. He could have used the word class instead of faction, but the word class
was not in vogue yet. So faction. And what are these different factions based on? These
different factions are based, James Madison said, on the unequal division of property.
Some people have property; some people dont have property. Or, to put it another
way: some people have property; most people dont have property. That causes
factions. We dont want these factions to fight against one another, Madison said, so
we have to have a strong central government to control this. Now, what are we most

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worried about? We are not worried about a minority faction, he said, because we are
going to set up a Constitution where the majority will rule. But what we are worried
about is a majority. Ah! That is interesting! That means most of the people of the
country. That is what we are worried about. Its a democracy, but we are worried about
a majority. Thats why they set up a strong central government. The Republicans and
Democrats, they both agree: we mustnt have big government. The fact is weve never
had anything but big government in this country. The Constitution set up big
government. They wanted big government. They have always wanted big government
until government began to do things in the twentieth century for ordinary people, and
then the cry went up: No big government!

Chapter 3: The Industrial Revolution

Student: I think they mostly just say, like, how good the U.S. is but not the bad about
the U.S.

Student: No one wants you to think, you know, America is bad, or, whatever, the
media, the government.

Howard Zinn, Historian: When I went to high school, the period between the Civil
War and World War Iyou know, roughly between 1865 and 1914/15, that period called
the Industrial Revolutionwas the period in which the United States became a great,
great economic power in the world. And what I remember sitting there in high school
was how wonderful it all was, and how it was presented wonderfully, and how the
country, you know, just zoomed. And were all supposed to be proud of, you know, of
that zooming up into first place, just like were all supposed to be proud today when
the Dow Jones average goes up. We talk about the great pioneers of the new industrial
society. They were gamblers willing to take chances on the hope of gain, highly
competitive people in a highly competitive society. These business leaders often have
been condemned as robber barons for their selfishness and ruthless business
methods, for exploiting their workers and forcing their rivals out of business. Ah,
good! A concession! And then, it ends up saying: However they are viewed today,
these business leaders played an important part in an important period of the nations
development. They helped to give new directions to American life. Well, what are
these new directions? They helped to give the directions to American life which we are
still experiencing today. The increasing wealth at the top and increasing troubles down
below. That is, they introduced a system of profit-making and profit as the chief
incentive of the industrial system in which human beings were to be considered
secondary to corporate profit. Thats the direction that they set. Today, when we talk
about the Dow Jones average, they dont talk at the same time about the fact that while
the Dow Jones average has gone up 400% in the last fifteen years, the wages of
ordinary people have gone down 15%. Throughout America, a new spirit of fierce
competition drove people at a faster and faster pace. It was an exciting and a
productive period in the nations history. You know, Id like to see that. You see people
being driven at a faster and faster pace. You see the working people being driven at a
faster and faster pace, working longer and longer hours: an exciting and a productive
period in American history. How nice! Then, it says, but some of the changes created
problems for many people. Well, thats the greatest understatement that you could
have in describing the Industrial Revolution.

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Emma Lapsansky, Textbook Writer: The process of textbook writing is to take the
complex and to reduce it to as simple a sound bite as textbook publishers believe the
American public can handle.

Elliot Hoffman, Textbook Editor: Obviously, whoever has the most power in society
is going to be able to use their power to influence, you know, lots of things, including
textbooks.

Chapter 4: Standardized Testing and the Textbook Industry

Student: Teachers are pressured to teach students to think one way.

Interviewer: Pressured by whom?

Student: Pressured by the administration. Pressured by the Board of Education.

Keith Catone, High School History Teacher: Certainly, with global history and U.S.
history, we need to teach a certain curriculum, and it would be a disservice to the
students not to teach that curriculum because they are tested on that at the end of the
year.

Tess McBride, High School History Teacher: Were in the midst of grading these
Regents Examinations, and so the principals got pressure from the superintendents or
whoever to have a high percentage of the students passing those Regents
Examinations, and then the pressure gets put on the teachers to teach the materials
that are going to be on the Regents. It is like, all of this pressures us to study whats in
the book, and it focuses on the test. So important things that might not be on the test
that youd want to teach, you know, you have to sacrifice some places. And you hope
that everything falls together. But definitely, theres a tremendous amount of
pressure.

Emma Lapsansky, Textbook Writer: Textbooks probably should be designed to

teach towards some testing that checks to see whether or not, if youre going to live in
this country, you know what the Constitution is about. People who come from
somewhere else have to do it. Why shouldnt people who are born here have to do the
same thing? So this is a good thing. On the other hand, when the textbook reaches all
the way out to the edges of the margin so that everything that a textbook does must
somehow conform to a test at the end, it does not leave any space for people to pursue
the edges, the corners of history, the exciting parts, the fun parts, the parts that give
individuals a sense of their own place in it.

James Loewen, Historian: Publishers dont want to offend anybody. Franklin W.

Pierce was one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States. He was one
of the causes of the Civil War: he was so bad. But hes the only president who ever
came from New Hampshire. Now, am I going to say in my textbook, This president
sucks: hes my candidatehe actually is my candidatefor the worst president of
all? Well, I might offend New Hampshire. And then, we dont want to say anything
bad about the Alamo, or well lose the Texas market. We dont want to say anything
bad. Well, if you cant say anything harsh or hard-hitting about anything, you cant say

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anything interesting about anything because you might offend somebody. Thats what
unfortunately happened to the textbook market.

Elliot Hoffman, Textbook Editor: The market is the government, you know, because
textbooks are bought byyou know, well, for about half of the states in the country, it
isadoption boardsthey are called, they arestate boards that buy textbooks that
have to pass, you know, certain requirements. So their whole thing is will it get
adopted by a state. And the two biggest states that they are worried about are Texas
and California, and the reason is because those are the biggest markets.

Steven Shreefter, High School History Teacher: There are also connections
between the publishing companies and the Board of Education. If I want to use a text
from, say, the New Press, if it is not on the approved list, I cant order a class set. I can
order a few copies for the library. But, if you look at those listings, they are primarily
what the large textbooks companies put out. So its cozy, and its a multimillion-
dollar-business.

Emma Lapsansky, Textbook Writer: Textbook writers, textbook publishers are in,
really, a business. They are really not idealists. Sometimes, they are idealists, too, but
they are really out to figure out how to make a dollar and how to make a dollar in the
most competitive way both in competition with the other textbook companies and in
competition with themselves to keep their costs down and their profits up.

Elliot Hoffman, Textbook Editor: Some of the management executives, you know,
they come out with great lines. Like, one boss said, Were not educators; were
business people. You know, thank you, thats a great thing to quote.

Chapter 5: Forgotten Heroes

Howard Zinn, Historian: They give you large and admiring profiles of these
pioneers of industrialism, of Carnegie, of Rockefeller, of Vanderbilt. But you dont get
comparable portraits of the people who were on the other side, that large group of
people who were in essence exploited by them, who had to work 14-16 hours a day in
their factories, in their oil refineries, who died by the thousands working on their
railroads, the Chinese immigrants and the Irish immigrants. You dont get a picture of
that while it glamorizes the Founding Fathers, the industrial leaders, and the military
leaders. At other points in the textbook, it treats what I think are the true heroes of
American democracy in passing ways, or it doesnt treat them at all or in ways in
which distort who they were. No great portrait of Mother Jones. Here is a woman who
in her 80s organizes miners in West Virginia, talks to the miners, and says, You are
the ones who have produced this wealth and where is it? Who has it? She brings the
children of the miners who are working in the mines at the ages of 10 and 12 and she
brings them to Washington, D.C. to confront Theodore Roosevelt and the Congress
about child labor, carrying signs saying, We want time to play. Well, Mother Jones
doesnt even appear here. She doesnt exist as far as this is concerned. To me, thats a
test because Mother Jones is one of the great figures of the twentieth century. It talks
about Emma Goldman, for instance. Emma Goldman, this remarkable anarchist,
feminist of the early twentieth century. The best known anarchist was Emma
Goldman, an immigrant from Russia. Though feared and hated generally by the

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middle class and disliked by many workers, Goldman was appreciated in radical
circles. I like that. Feared and hated? Now, how many workers opinions are they
aware of? The fact is that Emma Goldman was a hero to workers. She organized the
garment workers in New York, and they assembled in huge numbers to hear her speak
in Union Square at times of great deprivation. And she spoke all over the country, and
thousands of people, thousands and thousands of people came to hear her speak. She
was popular among working people. We know who hated and feared Emma Goldman.
That is clear: the very rich in this country, the industrialists, the police, the forces of
authority, J. Edgar Hoover, who finally deported her personally at the end of World
War I after she had been in jail for opposing World War I. I mean, those were the
people who hated her, but you would never know that from this book.

James Loewen, Historian: The history curriculum as it is taught today makes all
students stupid. That is it reduces their ability to think about society. It does this
because it pretty much leaves out causation. Instead, it just teaches one damn thing
after another.

Chapter 6: The New DealWho Really Makes History?

Ben Stein, Economics Teacher: In 1930, the Republican controlled House of

Representatives in an effort to alleviate the effects of? Anyone? Anyone? The Great
Depression.

Howard Zinn, Historian: The New Deal is portrayed in the traditional way that the
New Deal is portrayed. We had a depression. Roosevelt came along. He fixed things up.
How nice! But what they leave out was that Roosevelt came into office in early 1932 in
the midst of ferocious class conflict in this country. He came into office in the midst of
organizing all over the country: tenants organizing against landlords, unemployed
people organizing, marching on city halls to demand that something be done to help
feed their family, demanding jobs because one-third of the working population was
jobless. This is the situation which Roosevelt faced when he came into office. If you
dont understand that, if you arent given that understanding in the textbook, then in
1934, there were strikes all over the country: turmoil all over the country. Theres class
conflict. Theres worry in the upper classes. It is under those conditions that Roosevelt
goes to work, and the New Deal legislation is passed, but you get no indication that its
that kind of struggle that has always existed in this country and in which concessions
for the working class, for ordinary people, has come not through the beneficence of
presidents but through the turmoil, the protests, the organization, the strikes, the
boycotts of ordinary people in this country.

Student: If youre content with the past history of your own country, then youre not
going to want to question things that people do in the present day of your own
country.

Student: People are going to think that their own country is perfect. Youre going to
love your country and I guess youre going to end up even fighting for it if you had to.

Elliot Hoffman, Textbook Editor: You can read the Texas Educational Code. A
primary purpose of the public school curriculum is to prepare thoughtful, active

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citizens who understand the importance of patriotism and can function productively
in a free-enterprise society with appreciation for the basic democratic values of our
state and national heritage. If youre teaching kids to think for themselves, you would
just give them tools and encourage them to reach their own conclusions, not
indoctrinate them saying were going to teach you what patriotism is.

Student: In public schools, we learn history as training to take orders from others
when you get out there. Students just do the same thing over and over. Its a cycle. It
needs to be broken. Hopefully, that will be us who breaks it.

Chapter 7: Thinking Outside the Book

James Loewen, Historian: Teachers need to teach against the textbook, and they
need to help students become independent learners so that they learn how to do
history rather than just how to learn the textbook. By doing history, I mean
supplementing the textbook and going beyond and even contradicting the textbook by
doing actual research. Its not so hard to do with all kinds of books in the library, even
in a high school library or public library and more in a college library.

Emma Lapsansky, Textbook Writer: Go to www.xyz and read what people were
actually saying. Go to www.xyz and see what the newspapers in Los Angeles were
saying. See what the Chinese newspapers in San Diego were saying. Its now possible
to do that.

Tessa McBride, High School History Teacher: One of the really great lessons we
had was on the Industrial Revolution, and we looked at the impact on women and
workers. And so I gave the kids different articles about the experiences of workers in
different factories, and so we had to organize a strike. So they had to come up with
their own model slogans. They had to come up with their own banners. And when I
had them reflect at the end of the year on the best lessons, this was one of the best
lessons that they enjoyed because they got involved. They did something about it.

Keith Catone, High School History Teacher: When were reading the textbook,
were scratching the surface, and if we really want the truth, if we really want the
entire story, you really need to dig.

Tessa McBride, High School History Teacher: There are different perspectives. You
can have the same event, but ten people can see it totally different. Its all about the
perspectives, but this, its like one perspective.

Student: In life, I think its important to realize that you should never consider one
source the ultimate source, so in a classroom, no source should be handed to a student
and said that this is everything thats true or that this is everything that happened. If
youre not going to give them more than one source, then give them places where they
can go to look for different sources.

Student: The regular textbook has a blueprint of the event but then go in depth. I
mean, the topics that they give are the actual events that happened, but they just dont
give all the facts.

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Student: You have to be really skilled to take what they are saying, acknowledge it,
not necessarily accept it, acknowledge it, and say, Well, okay, I understand what you
are saying, but heres my point about it. This is what I think about it.

Student: I think its the teachers job to inspire you, but its your job to go out and find
out all the facts because you cant depend all on the teachers, or on adults, or the
government, or, whatever, your friends. Really, its your task to go out and to learn
what you want to learn, and they should be there to help you and inspire you.