11 Years after: How Not to Teach About the Iraq War

By Bill Bigelow, Rethinking Schools curriculum editor and
Zinn Education Project co-director

U.S. marines entering one of Hussein's palaces during Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003

As we watch the horrors of war escalate in Iraq, it's worth pausing to note how profoundly corporate textbooks mis-educate our students on the years of warfare in Iraq. A widely used world history textbook, Holt McDougal's Modern World History, includes exactly one "critical writing" activity on the Iraq war:

            Imagine you are a speechwriter for President Bush. Write the introductory 

            paragraph of a speech to coalition forces after their victory in Iraq. 

If more people in the United States knew our history, we would not have allowed the U.S. government to punish Iraq with deadly sanctions, to invade Iraq, or to wage economic warfare with radical free market policies. And if we knew our history, we would not allow propaganda to substitute for analysis in U.S. textbooks. To make sense of the bloody internecine fighting we see unfolding now, students need honest, clear-eyed history.

Continue reading Rethinking Schools curriculum editor Bill Bigelow 2013 Zinn Education Project column at: Common Dreams | Huffington Post.