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Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modern scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics text did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it, for that generation never noticed when its complaint began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the textbooks. But this is what happened.
當然，在教科書中發(fā)現當下的一些學術研究和觀點并不會令人十分驚訝。但教科書的變化卻著實讓人震驚。60年代的人們認為，盡管他們曾抗議舊教科書中的平庸樂觀主義、沙文主義和拜金主義，但課本絕不會因此而變。他們對這一想法非常篤定，因為，當他們的意見發(fā)生作用時，關于核雨和粗制濫造的房子的歌曲收進歷史課本，他們竟然渾然不覺。
The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and a half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania—ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove man that the United States interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.
時下的歷史教科書在一定程度上反映了美國歷史不光彩的一面。例如，有幾本書講到了美國大陸最后一個“野生”印第安人艾什的故事。他的族人被屠殺殆盡之后，艾什在1911年被俘并在位于舊金山的加州大學人類學博物館度過了生命中最后的四年半。至少三本書里都有同一張讓人觸目驚心的照片。鏡頭下賓夕法尼亞州煤礦里分揀煤炭的童工身體扭曲、滿臉煤灰，從煤礦口呆滯地望出來。有一本書援引了一個士兵為例來證明20世紀初美軍曾使用酷刑來鎮(zhèn)壓菲律賓人。另有不少書都提到在獨立戰(zhàn)爭期間，愛國者們曾把反對者們渾身涂滿柏油粘上羽毛以示嚴懲，并將許多保皇黨人驅逐出國。幾乎目前所有的教科書都提到美國在第二次世界大戰(zhàn)期間曾將日裔美國人監(jiān)禁在拘留營中。
Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: Its values and its political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution.
從意識形態(tài)上來說，50年代寫就的歷史書堅如磐石、天衣無縫。書中的美國是完美的：是世上最偉大的國家，是民主、自由和科技進步的化身。這些教科書中，美國從未發(fā)生過重大變化：美國價值觀和政治體系自獨立戰(zhàn)爭以來便穩(wěn)定延續(xù)。
