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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.
当然，在教科书中发现当下的一些学术研究和观点并不会令人十分惊讶。但教科书的变化却着实让人震惊。60年代的人们认为，尽管他们曾抗议旧教科书中的平庸乐观主义、沙文主义和拜金主义，但课本绝不会因此而变。他们对这一想法非常笃定，因为，当他们的意见发生作用时，关于核雨和粗制滥造的房子的歌曲收进历史课本，他们竟然浑然不觉。
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.
时下的历史教科书在一定程度上反映了美国历史不光彩的一面。例如，有几本书讲到了美国大陆最后一个“野生”印第安人艾什的故事。他的族人被屠杀殆尽之后，艾什在1911年被俘并在位于旧金山的加州大学人类学博物馆度过了生命中最后的四年半。至少三本书里都有同一张让人触目惊心的照片。镜头下宾夕法尼亚州煤矿里分拣煤炭的童工身体扭曲、满脸煤灰，从煤矿口呆滞地望出来。有一本书援引了一个士兵为例来证明20世纪初美军曾使用酷刑来镇压菲律宾人。另有不少书都提到在独立战争期间，爱国者们曾把反对者们浑身涂满柏油粘上羽毛以示严惩，并将许多保皇党人驱逐出国。几乎目前所有的教科书都提到美国在第二次世界大战期间曾将日裔美国人监禁在拘留营中。
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.
从意识形态上来说，50年代写就的历史书坚如磐石、天衣无缝。书中的美国是完美的：是世上最伟大的国家，是民主、自由和科技进步的化身。这些教科书中，美国从未发生过重大变化：美国价值观和政治体系自独立战争以来便稳定延续。
