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To my generation—the children of the fifties—these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no handholds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonialists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorale of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were— or so it seemed—the permanent expression of mass culture in America.
對我們這些出生于50年代的人來說，這些教科書是恒定不變的，因?yàn)闀械氖聦?shí)根本毋庸置疑。歷史書的正統(tǒng)觀念看起來無懈可擊，永不衰敗。畢竟，有誰會懷疑技術(shù)帶來的奇跡或英國殖民者相較兩班牙殖民者的優(yōu)勢？有誰會否認(rèn)昔日美國西部和南方田園牧歌般的時光？又有誰會質(zhì)疑反共產(chǎn)主義的運(yùn)動？似乎根本無須將書中的內(nèi)容與現(xiàn)實(shí)去對比，因?yàn)檫@些是公認(rèn)的真理，與現(xiàn)實(shí)無關(guān)，與個人意見無關(guān)。這些觀點(diǎn)曾是美國大眾文化的永恒體現(xiàn)——至少看起來是這樣。
But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor Presidents is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word “progress" has been replaced by the word "change": Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically.
但是如今的教材已然變化，隨之而變的還有孩子們成長后將要邁入的美國社會。曾經(jīng)統(tǒng)一的社會如今成了一個個群體割據(jù)的大拼盤，富人與窮人，老人與年輕人，男人與女人，黑人、白人、西班牙裔人和印度裔人。美國社會過去依據(jù)憲法有章可循，依靠總統(tǒng)仁慈善為，閨家運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)順利，但是現(xiàn)在整個體系都變得破舊不堪、岌岌可危。過去不再是通往現(xiàn)在的一條通衢大道，而是一堆混雜在一起的事件，彼此互不相融、沒有統(tǒng)一的方向?！斑M(jìn)步”一詞被“變化”所取代：現(xiàn)代的教科書認(rèn)為，孩子們學(xué)習(xí)歷史是為了更好地適應(yīng)他們身邊日新月異的變化。歷史在前進(jìn)，不以我們的意識為轉(zhuǎn)移。以前的歷史書在末尾章節(jié)總是會提到科學(xué)進(jìn)步和總統(tǒng)大選，把當(dāng)代社會描繪成寧靜美好的天堂，但是如今的歷史書總是以各種各樣的問題結(jié)束：種族問題、城市問題、外交問題，以及污染、貧困、能源枯竭、青卷叛逆、暗殺、毒品等問題。一些書甚至以戲劇化的筆觸來闡釋這些問題。
